NVIDIA Purchased AGEIA Technologies

Blimey, its not that hard to comprehend.

Extra objects need drawing.
This needs more horsepower.
Its better to have the extra horsepower to produce the extra graphical output on the graphics card.
An add on card alongside a normal graphics card is going to have a much harder time doing it as fast so its not a good solution to completely rely on a separate physics processor card.
This has been proved by AGEIAs PhysX card and how well it didnt perform.

I didnt say that the Physics calculations for movement etc would be performed on the GPU, just the extra graphics.
I stressed that the CPU would be doing that part.
A CPU will use spare cores to process this information and the GPU will draw the extra Graphical results.
Click to expand...
 
Nenu said:
Blimey, its not that hard to comprehend.

Extra objects need drawing.
This needs more horsepower.
Its better to have the extra horsepower to produce the extra graphical output on the graphics card.
An add on card alongside a normal graphics card is going to have a much harder time doing it as fast so its not a good solution to completely rely on a separate physics processor card.
This has been proved by AGEIAs PhysX card and how well it didnt perform.

I didnt say that the Physics calculations for movement etc would be performed on the GPU, just the extra graphics.
I stressed that the CPU would be doing that part.
Click to expand...

Do you not see the GPU/CPU struggle going on right now? There's absolutely no way that NVIDIA would do physics calculations on a CPU...

There is no "extra graphics". That is my point. What is extra about having things break apart? The engine presents a scene to the runtime which in turn presents it to the GPU. Regardless of how many objects there are, the GPU renders it. Something that consists of 100 little pieces does not necessarily increase workload on the gpu vs. 1 large piece. The gpu, doing graphics, doesn't care.

A scene that has a mirror breaking isn't necessarily harder to render than a solid mirror. You're thinking fallaciously.
 
Sr7 said:
Do you not see the GPU/CPU struggle going on right now? There's absolutely no way that NVIDIA would do physics calculations on a CPU...
Click to expand...

There can be a huge amount of extra graphics, think of the polygon count required to draw 100's to 1000's of accurately deformable objects.

With Dual cores being mainstream, Quad becoming mainstream and a massive amount of processing power available for free, they would be daft not to utilise it.
The coding of Physics to use GPU's and CPUs wont be just down to NVidia, there are multiple interested parties who will want to contribute.
I have no doubt some of NVidias own routines will be included in DirectX and this will be a good API to code Physics with.
There is a possibility that NVidia could create their own API, I hope that doesnt happen.

No matter how you view this, NVidia WILL need to allow graphics silicon to be used for drawing the extra Physics, they have to be drawn somehow and at a decent framerate.
 
TechBoy said:
Man, Ageia's crap it horrid.
Click to expand...

Actually AGEIA's solution is working pretty well when implemented, it the fastest physics solution out there, care to back up the FUD with documentation?

But if this suddenly makes the PPU "okay" in people eyes that NVIDIA has bougth them, then I am going to have a fun time reading all the 180's and back pedalling...:p

Never understood all the FUD and "hate" towards the PPU..or new hardware...hell just to spite those people i have ordered a Killer NiC :D

Next time I upgrade there might be "Intel Inside" stamped all over my CPU, GPU, APU, PPU and NPU..so why not build a rig from the time when one company didn't rule them all ;)
 
I agree - the FUD seems ill founded when market leaders are shelling out millions to acquire companies specialising in game physics. They know what they're doing and I doubt they'd throw away the money for fun. Will be interesting to see how this actually affects game physics, and if there will be a standard that games can work to instead of having to choose between Havok/Ageia etc.

Also, just to pick [H]ardOCP up on something:

Ageia NOT Sold/Aquired/Given Away or Anything Else

Contrary to what you will read on the "tech" rumor sites, Ageia has not bee sold. That brought to you buy the "Don't Believe All The BS You Read On The Net Committee," better known as the DBATBSYROTNC. That is all.
Click to expand...

That was from [H] news 23rd Jan 08.

