How much is NVidia jeopardizing right now?

[OICAspork]

It occured to me long ago that OEMs in general would be very angry with NVidia for artificially inflating their 3DMark scores in their attempts to win contracts... but it popped into my mind... that they might make specific people even angrier... the other BETA partners for FutureMark... and particularly DELL and Gateway.

Here is a list of the BETA members:
http://futuremark.com/betaprogram/

Do you think that this could greatly jeapardize current of future contracts with these two companies?

 

[GreenBeret]

IMO: That will only happen if enough consumers are informed about NVIDIA's cheating and lying to them, and boycott their products/buy competitor's products. If consumers are not informed or don't give a damn, then the OEMs won't give a damn either.

 

[OICAspork]

IMO: That will only happen if enough consumers are informed about NVIDIA's cheating and lying to them, and boycott their products/buy competitor's products. If consumers are not informed or don't give a damn, then the OEMs won't give a damn either.

In general I'd agree with you... especially from a business sense, however by trying to discredit FutureMark... there statement basically said that it was designed to intentionally make them look bad... they are throwing into question the rebutation of all BETA partners... including DELL and Gateway. From a business standpoint DELL and Gateway might be willing to dismiss it... but their are people at the top of these companies... and they can become offended and irrational... that is to say, make an emotional decision instead of an economic one... my question basically is... does anyone think they might?

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

nVidia does not need their PR department to "help them" anymore. Who is their cheif scientist? That is the man directly responsible for the nV30 and all of its siblings. Oh yeah that is the Guy talking about how the 3d industry is going to change. David K I got some advice for you. PLEASE GO BACK TO THE DESIGN BOARD AND MAKE QUALITY HARDWARE.

nVidia has a history of crappy IQ all the way back to the Riva128 days....and the sad part is the only thing most people care about is raw speed.

Go run nVidia's Dawn demo on ATi's card and you will see how much better it truly is when it is rendered in high IQ

 

[Sabastian]

It occured to me long ago that OEMs in general would be very angry with NVidia for artificially inflating their 3DMark scores in their attempts to win contracts... but it popped into my mind... that they might make specific people even angrier... the other BETA partners for FutureMark... and particularly DELL and Gateway.

Here is a list of the BETA members:
http://futuremark.com/betaprogram/

Do you think that this could greatly jeapardize current of future contracts with these two companies?

Hrm, the short answer I think is, yes. While most end users don't have a clue about 3DMark the enthusiast market is well aware of 3DMark. The way I see this is that the enthusiast group is very influential overall and information trickles out of this group to the greater public. In general most don't even know or have a clue about ATi or nvidia and when they get their computers they are simply happy that they can browse the internet with it. So if the enthusiast know about these problems then they are the only real focus group that even matters in the market.

What does nvidia have to lose...? Well the NV35 doesn't really look like much more then a respun NV30 with a 256 bit bus memory controller so essentially it appears it is an attempt to reincarnate the NV30 core. Market share loss for nvidia is very likely IMO. Nvidia may be able to sell plenty of chip yet though but at lower margins which is something I see possibly occurring just to keep market share out of ATIs hands. When it comes to the bottom line even DELL I believe is subject to price pressures.

It really is possible that the NV35 turns into a bust for the enthusiast market and another failure for nvidia marketing. Further nvidias driver reputation is going down the tube while ATi is making strides in that area. A year ago I never would have guessed that nvidia would go down the tubes so much in terms of their reputation and that ATi would be perceived so .... positively. But ever sense ARTX became actively a part of ATi they have really changed the companies prospects for the better. Nvidia has allot to lose while ATi has allot to gain in terms of market share. The Radeon 9700 Pro was a good start for ATi but I don't think ATi could have ever managed nvidias failures with the NV30 and now the NV35 without nvidias help.

At this point I don't see the Geforce FX 5900 "ultra" making any positive difference for nvidia and it is possible that it goes the way of the NV30. Subsequently the entire FX series will most likely suffer in demand resulting in nvidia cutting their margins and still loosing market share. ATi however may be able to demand better margins(then nvidia) over all as a result of their improved reputation and hardware. OEMs are not deaf, and they keep their ear to the ground, this 3DMark issue is something they would hear.

 

[Typedef Enum]

Anybody remember Steve Jobs? Remember what he did after ATI jumped the gun by a day in making reference to their Mac Radeon before Steve had a chance to announce it? It was like...that one little thing suddenly wasn't too little anymore...

There are people like Steve Jobs (count me in...If I were CEO and somebody pissed me off, I would do the same thing, despite it all) that would be swayed by these sorts of things...it just depends on the person.

 

[Sabastian]

Anybody remember Steve Jobs? Remember what he did after ATI jumped the gun by a day in making reference to their Mac Radeon before Steve had a chance to announce it? It was like...that one little thing suddenly wasn't too little anymore...

There are people like Steve Jobs (count me in...If I were CEO and somebody pissed me off, I would do the same thing, despite it all) that would be swayed by these sorts of things...it just depends on the person.

