Nvidia Lies All the Time

[Reverend]

From that 3DCenter interview :

3DCenter: Although nVidia supports many games with their "The Way Its Meant To Be Played" programme, some of those games run just as fast (or even faster) on competitors' hardware at better quality, too. Example: graphics quality in Far Cry clearly has been the worse for GeForceFX than its Canadian counterpart since the release of patch 1.1. If one enables similar quality, performance will drop tremendously below its direct competitor's. There are other TWIMTBP games which were released prior to GeForce 6800 which don't run as nicely on GeForceFX as on Radeon VGA. Our readers thus are uncertain about the true meaning of the TWIMTBP logo on their favorite games' boxes.

Darryl Still: Competiton is one of the things that is helping to ensure that the quality of games constantly improves. We welcome it and every time we come second in a benchmark, we work doubly hard to improve our performance next time. However it is extremely damaging to the PC gaming industry to focus solely on speed over compatibility. It would be easy for us to bypass Direct X guidelines to gain extra speed benefits, but that would also risk causing stability issues and crash bugs and we would prefer to stay within the guidelines and give our users a solid, compatible performance that runs reliably and gives them and extremely fast performance, without blue screens and constant referencing to driver updates or backdates.

We strive to give our users the best performance, and the 6800 series will offer that in almost every case, but we will not compromise reliability. That is the true meaning of "The Way Its Meant To Be Played". Performance AND reliability. No compromise.

Bolds are mine. What is Mr Still insinuating?

 

[digitalwanderer]

However it is extremely damaging to the PC gaming industry to focus solely on speed over compatibility. It would be easy for us to bypass Direct X guidelines to gain extra speed benefits, but that would also risk causing stability issues and crash bugs and we would prefer to stay within the guidelines and give our users a solid, compatible performance that runs reliably and gives them and extremely fast performance, without blue screens and constant referencing to driver updates or backdates.

We strive to give our users the best performance, and the 6800 series will offer that in almost every case, but we will not compromise reliability. That is the true meaning of "The Way Its Meant To Be Played". Performance AND reliability. No compromise.

Bolds are mine.


What is Mr Still insinuating?

I'll give it a run thru me digilator for ya:

However it is extremely damaging to the PC gaming industry to focus solely on speed over compatibility.

"Damn it, it looks like ATi is still faster than us!"

It would be easy for us to bypass Direct X guidelines to gain extra speed benefits,

"We could cheat if we wanted to since we're so good at it, but we're not right now."

but that would also risk causing stability issues and crash bugs and we would prefer to stay within the guidelines and give our users a solid, compatible performance that runs reliably and gives them and extremely fast performance, without blue screens and constant referencing to driver updates or backdates.

"How can you trust a company that releases drivers once a month, that's just plain crazy talk!"

 

[russo121]

From that 3DCenter interview :

3DCenter: Although nVidia supports many games with their "The Way Its Meant To Be Played" programme, some of those games run just as fast (or even faster) on competitors' hardware at better quality, too. Example: graphics quality in Far Cry clearly has been the worse for GeForceFX than its Canadian counterpart since the release of patch 1.1. If one enables similar quality, performance will drop tremendously below its direct competitor's. There are other TWIMTBP games which were released prior to GeForce 6800 which don't run as nicely on GeForceFX as on Radeon VGA. Our readers thus are uncertain about the true meaning of the TWIMTBP logo on their favorite games' boxes.

Darryl Still: Competiton is one of the things that is helping to ensure that the quality of games constantly improves. We welcome it and every time we come second in a benchmark, we work doubly hard to improve our performance next time. However it is extremely damaging to the PC gaming industry to focus solely on speed over compatibility. It would be easy for us to bypass Direct X guidelines to gain extra speed benefits, but that would also risk causing stability issues and crash bugs and we would prefer to stay within the guidelines and give our users a solid, compatible performance that runs reliably and gives them and extremely fast performance, without blue screens and constant referencing to driver updates or backdates.

We strive to give our users the best performance, and the 6800 series will offer that in almost every case, but we will not compromise reliability. That is the true meaning of "The Way Its Meant To Be Played". Performance AND reliability. No compromise.

Bolds are mine. What is Mr Still insinuating?

I don't understand a thing:
- What is compatible performance?
- He don't believe their own hardware? - "...but that would also risk causing stability issues and crash bugs..." If it's easy to bypass Dx guidelines it's not easy for their hardware part.
- compatible performance == extremely fast performance ?
- "...to focus solely on speed over compatibility..." - Compability between what? Who? Which?

IMO he means that if Nvidia could delete dx and substitute by OpenGl you'd have "extremely fast performance" and only D3 to play.

 

[martrox]

Can you say CG?.........I knew you could!

 

[Randell]

He's insinuating TWIMTBP games will be unreliable on ATI hardware, and nVidia don't mind coming come second if it ensures no/less crashes on their hardware compared to ATI going all out for speed without thought for end user happiness.

Complete PR BS.

I cant remember the last BSOD on any game on my 9700Pro or 6800GT that wasn't caused by overclocking.

