No more FX reviews.

[sumdumyunguy]

I guess it just goes to show that without competition, the incumbent sees no reason or need to innovate. Why work hard and produce something new and clever, when you can eek out the old stuff and keep raking in the cash for minimal outlay?

Well, it could technically be argued that ATI is currently somewhat milking the R300 core too. Of course, the R360 could bring substantial improvements to the table, but I suppose it wouldn't be marketed as Radeon 9800XT if it were the case...

I'm not defending Nvidia's design plan or whatever (I've been arguing for a few years now that always relying on newer exotic memory and smaller process was bound to fail at some point in time), but with R&D costs and ASIC tuning costs rising for each new design (I remember something to this extent in an ATI interview, where the rep said that the cost to enter the graphical market was increasing a lot with each DX generation), it's only a matter of time before doing a completely new core each year or year and a half becomes a sure way to lose money. Perhaps the enthusiasts crowd has been spoiled in the past years, and the GPU race will slow in the future ? Time will tell.

Did not the management of both companies, during the last financial results cycle, state that the product cylce would, indeed, start to get longer?

 

[Pete]

Everyone who's picking on Russ, can you give me a summary of your reading of gkar1's post? Because, from where I sit, most of you are attributing not just self-interest but deliberate malice in nVidia's recent marketing actions, and not just a reasonable (not necessarily right) interpretation of gkar1's reply but deliberate obfuscations and retreats in Russ' self-defense.

In short, I think you all are making way too big a deal out of a misunderstanding, for reasons I don't wholly understand. Care to set me straight with a Reader's Digest version of your objection to Russ' interpretation? Perhaps you would humor me with a similar summation of your interpretation of gkar1's post?

Here's gkar1's post, for reference. I'll even toss in the preceding post (presented four hours before gkar1 replied, so he may well have been responding in the same "nVidia is the evil empire" vein) for context.

It's useless talking to them dude. I know, I "worked" at nvnews for darn near 2 years (was it really that long?)

I have a bunch of emails from Brian Burke that would him look like such an ass right about now it's not even funny. And I bet you he would _still_ try to weasel his ass out of it.

Nobody is going to tell you what they really think, and they will almost always tell you what you want to hear. Think about that set of slides in which they point blank stated that they would not compromise IQ for performance. I knew right then and there they were totally full of sh*t, and that it would be a matter of weeks before the thing blew up in their face.

What's even more funny is the fact that those _cowards_ essentially blamed the whole thing on a "zealous" engineer (or whatever the hell their wording was). Yeah right, like it was some dude sitting there in some corner, doing it all on his own. They didn't have some directive(s) from above that said, "OK Pal, we're going to ask you to discover clever ways so that we can chear our asses off. Kool?"

That's precisely what gutless cowards do. Pass blame on to somebody else. I really do hope NV40 is late again, sucks ass, really hot, underwhelming, etc. I so much want to see these losers become legitimately irrelevant.

Its extremely funny to me that they had the opportunity to drive the industry forward by leaps and bounds, but instead chose the path of greed and deceit. I guess i put too much faith in the goodness of the human spirit.

Me, I think this all hinges on how everyone is interpreting "leaps and bounds." And I can't believe this thread has gone five solid pages on the basis of that misunderstanding alone. Heck, quite a few people have been willing to take up gkar1's torch, whatever it is/was/may be, but I haven't seen him return to this thread to disabuse Russ' misunderstanding.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Everyone who's picking on Russ, can you give me a summary of your reading of gkar1's post?

I think I did several pages back. I don't think Gkar1 was attributing malice. He was just saying (in a conversational style) than Nvidia had opted for a safe, borng route of development when they were in the position of being able to really drive the market forward into new and interesting technology if they so desired.