Well, seems this attack on Fudzilla as writers of BS turned out to be wrong. Tech sites such as Fudzilla and the Inq do publish some stuff based on rumours, so won't always be accurate, but knowing this they can be very interesting and get stories way ahead of others. Maybe [H] news need to work their sources a bit! (Though I'm pointing this out, I see the value of more conservative news publications too, variety is good!)
 
david_Mc0 said:
I agree - the FUD seems ill founded when market leaders are shelling out millions to acquire companies specialising in game physics. They know what they're doing and I doubt they'd throw away the money for fun. Will be interesting to see how this actually affects game physics, and if there will be a standard that games can work to instead of having to choose between Havok/Ageia etc.
Click to expand...

So we now have Intel/Havok...and NVIDIA/AGEIA...and AMD/ATI starting to oppose each other....good for competition...but the real question is can AMD or NVIDIA really oppose Intel on a mission(larrabee)?
But Intel should have the power in the industry to get a physics standard implemented...if tehy can't bugde Microsoft...no one can.

Only time will tell...
 
What I don’t get is why people are so much happier with the idea of GPU physics than PPU?

I know Nvidia’s current solution doesn’t have all the problems and limitations that Havok FX had. But what’s the advantage of buying a secondary graphics card for physics over the Ageia PhysX card?

The GPU costs more, draws more power and isn’t configured just for physics. The PPU is for sale at Scan.co.uk for £88, if you put that into GPU physics what would it get you? That price increase added on top of your GPU as opposed to a PPU would send you from a 512mb 8800GT to a cheap 8800GTX, a small performance boost for a massive increase in price.

Seeing how the original Havok FX demonstrations were done on SLI 7900GTs, I don’t think that performance boost will cover the advertised requirements.

How about a secondary graphics card for physics instead of a high end single? Ok £88 would afford you an 8600GT; which is still way below a single 7900GT, but honestly do people expect the original GPU physics demo’s performance right off the bat?

Not forgetting that none of these solutions are practical for the mainstream, people who can only afford an 8600GT to begin with won’t be able to pay out for a higher end or dual GPU solution. Since GPUs will be under the same limitations of lowest common denominator targeting for game play physics that CPUs are under, and we have already identified that the mid range cannot afford to give up much GPU power for physics, this convinces me we won’t be seeing Cellfactor/Warmonger/UT3 physics game play for quite a while.

It’s like implementing shader model 3 in games, despite being made available in the Gefore 6 series games didn’t start making it a mandatory requirement until the 8 such as Bioshock. This is because until the install base of SM3 graphics cards became the majority, they couldn’t risk narrowing its audience by making it mandatory to fully take advantage of it. GPGPU and Cuba programming architecture has only just been fully implemented in the 8 series, until the majority have GPUs that support it they cannot risk making it mandatory with GPU game play physics.

Until the install base is reached, like SM3, games will most likely only partially use it until they can be sure it is safe to go all out. Until then like when HDR was first introduced it will be an option for those who can support it, in terms of physics that means they can only introduce effect physics that won’t impact game play for those who don’t have the hardware. The devs cannot utilise it without alienating those who don’t meet the performance/GPU architecture requirements, install base of compatible GPUs with plenty of free performance will have to be reached before it is practical.

How is this any different than when the Ageia Physx card was the potential solution? Everyone may have a GPU, but whether it can fully support everything needed to do game play physics in a mainstream retail game without severally narrowing the audience is debatable.
 
I think it's funny that nvidia can now put a whole new spin on their "GeForce" phrase/trademark.

I also think that just because they are acquiring them, doens't mean that they'll necessairily go in and fubar/enchance them. For now, they could just let them be their own entire company just sailing under the nvidia flag.
Of course, I haven't a clue what they're going to do.
It would be cool more, if you asked me, if they kept everything seperate, yet collaborated on a much higher level than they could've before. Whether that be integrating a PPU onto a GPU, a dedicated PPU or an onboard one (or, any combination/variance of the three).

GeForce; seen and now "felt" like never before?
 
Sr7 said:
Do you not see the GPU/CPU struggle going on right now? There's absolutely no way that NVIDIA would do physics calculations on a CPU...

