AMD Briefing With Eric Demers Slide Deck @ [H]

AMD Briefing With Eric Demers - We have posted and AMD slide deck that was the basis of a meeting with AMD GPU CTO Eric Demers yesterday. Some interesting points are being made by AMD.

We spent about 30 minutes with AMD's CTO of Graphics Eric Demers yesterday, talking about what AMD thinks about the recently "paper announced" Fermi GPU from NVIDIA. I am not going to editorialize a lot here except to say I find very little I can disagree with AMD on this. While Fermi looks to be an incredible compute machine, it seems that AMD is already doing a lot of what Fermi is only promising to do at this point. On the gaming front, we know the 5870 / 5850 and 5770 / 5750 series GPUs already kick ass and are being sold while we are still waiting for NVIDIA to even discuss gaming with Fermi.

It almost feels like Nvidia has become complacent over the past few years. AMD is really on their game and Nvidia can't hide behind minor refreshes and model name changes anymore. Sorry Nvidia, talk is cheap in this industry.

For those of us which perhaps are unable to get our heads around these presentations, is there anyone out there that would be able to outline what Nvidia touts as being key features from their next platform, and what AMD's reponces to those features are?

nVidia's key feature is basically this:

You've got a lot of power in your GPU. Why use it just for games when you could use it for doing cancer research(folding at home), calculating physics for in games or converting videos without bogging down your processor as much? Their goal is to more or less try to supplement your iCore 920 for when you feel your iCore 920 is too slow. They also hope to add some physics calculations into the mix as well.

At the moment though, they have no hardware to show. Just a powerpoint slide telling us what the nVidia Fermi will have to offer. Even in those slides though, it doesn't look like a huge gaming increase so much as a huge 'use your graphics card as a cpu' increase. GPGPU is the term usually used to describe that.

The only thing keeping me from sticking with ATi cards is the superior F@h performance from nV. Equal or beat what a similarly priced nV card puts out, and I'll swap back over again; that's my only issue. Hell I just bought my 260 due to F@h and ditched the 4830 CF setup that had served me well the last 6+ months.

I have no problem saying ATi cards outperform nV's for everything else. Folding though, ATi's cards are still sorely lacking.

Fermi to me is "We can't get an x86 license due to our poor relations with Intel so this is the best we can do". Is there really that much money to be had from the Fermi target market (ie Tesla types)?

Very good selection of quotes in the slides and presentation, wish the other side was this open and professional about the competition.


(F@H has strange things going on behind closed doors that makes ATI lose a bunch of sales. Look at the past history of the clients and the compiles.)

Looks like they would have learned their lesson from the 9700 Pro. I thought they were back to their winning ways with the 8800 GTX and now it seems like they're falling off again.

Originally Posted by MrLonghair

Fermi to me is "We can't get an x86 license due to our poor relations with Intel so this is the best we can do".

They have no choice. They are at risk of becoming redundant. With Intel and AMD converging to a gpu and cpu on die product future, the market for pure discrete graphics has its days numbered. They have no x86 license nor tech to speak of so they must carve out their own market to survive.

Is there really that much money to be had from the Fermi target market (ie Tesla types)?

HPC sales constitute 1.3% of Nvidia's total revenue, so the potential for growth is there. The trick is to do an effective transition from pure discrete graphics acceleration to GPGPU territory. They've already stumbled on the first step of that transition as the piss poor execution to bring Fermi to market has shown. On top of that the revenue loss from the closing of their chipset business will be about a billion.

Very good selection of quotes in the slides and presentation, wish the other side was this open and professional about the competition.

To be fair, they both are guilty of slinging mud to each other over the years. The difference this time is that AMD does not need to sling any mud when the facts are enough. Nvidia really has no product to answer AMD's claims so all they can do is keep their heads down and get back to work on getting Fermi out the door.

Kyle, it would really help if your UI was a bit better with these slideshows (same thing with the Fermi slideshow). It's unneccessarily obtuse to open each one individually in a new window/tab and toggle between. Plus, for laptop users like myself, the side banners force a horizontal scroll to view the whole slide. Would it be possible for you to put prev/next buttons and keep the banners off the horizontal view?

There are previous and next image links at the bottom of each page, just scroll down.