Having said that I had a random CTD on Rome:TW on my 6800GT when I attacked Rome, and that's a TWIMTBP game.(but whose to say its the card/drivers)

So go figure

edited: to tidy up phrasing.

 

[russo121]

Do what I say, don't do what I do....

Just to contradict Mr. Still....

http://www.hardocp.com/

Chech at http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTA5NzYwMzIxNWNGVnNoMkFBMEZfMV8xX2wuZ2lm

"SLI Benchmarks:
These are some raw numbers direct from NVIDIA that show off the power of coming SLI configurations with DOOM3 and Halo. And for those of you wondering just how big SLI will make your ePenis, 3DMark05.


DOOM3 - 1600x1200,32-bit, 4XAA
Halo - 1600x1200, 32-bit, NoAA
3DMark05 - 1024x768 Default
Athlon 64 4000+ 1GBDDR400, ASUS nForce4 SLI"

Sad, isn't it?

 

[RickCain]

Based on the amount of pro-nV posts over the past few months, looks like [H] is turning green again.

 

[RickCain]

At http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2238&p=2 we found this:
"...This "Video Processor" was composed of more than 20 million transistors and NVIDIA was proud to announce that they put more transistors into NV40's Video Processor than they did in the entire original GeForce 256 chip itself. NVIDIA promised quite a bit with the Video Processor. They promised full hardware accelerated MPEG1/2 and WMV9 encoding and decoding at 1080i resolutions..."
"...take advantage of the processor 2 weeks after the launch of the GeForce 6800 Ultra. We even pressured NVIDIA to work on getting support for the Video Processor in the DiVX codec, since it's quite popular with our readers. The launch came and went, as did the two weeks with nothing from NVIDIA...."
"...The Video Processor (soon to receive a true marketing name) on the NV40 was somewhat broken, although it featured MPEG 2 decode acceleration. Apparently, support for WMV9 decode acceleration was not up to par with what NVIDIA had hoped for. As of the publication of this article, NVIDIA still has not answered our questions of whether or not there is any hardware encoding acceleration as was originally promised with NV40. So, the feature set of the Video Processor on NV40 (the GeForce 6800) was incomplete, only in its support for WMV9 acceleration (arguably the most important feature of it). .."

Take your own conclusions... The same sh*t company! Promises, only promises and cheats

Interesting link I was given today about the video decoder

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/geforce6600gt-theory_6.html

 

[Dave Baumann]

Rule number one with video comparisons: AMD and Intel have very different performance characteristics when encoding/decoding video - never compare different systems.

 

[RickCain]

Rule number one with video comparisons: AMD and Intel have very different performance characteristics when encoding/decoding video - never compare different systems.

So the encoding/decoding will work more effeciently on Intel versus an AMD system?

btw: both Anand and X-bit are using Intel based systems and one says it works and the other says it doesn't.

 

[Sabastian]

"SLI Benchmarks:
These are some raw numbers direct from NVIDIA that show off the power of coming SLI configurations with DOOM3 and Halo. And for those of you wondering just how big SLI will make your ePenis, 3DMark05.


DOOM3 - 1600x1200,32-bit, 4XAA
Halo - 1600x1200, 32-bit, NoAA
3DMark05 - 1024x768 Default
Athlon 64 4000+ 1GBDDR400, ASUS nForce4 SLI"

Sad, isn't it?

Yes it is sad... I can't tell you how much an Athlon 64 4000 costs but the 3800 runs for $926 canadian. Two GF 6800 U will clobber you for a mere $1700 canadian. God knows how much the dual slot nForce 4 mother board costs and I don't have a clue about the memory cost. Never mind the ultra power supply you will need for this dream system... Yeah that is pretty sad. I'd guess that just between the GPU's and CPU's your looking at well over $3000 canadian. Unless NV drops the prices on their cards the sli configuration won't be going into a lot of end users machines.

 

[trinibwoy]

Yes it is sad... I can't tell you how much an Athlon 64 4000 costs but the 3800 runs for $926 canadian. Two GF 6800 U will clobber you for a mere $1700 canadian. God knows how much the dual slot nForce 4 mother board costs and I don't have a clue about the memory cost. Never mind the ultra power supply you will need for this dream system... Yeah that is pretty sad. I'd guess that just between the GPU's and CPU's your looking at well over $3000 canadian. Unless NV drops the prices on their cards the sli configuration won't be going into a lot of end users machines.

You won't need any special memory - just the same PC3200 you're using now. And a sufficient PSU would run you less than $100. The mobo premium and additional card are the only extra costs.

But this is from the perspective of somebody like me who's still on an XP/Nforce2 combo and already has quality memory and a quality PSU. But I can understand that others who are already on A64 754 and have subpar components will view SLI as a full system overhaul.

 

[Sabastian]

You won't need any special memory - just the same PC3200 you're using now. And a sufficient PSU would run you less than $100. The mobo premium and additional card are the only extra costs.

But this is from the perspective of somebody like me who's still on an XP/Nforce2 combo and already has quality memory and a quality PSU. But I can understand that others who are already on A64 and have subpar components will view SLI as a full system overhaul.