There is no "extra graphics". That is my point. What is extra about having things break apart? The engine presents a scene to the runtime which in turn presents it to the GPU. Regardless of how many objects there are, the GPU renders it. Something that consists of 100 little pieces does not necessarily increase workload on the gpu vs. 1 large piece. The gpu, doing graphics, doesn't care.

A scene that has a mirror breaking isn't necessarily harder to render than a solid mirror. You're thinking fallaciously.
Click to expand...

The GPU doesn't "care" per se... but it will take a lot more power to real time render those 100 pieces than 1 large piece. There is going to be a lot more lighting effects as well as triangles, etc. to render with 100 small pieces.

Sure.. if it is a pre-rendered / recorded scene that requires nothing more than sending and image to the screen then it won' take any more CPU/GPU power.. but that is not what we are talking about is it?
 
XamediX said:
It would be cool to see a while new line of video cards by Nvidia. 8800GTX, 8800GTX/PPU, 8800GT, 8800GTPPU, etc etc. Basically we'd get the same choices we have except each one of those offers a PPU stuck on it also. That'd be kinda cool ... IMHO
Click to expand...


Could this be the reason for the "9" series Delays(Or at least time it has taken to come to market)? Maybe the deal has been in Development for so long and the plan was already in place to use onboard PPUs on all 9 Series cards?
 
AnnoyedDragon said:
What I don’t get is why people are so much happier with the idea of GPU physics than PPU?

I know Nvidia’s current solution doesn’t have all the problems and limitations that Havok FX had. But what’s the advantage of buying a secondary graphics card for physics over the Ageia PhysX card?

The GPU costs more, draws more power and isn’t configured just for physics. The PPU is for sale at Scan.co.uk for £88, if you put that into GPU physics what would it get you? That price increase added on top of your GPU as opposed to a PPU would send you from a 512mb 8800GT to a cheap 8800GTX, a small performance boost for a massive increase in price.

Seeing how the original Havok FX demonstrations were done on SLI 7900GTs, I don’t think that performance boost will cover the advertised requirements.

How about a secondary graphics card for physics instead of a high end single? Ok £88 would afford you an 8600GT; which is still way below a single 7900GT, but honestly do people expect the original GPU physics demo’s performance right off the bat?

Not forgetting that none of these solutions are practical for the mainstream, people who can only afford an 8600GT to begin with won’t be able to pay out for a higher end or dual GPU solution. Since GPUs will be under the same limitations of lowest common denominator targeting for game play physics that CPUs are under, and we have already identified that the mid range cannot afford to give up much GPU power for physics, this convinces me we won’t be seeing Cellfactor/Warmonger/UT3 physics game play for quite a while.

It’s like implementing shader model 3 in games, despite being made available in the Gefore 6 series games didn’t start making it a mandatory requirement until the 8 such as Bioshock. This is because until the install base of SM3 graphics cards became the majority, they couldn’t risk narrowing its audience by making it mandatory to fully take advantage of it. GPGPU and Cuba programming architecture has only just been fully implemented in the 8 series, until the majority have GPUs that support it they cannot risk making it mandatory with GPU game play physics.

Until the install base is reached, like SM3, games will most likely only partially use it until they can be sure it is safe to go all out. Until then like when HDR was first introduced it will be an option for those who can support it, in terms of physics that means they can only introduce effect physics that won’t impact game play for those who don’t have the hardware. The devs cannot utilise it without alienating those who don’t meet the performance/GPU architecture requirements, install base of compatible GPUs with plenty of free performance will have to be reached before it is practical.

How is this any different than when the Ageia Physx card was the potential solution? Everyone may have a GPU, but whether it can fully support everything needed to do game play physics in a mainstream retail game without severally narrowing the audience is debatable.
Click to expand...

Very True. I think a real driver for this will be the use of the PPU/GPU Combo on Console Systems. There you have a set technology install base and developers will utilize all of those tools available to them to build their next "wiz-bang" title. If you offer those same technology features in your consumer card and make porting over a less-risky option, then you have a real winner and driver for new technology.
 
how things change...

just a couple of years ago, nvidia was touting sli physics based on the havoc engine, the most popular physics engine to date. It was supposed to be the ultimate accelerated physics solution, at the time nvidia claimed even a geforce 7900GT would outperform the Physx dedicated PPU. It was supposed to be out late 06/early 07... I'm still waiting...

