Interview with Dan Vivoli

[John Reynolds]

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/quickbyte/20040730/index.html

 

[Nappe1]

LOL.

that man is marketing freak. Not much any information there, but still funny stuff to read.


EDIT:
- "can you tell us more about NV40 VP Unit?"
- "yeah, sure, but can you say GeForce6800? Let's say it together: G-e-F-o-r-c-e..."

 

[Tahir2]

A waste of time and bandwidth... what was the point of that interview? It sounded like a really bad commercial with no info.

 

[Killer-Kris]

I dunno, I found one of his last comments on the first page interesting. The one about the mainstream parts actually having SM3.0 and being derivatives of NV40 instead of the bastardizations the MX series has been.

I'm anxious to see the NV40 derivative replacement for the 5200. It's something that might be in my price range, and might even have some decent performance for the money.

 

[Bjorn]

Would be interesting to know when the video processor will be enabled in the current NV40's. And some benchmarks, CPU usage, encoding/decoding speed...

 

[Bjorn]

I dunno, I found one of his last comments on the first page interesting. The one about the mainstream parts actually having SM3.0 and being derivatives of NV40 instead of the bastardizations the MX series has been.

As long as the DX9 performance isn't something along the lines of the 5200. Then it'll be interesting. Though i'm guessing that f.e a 4 pipe NV40 derivate should perform very well.

 

[Lezmaka]

I would hope that whatever gets put in the $99 range (from both companies) performs similar to a 9600, especially in dx9. Otherwise, the gap between low end and high end is going be enormous.

 

[aapo]

I would hope that whatever gets put in the $99 range (from both companies) performs similar to a 9600, especially in dx9. Otherwise, the gap between low end and high end is going be enormous.

Yes, I'd questimate a speed of a little more than 9600-pro for the ~100$ parts coming along. There are two reasons; 1) the performance can't be a lot higher, because the amount of transistors won't allow more than 4 pipes for the cheap parts. 2) the performance can't be lower than 9600 pro, because both rivalling companies have learnt from the 5200 fiasco. Plain Features just aren't enough.

I guess the cheapest NV4x variant will be 4 pipes, clocked around 375 MHz (just a guess) and reasonably fast in DX9 (meaning SM2.x). It'll have SM3 support, which will be slow as hell if fully utilised (meaning shaders so complex that they need looping and if-then-elses). But just to have SM3 support in a board this cheap will be very impressive anyway. A programmers dream!

 

[Dave Baumann]

Would be interesting to know when the video processor will be enabled in the current NV40's. And some benchmarks, CPU usage, encoding/decoding speed...

I've got some coming up...

 

[ET]

the performance can't be lower than 9600 pro, because both rivalling companies have learnt from the 5200 fiasco. Plain Features just aren't enough.

I thought that most of the cards being sold are slower than the 9600 Pro (I'll be happy to be corrected on this point). This would suggest that if anything, the lesson to be learned is that if it's cheap it will sell, regardless of spec or speed.

 

[pat777]

Why would anyone interview a marketting guy? I'd rather see an interview with one of the NV40 engineers.

BTW, I did not know the Vice President of Marketing helps build nvidia GPUs. Very interesting indeed.

Tom's Hardware Guide (THG): People who buy graphics cards often are not sure whether to buy NVIDIA's or your competitor's product. Do you have to work harder to differentiate NVIDIA from ATI and how do you plan to do that?

Dan Vivoli (DV): Build a superior product! ;-)

 

[Sxotty]

Would be interesting to know when the video processor will be enabled in the current NV40's. And some benchmarks, CPU usage, encoding/decoding speed...

I've got some coming up...

ARG I just bought a x800 pro I was wondering what all the hype was about and now it doesn't much matter.

 

[assen]

2) the performance can't be lower than 9600 pro, because both rivalling companies have learnt from the 5200 fiasco. Plain Features just aren't enough.

What 5200 fiasco??? NVIDIA is selling truckloads of 5200s, especially in the OEM channel.

 

[PatrickL]

Seems they did not sell enough.

 

[aapo]

What 5200 fiasco??? NVIDIA is selling truckloads of 5200s, especially in the OEM channel.

You haven't heard? The 5200 has so miserable production cost / performance ratio that nVidia couldn't sell them in mentionable quantities without serious price cuts. They have been selling them, but their profit has dropped ~ 80 % due to the large price cuts. I guess that didn't make them happy.