Are we for getting most of this was said about the 4870, and the GTX280 kicked its butt, then the X2 came to take it back, then the GTX295 took it again.
This happens almost every time, and people still post this crap over and over, the GTX295 is still the fastest single card you can buy!
Nv did not need DX10.1 or DX11 right now, whats the point? nothing I play uses DX11, and 10.1, heck even DX10 is still not used much, again whats the point?

Soon as this Fermi hits whats are you guys going to cry about next? oh its $50.00-$100 more ATI is better price, my god, ATI is a 2nd rate GPU maker, AMD is 2nd rate CPU maker, get over it, if you like what they have and dont mind having a 2nd rate product good, but shut up already.

Thanks have a nice day.

Originally Posted by MADOGRE

Are we for getting most of this was said about the 4870, and the GTX280 kicked its butt, then the X2 came to take it back, then the GTX295 took it again.
This happens almost every time, and people still post this crap over and over, the GTX295 is still the fastest single card you can buy!
Nv did not need DX10.1 or DX11 right now, whats the point? nothing I play uses DX11, and 10.1, heck even DX10 is still not used much, again whats the point?

x2 some of it, there is no reason jump on the 5870 bandwagon unless you got to have eyefinity. The drama of Nvidia's back up the against the wall and shoving ATI marketing down our throat is getting old. Rant

Originally Posted by MADOGRE

ATI is a 2nd rate GPU maker, AMD is 2nd rate CPU maker, get over it, if you like what they have and dont mind having a 2nd rate product good, but shut up already.

Thanks have a nice day.

The 5870 is a second-rate product? Yeah, ok.

To be honest, you had a couple of semi-valid points, but ending the post like this, screams nVidia fanboy. To use an wonderfully old phrase: "You have your head so far up nVidia's ass, I don' t know where nVidia ends, and you begin."

Are we for getting most of this was said about the 4870, and the GTX280 kicked its butt, then the X2 came to take it back, then the GTX295 took it again.
This happens almost every time, and people still post this crap over and over, the GTX295 is still the fastest single card you can buy!
Nv did not need DX10.1 or DX11 right now, whats the point? nothing I play uses DX11, and 10.1, heck even DX10 is still not used much, again whats the point?

Soon as this Fermi hits whats are you guys going to cry about next? oh its $50.00-$100 more ATI is better price, my god, ATI is a 2nd rate GPU maker, AMD is 2nd rate CPU maker, get over it, if you like what they have and dont mind having a 2nd rate product good, but shut up already.

Thanks have a nice day.

fanboy logic

Looking at the numbers, I think someone isconfusing AMD with NVIDIA:
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

2/3 market cap is "in trouble"?

Facts is that AMD has market 1/3 cap in GPU's and 1/3 market cap in CPU's, if anyone is in "trouble"...it's AMD.

But will be fun to look back to these threads in 6 months.

Originally Posted by MrLonghair

Fermi to me is "We can't get an x86 license due to our poor relations with Intel so this is the best we can do". Is there really that much money to be had from the Fermi target market (ie Tesla types)?

Very good selection of quotes in the slides and presentation, wish the other side was this open and professional about the competition.


(F@H has strange things going on behind closed doors that makes ATI lose a bunch of sales. Look at the past history of the clients and the compiles.)

actually if this is true its not necessarily ATI fault but the client and should be getting fixed

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news...-as-4870!.aspx

I have a hard time argueing their logic here, but it does seem like a very open slap in nvidai's face and I am wonder why. Kicking them when there down may make someone feel good but I think it's going alienate some of their future customers.

Or is this just "writing on the wall" to developers ? if it is then is AMD still believing / investing in the gaming market?

Originally Posted by Atech

Looking at the numbers, I think someone isconfusing AMD with NVIDIA:
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

2/3 market cap is "in trouble"?

Facts is that AMD has market 1/3 cap in GPU's and 1/3 market cap in CPU's, if anyone is in "trouble"...it's AMD.

But will be fun to look back to these threads in 6 months.

Do you work for Nvidia or have some vested interest in them? You seem to spend your time trolling forums trying to support Nvidia wherever possible. What does current market share have to do with current shipping technology?

And your going to use this current shipping technology on what?

I dont know about all this but if nvidias next product is the first step to creating a complete gamming system on a single card, I'm in. I just dont see nvidia not being competitive as far as video cards go, though they may be shooting to high for the rest of it.