 

[gkar1]

Wow, I left this thread a long time ago. Basically what i meant was that NV chose to cheat and manipulate the community by any way necessary(cheating benchmarks, manipulate the press with PR propaganda, et al) to save face and cover up the underlying truth.
The plain fact is that they have a subpar implementation of directx9. I don't care about their intentions, all that seems very clear to me is that they designed NV30 with the asumption that its feature set would be adopted as the basis for directx9, they were wrong as wel all know now. Also Cg was the other gamble they took in the race for a HLSL, and it failed as well.

Now here we are seeing the fruits of that gamble, a community shunning them on one side for their after their recent actions have been exposed and developers chastising them on the other. Yet they still try to force the issue with PR tactics(damage control after Valve's benchmark presentation of HL2) and intents at strong arming developers(EA and AOD patch removal). Instead of the product speaking for themselves we have their PR department citing the "millions of customers" they have and how other developers "believe" games run on their hardware.

 

[RussSchultz]

I won't argue with you over what you meant your first statement says if that's what you say you intended to convey. (But it certainly wasn't what I took away from it reading it.)

I will offer a differing opinion of how NVIDIA ended up where they got today: marketting started off small with promises and improper expectation management, expecting engineering to pull through, but the snowball kept rolling and getting bigger. I don't think anybody conciously set out to engage in the activities they're in now--just one thing led to another.

But that's my alternate opinion to the malice theory.

 

[T2k]

I will offer a differing opinion of how NVIDIA ended up where they got today: marketting started off small with promises and improper expectation management, expecting engineering to pull through, but the snowball kept rolling and getting bigger. I don't think anybody conciously set out to engage in the activities they're in now--just one thing led to another.

But that's my alternate opinion to the malice theory.

Certainly far more feasible theory for me - I saw this process 2-3 times at certain companies I used to work for...

 

[demalion]

...

In short, I think you all are making way too big a deal out of a misunderstanding, for reasons I don't wholly understand. Care to set me straight with a Reader's Digest version of your objection to Russ' interpretation? Perhaps you would humor me with a similar summation of your interpretation of gkar1's post?
...

As for Typedef Enum's commentary criticizing nVidia personnel, gkar blaming nVidia personnel and their decisions doesn't seem to have been a point of disagreement in subsequent discussion.

For myself and my thoughts, I've provided what you've asked for abundantly and explicitly. I explained these things briefly earl on, and there continue to be multiple brief explanations throughout my further commentary, if you look through them.

I cannot hold successful conversation conducted on the basis of simply overlooking what I've already provided several times, on the premise of it being too much trouble to read. Allowing such an evaluation of what is too much trouble, where complete dismissal of statements is proposed without ever addressing them, is too prone to a result where rational conversational progress simply cannot be made.

I can, however, conduct one based on the premise of seeking clarification of what I've said, based on a starting point of actually recognizing something I've said and trying to discuss it, and then proceeding to do the same to the following clarification. Per moderator recommendations as far as this thread, my explanations in this thread will have to stand...if you'd like to pick such a starting point for your query, I recommend a PM.

 

[Nautis]

Geeze this is still going on!?! I just figured Russ nitpicked saw an easy argument and pounced on it (hence my "..likes to argue" statement.)

-

I personally feel as many bad things came of this situation alot of good came out of it too. People are no longer looking at reviews based on one thing only (FPS.) Most reviews seem to be much more detailed. This also seemed to stirr up alot of dirt and reveal alot of peoples real feelings and intentions.

Hopefully people have more of an understanding of whats really going on and will be more detailed in their search. And I havent seen many people comparing drivers based on their 3dmark score.... well at least not in the way they use to.

 

[RussSchultz]

I just figured Russ ... saw an easy argument and pounced on it

Did the last 5 pages look like an "easy argument" to you?

There is no joy and no fun in painting a target on myself.

Its certainly no fun to stand up and speak my mind against a completely offbase comment, when I know good and well that in this environment and with the current populace, 95% of the people on the forum aren't going to see "hey, that comment is just wrong", but they're going to see "NVIDIA R0X0Rs! ATI is teh $UCK" simply because I'm not lavishing praise on ATI and spewing negativity against NVIDIA and I was *gasp* questioning the reasonability of a statement.