It could be that he was upset about it... to a degree. It wouldn't be out of character ... . I think at the time though Apple was looking for an excuse to switch away from ATi. Nvidia was on the rise in popularity and it could have been a board room decision to begin switching away from ATi whom they had done business with for so long to nvidia. I always thought that the move was a little rash but within understanding... sort of. ATi was excited to show for a design win with their radeon in that particular machine... argh, can't remember what the name was of the Apple design but it was quite different compared to other machines.(Small box, some referred to it as a "toaster" )

 

[WaltC]

Yes, in the best of climates nv35 wouldn't do anything for nVidia until it ships (which is still a couple of months off at the earliest, I think.) But nVidia seems to have managed shooting itself in the foot--again--and has already put a damper on nv35 even before the first boards are shipped. In light of the pounding nVidia's taken in particular market segments because of the nv30 failure, anything like this is bound to have far-reaching reverberations.

Basically, the kind of people willing to shell out $500 for the nv35 reference-design cards that are being reviewed now (I note that only the most expensive version of an nv35 card is being pushed into the review circuit currently), are the very ones who know and care about things like deliberately cheating in benchmarks to create false performance impressions. As this news filters down into that market segment over the coming weeks it is likely that many in this market will change their minds about waiting on nv35 and go ahead and buy a less expensive R9800P or the equally expensive 256mb R9800P.

System OEMs will do things based on the number of orders they get from customers requesting certain peripherals, and this news is bound to diminish demand for these upcoming products and as this happens it will negatively affect OEM interest in the nv35 product line.

Thing is the current mess nVidia has gotten itself into is compounded with all of the current messes, and PR distortions and gaffes, that led the nVidia CEO to ultimately pronounce nv30 "a failure." It's not so much this one thing in isolation, it's pretty much everything nVidia's been producing, and saying, since August of last year. It's the sum total of all of this that's really going to hurt.

Hopefully nVidia will quickly learn that no amount of driver fudging and PR initiatives can turn a sou's ear into a silk purse... What it needs to do is to produce a silk purse in the first place and the rest will fall into line. Let's hope they do better with nv40.

 

[Sabastian]

As this news filters down into that market segment over the coming weeks it is likely that many in this market will change their minds about waiting on nv35 and go ahead and buy a less expensive R9800P or the equally expensive 256mb R9800P.

System OEMs will do things based on the number of orders they get from customers requesting certain peripherals, and this news is bound to diminish demand for these upcoming products and as this happens it will negatively affect OEM interest in the nv35 product line.

I know that the Radoen 9800 Pro 256 is paired with expensive and fast 2ns memory.(err I think so, correct me if I am wrong, thanks in advance.) But the Geforce FX 5900 "ultra" has a very large and expensive PCB paired up with 256 mb fast memory as well.(Don't know what the speed rating on it is don't think it is 2ns though.) The Geforce FX 5900 "ultra" has an even larger PCB then the Geforce 5800 "ultra". Given these matters I think ATi will have more flexibility in their pricing of the 256mb Radeon 9800 Pro.

http://www.hothardware.com/reviews/images/fx5900/cardscompare.jpg

no amount of driver fudging and PR initiatives can turn a sou's ear into a silk purse...

lol "sou's ear into a silk purse" hehe.

 

[RussSchultz]

the Geforce FX 5900 "ultra" has a very large and expensive PCB paired ...The Geforce FX 5900 "ultra" has an even larger PCB ...Given these matters I think ATi will have more flexability in their pricing of the 256

The cost of a PCB is negligable when compared to the memory or the chipset.

 

[Star_Hunter]

As this news filters down into that market segment over the coming weeks it is likely that many in this market will change their minds about waiting on nv35 and go ahead and buy a less expensive R9800P or the equally expensive 256mb R9800P.

System OEMs will do things based on the number of orders they get from customers requesting certain peripherals, and this news is bound to diminish demand for these upcoming products and as this happens it will negatively affect OEM interest in the nv35 product line.

I know that the Radoen 9800 Pro 256 is paired with expensive and fast 2ns memory.(err I think so, correct me if I am wrong, thanks in advance.) But the Geforce FX 5900 "ultra" has a very large and expensive PCB paired up with 256 mb fast memory as well.(Don't know what the speed rating on it is don't think it is 2ns though.) The Geforce FX 5900 "ultra" has an even larger PCB then the Geforce 5800 "ultra". Given these matters I think ATi will have more flexibility in their pricing of the 256mb Radeon 9800 Pro.

http://www.hothardware.com/reviews/images/fx5900/cardscompare.jpg

no amount of driver fudging and PR initiatives can turn a sou's ear into a silk purse...

lol "sou's ear into a silk purse" hehe.

The 5900 Ultra PCB retail boards will be much smaller then the ones you saw in reviews...

