Let me be clear, first of all: I still harbor more goodwill toward ATI than NVIDIA, but nowhere near the gulf that opened thanks to NV's "handling" of NV30. And I have to give NV credit for innovating far more since R300 than ATI has, at least in terms of products in the marketplace (Xenos and R520 aren't out yet). That being said, Walt, I think you're carrying on too strongly about the whole NV30 mess, mainly because ATI hasn't acted the saint since, either.
WaltC said:
Can we try and restrain commentary about both companies to 2002 and later?
Fine, so ATI lied about "trylinear," and in writing, not loosely-worded and generously-interpreted interviews. But I'm not sure what we gain from ignoring what happened before 2002. Because ATI has new leadership, and NV has the same? Again, it seems to me ATI tried to slip trylinear past us--post-NV30, no less. Both companies will do what they can to win more money when they hold the upper hand, and wave their hands when they've got nothing to hold. They've proven it repeatedly. Yes, I also feel that nVidia sunk lower with NV30 than ATI ever has, but not low enough to lose sight of ATI's ethical missteps.
Still, I didn't realize 3DM01 was mostly 2D.
Well, nV's anti-Microsoft, anti-FAB, anti-DX9, anti-DX9 benchmarks (remember TR:AoD?), anti-3dMark, anti-ATi, pro-nV3x PR blitz of 2002-03 resulted in nV losing market preeminence to ATi, losing the xBox contract, losing a *lot* of market good will, and ultimately ended with the statements of JHH that nV3x was both a "failure" and a "mistake."
Here's where we differ, and it's possible we do so because I'm not arguing with all the facts. I can agree that nV took all those stances. I can also agree with your looking down on them. I can't agree, however, that those stances resulted in all those problems. Some of those stances looked to me to be reactive, rather than proactive. They probably lost the Xbox 2 bid because they played a game of chicken with MS, a company that typically wins such games. Then, knowing that they'd lose Xb2 anyway and that they were holding a weak hand with NV30, they decided to milk their profit margins on the remaining Xbox sales simply because things really couldn't get any worse. They lost market preeminence and good will due to inferior product, not because of inferior actions or posturing. Finally, I'm not sure what JHH's statements mean other than they reflect the truth--and that's probably not something you'd hold against him.
Indeed, nVidia's real answer to ATi did not come until nVidia shipped nV40, which was sometime later.
Agreed. But couldn't one say the same of R520? Except currently nV doesn't really outperfom ATI in next-gen features as much as they're the only ones who offer them, useful or not: SM3, HDR, and SLI (as useless as I find the latter, from a practical perspective).
I would argue that without nV40 most likely nV would not now exist as a competitive 3d-chip manufacturer
I'm not sure they'd have gone under, but NV40 did seem to save a significant portion of their bacon.
IMO, nV40 and beyond owes much more to R3x0 and beyond than it owes to nV3x.
Hmmm. I'm going to answer without knowing much about GPU architectire or engineering at all. Yes, I suppose NV40 owes much to R300 in that NV temporarily took a step back in terms of fragment shader complexity and went for more, simpler pipes on a more established (and thus potentially costlier) manufacturing process. Then again, they leaped beyond R300 and all subsequently released ATI GPUs by separating ROPs from the fragment pipes, by offering superior stencil performance (double Z and DST/PCF), and by still offering (at least theoretically, though less so than with NV3x) more capable shaders, both vertex and fragment (SM3 and HDR), and now TSAA (minor improvement tho it is). And yet G70 goes back to more powerful pipes with its dual ALUs per fragment pipe.
Yes, if R520 is expected to compete with G70 with only 16 pipes, it's probably even more powerful per pipe--but it ain't here yet.
In a recent interview with JHH that I believe I read here at B3d, JHH termed nV30 a "mistake" and you don't do that for a product line you consider a success, do you?
No argument here. Everyone agrees NV30 was a misstep in view of R300, and JHH can certainly say it was a mistake in that it cost him profit and marketshare.
Now that nVidia has been able to field a product line competitive with ATi's, the PR negativism has stopped, hasn't it? Thankfully, the message that nVidia's PR blitz of those days wasn't working was at long last understood by nV, and so we don't have to endure it anymore.
I'd argue (perhaps optimistically
) that NV's PR department isn't staffed by idiots, but by calculating realists that realize that soft and fluffy PR is more effective (and far easier) when you have a hardware advantage, however slight. If they'd kept being sneaky hard-asses, surely more grudges would've been held.
As to what you imagine nVidia "won" from all of that it's very hard to imagine. What helped nV in the end was changing its track, its attitude, and its
product line. I applaud that, and only want to see nVidia continue to get better at providing the products its markets want as opposed to trying to pitch Snake Oil, if you know what I mean...
Not won, but managed to lose less. They kept a stiff, if biting, upper lip. IMO, the change came solely from their engineers in the form of their NV4x product line. Everything else follows from that, and it's obviously not something you can change at the drop of a hat. I'm against snake oil, too, but perhaps I have a more jaded--dare I say, realistic--view of the market after following the event of the past few years (yes, just post 2002). I still can't forgive NV for being shmucks, but I can at least understand it as it relates to their employees and share-holders, and can expect more of the consumer as well as the salesman.
I think we agree more than not, but you're holding onto your NV30-era grudge longer than I have. To put it in perspective, ultimately we're talking about a purchase that tops out at around $500 for the vast majority of people. I'll save more of my indignation for, say, car makers who continue to pump out one SUV after another, and one higher-horsepower engine after another. Wait, what's that--another SUV on TV shown filling up on post-Katrina, $3++ unleaded?
Sweet deity, I can't believe I wrote the whole thing. I guess I keep hoping to solve this debate once and for all. From now on, I take the road of the resigned realist: no more replies that are longer than my screen.