If it was such an "easy argument', why didn't anybody else make it?

Could it be because any stand against the torrent of popular public opinion(no matter how vitriolic and unfounded that opinion is), simply makes you fair game to have feces flung at you?

Now I've got a second target on myself. Weeeee.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

If it was such an "easy argument', why didn't anybody else make it?

Could it be because any stand against the torrent of popular public opinion(no matter how vitriolic and unfounded that opinion is), simply makes you fair game to have feces flung at you?

Now I've got a second target on myself. Weeeee.

Occam's Razor - you could just be wrong. You interpreted GKar1's post in a way it wasn't intended (according to him), and you appeared to be the only one to do so (shrug).

 

[Althornin]

I just figured Russ ... saw an easy argument and pounced on it

Did the last 5 pages look like an "easy argument" to you?

There is no joy and no fun in painting a target on myself.

Its certainly no fun to stand up and speak my mind against a completely offbase comment, when I know good and well that in this environment and with the current populace, 95% of the people on the forum aren't going to see "hey, that comment is just wrong", but they're going to see "NVIDIA R0X0Rs! ATI is teh $UCK" simply because I'm not lavishing praise on ATI and spewing negativity against NVIDIA and I was *gasp* questioning the reasonability of a statement.

If it was such an "easy argument', why didn't anybody else make it?

Could it be because any stand against the torrent of popular public opinion(no matter how vitriolic and unfounded that opinion is), simply makes you fair game to have feces flung at you?

Now I've got a second target on myself. Weeeee.

The torrent could be caused by your constant attitude.

 

[Tagrineth]

I read the first page, can't be bothered to read the middle five... just want to chime in with this:

'nvidia', pronounced 'Invidia', right?

in·vid·i·ous ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-vd-s)
adj.

1. Tending to rouse ill will, animosity, or resentment: invidious accusations.
2. Containing or implying a slight; discriminatory: invidious distinctions.
3. Envious.

But the best part comes here:

From Latin invidisus, envious, hostile, from invidia, envy. See envy.

 

[Pete]

As for Typedef Enum's commentary criticizing nVidia personnel, gkar blaming nVidia personnel and their decisions doesn't seem to have been a point of disagreement in subsequent discussion.

For myself and my thoughts, I've provided what you've asked for abundantly and explicitly. I explained these things briefly earl on, and there continue to be multiple brief explanations throughout my further commentary, if you look through them.

I cannot hold successful conversation conducted on the basis of simply overlooking what I've already provided several times, on the premise of it being too much trouble to read. Allowing such an evaluation of what is too much trouble, where complete dismissal of statements is proposed without ever addressing them, is too prone to a result where rational conversational progress simply cannot be made.

I can, however, conduct one based on the premise of seeking clarification of what I've said, based on a starting point of actually recognizing something I've said and trying to discuss it, and then proceeding to do the same to the following clarification. Per moderator recommendations as far as this thread, my explanations in this thread will have to stand...if you'd like to pick such a starting point for your query, I recommend a PM.

Holy f***, dem, you need to get yourself a copy of Strunk and White, STAT!

I actually slogged, globbered, vollued, and quirruled through the whole thread, but I was hoping to elicit some common understanding with my request. I failed. I still think Russ' interpretation of gkar1's original post was reasonable, and I still think you all jumped on him because he didn't admit, early, often, and foremost, that nVidia is a detestible and now altogether evil company. We'll eventually see if we all underestimated the power of a fully operational Detonator. But, for now, basically everyone in these forums agree that the FX lineup as it stands is a day late and a Detonator short (and a clip plane long).

Need I continue to mangle humor in the name of goodwill? I will, if need be. Oh, I will.... <humorous yet evil glint in eye>

I think I did several pages back. I don't think Gkar1 was attributing malice. He was just saying (in a conversational style) than Nvidia had opted for a safe, borng route of development when they were in the position of being able to really drive the market forward into new and interesting technology if they so desired.
-----
Occam's Razor - you could just be wrong. You interpreted GKar1's post in a way it wasn't intended (according to him), and you appeared to be the only one to do so (shrug).