 

[Myrmecophagavir]

Basically, the kind of people willing to shell out $500 for the nv35 reference-design cards that are being reviewed now (I note that only the most expensive version of an nv35 card is being pushed into the review circuit currently), are the very ones who know and care about things like deliberately cheating in benchmarks to create false performance impressions. As this news filters down into that market segment over the coming weeks it is likely that many in this market will change their minds about waiting on nv35 and go ahead and buy a less expensive R9800P or the equally expensive 256mb R9800P.

I think this is one of the most important aspects here. They're doing this cheating in the place where it's most noticable because that portion of the public are more well-informed.

 

[duncan36]

People in tech companies love this sort of drama, doesnt happen too often.
But this is the biggest I can remember, and amongst certain people with pull it will get talked about.
For buyers in a company it will matter, its their job to know, and I'm sure ATi's salesmen will not show the censure regarding Nvidia that ATi is showing in public.
Will it hurt Nvidia? Definitely.

 

[WaltC]

....

The 5900 Ultra PCB retail boards will be much smaller then the ones you saw in reviews...

Let's hope that's also applicable to "girth" as well as length... Would be nice for them to manage to reduce things to a 1-slot product, though...That 2-slot backplane really bites, IMO.

 

[Dave H]

Companies do not generally make "irrational" or "emotional" decisions. However, they do sometimes take strong punitive steps in order to protect norms which are important to them.

Take the example of Jobs canning ATI when they revealed the design of the Mac Cube (IIRC) ahead of time. As a one-time occurence, this leak was not a big deal, and presumably had no impact whatsoever on the success or (as it turned out) failure of the Cube, and so Jobs' reaction might look irrational or emotional. But the secrecy of Apple's upcoming product designs, and the ability to have their introduction tightly controlled (i.e. by surprise unveilings at MacWorld keynotes), is very important to Apple's overall strategy and brand image. Jobs' strong reaction against ATI has meant and probably will continue to mean that no partner will ever leak "top-secret" product info ahead of a MacWorld again. Thus the move can be seen as quite rational from a game-theoretic perspective. (Assuming that the norm being protected is important enough. Also it probably didn't hurt that, as Sabastian points out, Nvidia was becoming a much more attractive supplier from Apple's perspective.)

So the question is, how important is it to OEMs that 3dMark numbers be accurate and reliable? Obviously it's important enough for Dell and Gateway to join FM's beta program, which is an outlay not just of money to FM but more importantly of engineering resources to participate in the program. And it is often said that many OEMs consider 3dMark scores an important tool when deciding sourcing for video cards/chips.

Of course, Dell and GTW are likely more interested in the SysMark side of things than 3dMark. And the base membership level--where both Dell and Gateway are--doesn't really provide much in the way of ongoing contact between the company and FM. So it's possible that neither they nor many other OEMs value the integrity of 3dMark enough to change purchasing decisions because of it. But if they do, then a decision to punish Nvidia for cheating would not be irrational, just good business sense.

 

[Sxotty]

Everytime someone talks about the 5900ultra it gets more expesnive are people just randomly making up numbers like $500, or do you actually believe it

 

[Ante P]

Everytime someone talks about the 5900ultra it gets more expesnive are people just randomly making up numbers like $500, or do you actually believe it

Gaiwards version is due to drop in at 900 Euros. One Euro is rouglhy one US dollar right now..
pretty sick stuff

 

[digitalwanderer]

Everytime someone talks about the 5900ultra it gets more expesnive are people just randomly making up numbers like $500, or do you actually believe it

Gaiwards version is due to drop in at 900 Euros. One Euro is rouglhy one US dollar right now..
pretty sick stuff

$900 FOR A VIDEO CARD?!?! AND THEY'RE CHEATING AND LYING ABOUT IT?!?!?

Oh yeah, people are gonna be lining up to buy them puppies...yes sirree!

Sorry, I was offended when I heard the $500 price being bandied about...$900 is freaking insane!

 

[Ante P]

Everytime someone talks about the 5900ultra it gets more expesnive are people just randomly making up numbers like $500, or do you actually believe it

Gaiwards version is due to drop in at 900 Euros. One Euro is rouglhy one US dollar right now..
pretty sick stuff

$900 FOR A VIDEO CARD?!?! AND THEY'RE CHEATING AND LYING ABOUT IT?!?!?

Oh yeah, people are gonna be lining up to buy them puppies...yes sirree!

Sorry, I was offended when I heard the $500 price being bandied about...$900 is freaking insane!

Well it's a very special bundle.
Watercooling, 5.1 soundcard (a crappy one though), firewire card, headphones, a game or two and some other crap. And it will also be clocked higher than the other versions of 5900 Ultra too.

Problem is that last time I spoke to Gainward they had no plans to release a normal 5900 Ultra, ie without all the extras.

But on the other hand, that's gainwards problem, not a general 5900 Ultra one.

BTW please take down the new "blick the geforce" banner before I get epelipsia..

 

[Evildeus]

Problem is that last time I spoke to Gainward they had no plans to release a normal 5900 Ultra, ie without all the extras.

In France 1 Gainward card will be available @ 529€