I don't know how much a 600w PS goes for or whatever the power requirement would be, certainly it would be an unusual item that does low volume and demands a higher then average price. The ram used to help get the performance levels depicted in the chart is a premium variety with a low latency compared with your PC3200. To get the performance depicted in that chart you need the most expensive 64bit processor available from AMD. The two slotted PCI-E nForce 4 mobo will be an unusual item surely you will pay a premium for it. Then the obvious cost of two freaking video cards. I'd have too say that after taxes and the like your looking at a system that will cost nearly $4000 canadian. That is ridiculous IMO... but whatever I guess if you've the money to throw out the window then fill your boots.

 

[trinibwoy]

I don't know how much a 600w PS goes for or whatever the power requirement would be, certainly it would be an unusual item that does low volume and demands a higher then average price. The ram used to help get the performance levels depicted in the chart is a premium variety with a low latency compared with your PC3200. To get the performance depicted in that chart you need the most expensive 64bit processor available from AMD. The two slotted PCI-E nForce 4 mobo will be an unusual item surely you will pay a premium for it. Then the obvious cost of two freaking video cards. I'd have too say that after taxes and the like your looking at a system that will cost nearly $4000 canadian. That is ridiculous IMO... but whatever I guess if you've the money to throw out the window then fill your boots.

You won't need a 600w PSU But now I understand that your thinking is centered around the CPU and mem being largely responsible for the scores in that rig. But the same can be said today where an Ultra/XT will be cpu limited in many situations. There isn't anything special about SLI when it comes to price and performance. You pay more - you get more (hopefully ). And what about those people that buy the most expensive CPU's anyway - I know there a boat load of them on forums with FX53/3800+ etc. SLI will surely appeal to them.

 

[Sabastian]

You won't need a 600w PSU But now I understand that your thinking is centered around the CPU and mem being largely responsible for the scores in that rig. But the same can be said today where an Ultra/XT will be cpu limited in many situations. There isn't anything special about SLI when it comes to price and performance. You pay more - you get more (hopefully ). And what about those people that buy the most expensive CPU's anyway - I know there a boat load of them on forums with FX53/3800+ etc. SLI will surely appeal to them.

Yeah, well I decided years ago now that buying the biggest bestest at whatever price .. just isn't worth it. 6 months down the road for the same cash a new configuration comes out and it OWnZ your once high end state of the art system. Usually when you buy the fastest bestest on the market your also buying unresolved software bugs because the hardware is so new to the market. Anyhow like I said I think if you have the money to throw away on a system then that is great .. go for it. I don't think I'll be coughing the quid up for one anytime soon. In fact I'm building two systems for christmas that are going to run me about $2400 canadian..

Barton 2600, Radeon 9600xt 128, 512 megs of system ram. etc.. The kids are going to love them.

 

[trinibwoy]

Anyhow like I said I think if you have the money to throw away on a system then that is great .. go for it. I don't think I'll be coughing the quid up for one anytime soon. In fact I'm building two systems for christmas that are going to run me about $2400 canadian..

Barton 2600, Radeon 9600xt 128, 512 megs of system ram. etc.. The kids are going to love them.

I completely agree with you. SLI isn't for the guy with a wife, two kids and a mortgage who lives in the suburbs and has a 45min drive every morning to the city. It's for the geek or 'hardcore' gamer with too much $$ and no girlfriend who's only source of self-esteem is his massive 3dmark score I'm just trying to make a point that SLI is for somebody. And instead of saying 'I'll never buy it so it's crap' people should appreciate that.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Yeah, well I decided years ago now that buying the biggest bestest at whatever price .. just isn't worth it. 6 months down the road for the same cash a new configuration comes out and it OWnZ your once high end state of the art system. Usually when you buy the fastest bestest on the market your also buying unresolved software bugs because the hardware is so new to the market. Anyhow like I said I think if you have the money to throw away on a system then that is great .. go for it. I don't think I'll be coughing the quid up for one anytime soon. In fact I'm building two systems for christmas that are going to run me about $2400 canadian..

Barton 2600, Radeon 9600xt 128, 512 megs of system ram. etc.. The kids are going to love them.

Yup, kids are without a doubt my best excuse/justification for upgrades and really help me to get the most bang for my buck.

I got 4 systems in my house right now, one for every member of the family, and all of 'em were either my PC at one time or are built out of about 90% parts from me old systems. Everyone has got a pretty decent system, and I got the gaming rig from hell. (IMHO of course, but I am easily impressed)

The only way I see to get an SLI system is if money/value really isn't an object and you just want the mondo fastest rig possible.

 

[zeejay]

Who says the Video encode / decode is broken in hardware, we don't know that for sure, you would think they would have tested it before they went with the final silicon, esp considering how much they talked about it.

I'm still hoping its just a driver issue.

 

[PatrickL]

Since the April launch ?

 

[digitalwanderer]

we don't know that for sure, you would think they would have tested it before they went with the final silicon, esp considering how much they talked about it.

You don't know nVidia and how they do business that well, do you? :|