BZB, Russ inferred malice from gkar1's post probably b/c he (Russ) didn't agree with the (gkar1's) implication that nV chose NOT to drive the market forward merely for their (this is nVidia now) evil ends. I (Pete) shared Russ' (Schultz's) interpretation, as did Dave H and perhaps a few others (who shall remain nameless but not blameless) on the page I replied (and maybe some after). As I've stated (globerred), I don't think it was an unreasonable interpretation. No need to force the issue, frood.

Anyway, gkar1 "The Instigator" himself clarified his post. I still fail to see how nV set the industry back with their cheating, as it was merely their marketing dep't running their mouth off--I doubt resources were diverted from R&D to maintain nV's golden aura, but, rather, the marketing dep't was left to grapple with inferior hardware for the first time in a while, and they made a big, honking, undignified mess of it. I can perhaps partially agree that Cg constituted an attempt to set the industry back, but not by "leaps and bounds." And, in a way or two, nV's disgraceful actions forced more than a few reviewers, and thus consumers, to approach reviews with more open eyes and more professionalism.

So it wasn't all bad. Just most of it.

 

[gkar1]

I think this thread is summed up best with this quote:

"The avalanche has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote"

 

[nelg]

I hate to add to this but I feel I must give you. Glen’s Razor : Sometimes people cannot say what they wish to convey. As a result we are left with having to take the literal meaning of their words. When I read gkar1’s remarks I interpreted them the same way as Russ did. Though I felt that the literal interpretation was asinine and therefore assumed what he said was not what he wanted to convey.

 

[Bjorn]

Occam's Razor - you could just be wrong. You interpreted GKar1's post in a way it wasn't intended (according to him), and you appeared to be the only one to do so (shrug).

I doubt that he was the only one that interpreted it that way.

 

[Pete]

Occam's

Gesundheit.*


* Here I'm using Russ' interpretation of humor. See, he's not the only one!

 

[Randell]

I thought Russ's interpretation of Gkars post was reasonble as well. I also think Russ's view of it is reasonable, we all know don't we about IHV's cheating on Winbench etc in the past?

We account for & influence a minscule proportion.5% of nVidia's potential customer base, therefore they could ignore this kind of forum and hardware site findings/knowledge in the sure certainity that it will hardly impact sales.

However, Gabe NewellHL2/Valve is a different matter.

 

[demalion]

Well, as is evident, I've stated my opinion: first of Russ's argument that he provided in response to his interpretation, and then the interpretation itself after he expressed a disinterest in discussing that matter. And I've given a large set of explicit reasons for those opinions that you are free to peruse.

Unfortunately, a conversation along the lines of such detailed reasoning is no longer supposed to occur in this thread. If you have questions or challenges to it that actually involve discussing my given reasons (as opposed to simply stating my opinion is wrong and ignoring the given reasons), I invite you to discuss it elsewhere, perhaps PMs.

 

[dream caster]

RussSchultz:
This not only about video cards and their engineering, it is also about ethics, language and trust.

From Orwell's 1984 to comunists to anyone that wants to dominate other people one of the first and more powerful ways to do it is to begin using words changing their meaning; Nvidia did do precisely that changing the names for integrated videos for instance and now you are changing subtly the meaning of words like "had to do", and wich is right and wich is wrong, but that does not inspire trust.
Knowing how you think about what do sellers have to do to sell I would not like to do bussines with you; those selling ethics you condone (at least I think you do not approuve them) give those who notice them a feeling one must defend oneself. You bet I have even less confidence upon Nvidia and seriously (Nvidia has made this to sound like a joke) I do not like to think i would have to use a video driver patch from them.

Does a company have to behave in a way that makes people not wanting to do bussines with them?