Now that Intel bought Havoc, the whole sli physics went down the toilet. So what do you do? you buy the company you claimed it was inferior, but now you say it has the best technology and developer support.

how things change...
 
makes you think "be careful what you wish for"

Found this on TechArp

NVIDIA Buys Over AGEIA!

This morning, we had an emergency conference call with NVIDIA. Apparently, they had something urgent to announce. You couldn't possibly guess what it was. Neither did we.

Over the last few months, NVIDIA has been steadily buying up companies that add value and expertise. Their most recent purchase was the Finnish mobile graphics outfit, Hybrid Graphics. But that changes today with NVIDIA's acquisition of AGEIA!

What does that mean for us users? Let's talk to NVIDIA.

ARP : Wow.. That was some purchase!

NVIDIA : Yes, but it was in the pipeline for some time now. We only finalized the deal with AGEIA moments ago.

ARP : Really? Why? Don't you already have SLI Physics?

NVIDIA : We decided that running physics on the GPUs just wasn't going to cut it, not even with the amount of power our GPUs have.

ARP : Does this have anything to do with ATI?

NVIDIA : ATI has always been a bunch of useless also-rans. We will always be ahead of them, even in physics. No matter what they do, they will always be second place.

ARP : Err.. Okay.. But since ATI starts with the letter A, won't they always be first in the alphabetical order, phone books, name lists, etc?

NVIDIA : Fine. ATI can have the telephone books. We want the rest of the world.

ARP : Okay.. Coming back to AGEIA, does this mean you will be integrating the AGEIA PhysX processor into NVIDIA cards?

NVIDIA : Initially, yes. But eventually, we will integrate the PhysX silicon into every NVIDIA GPU. It will probably double our transistor count but hey, if ATI wants to play the numbers game, we can do it with transistor count too!

ARP : What about SLI Physics and Havok FX?

NVIDIA : We will continue to support SLI Physics and Havok FX, but eventually we want the PhysX silicon to handle physics acceleration, leaving the GPU to do what it does best - graphics!

ARP : Err.. Isn't this kind of reversing your opinions recently that using the GPUs to do physics was the future, instead of going the AGEIA way with dedicated PPUs?

NVIDIA : Not so. We have to remain on top of the game. ATI may be slamming a lot of crap on us, but we will make sure the suckers eat dirt! Buying AGEIA will allow us to do just that.

ARP : So, there's no threat from ATI, even though they are trashing your cards by 50% or more?

NVIDIA : ATI has never been good for anything but vapourware. With AGEIA on our side, we will make them eat so much dirt, Canada will disappear off the face of the Earth!
ARP : But will this mean an increase in price for NVIDIA graphics cards that come with the PhysX processor? Or will NVIDIA continue to produce cheaper cards without the PhysX processor?

NVIDIA : Not at all. We not only intend to integrate the PhysX processor for free, we will now price our cards at least 20% cheaper than ATI's cards. If we have a vision for the next 5 years, it's to drive ATI into the ground, once and for all. When that happens, maybe we will buy those boys out and then we will be at the top of the telephone books too.
Click to expand...

Any resemblance with reality is a mere coincidence...
 
Bdbtoys said:
If I haven't read up on any of this stuff I wouldn't have commented.

I'm talking about the effectiveness of running a single video card as a GPU and a PPU at the same time. We all probably seen tech demos of both BrandX cards being used as a PPU, however that was not going to see the light of day until the next major revision of DX... well at least until now maybe.

For the near future, the PPU really needs to be seperate from the main video card. Not saying you can't make a GPU work as a PPU. The "switching modes" of a video card between GPU/PPU mode has been detailed in the past "press-releases" would be welcome. However your still sitting with 2+ video cards then, so the whole arguement about having everything being handled by one single card is not really valid.
Click to expand...

My point though, is that it doesn't need to be separate. If you're a gamer, you're going to have a gpu. You're not, necessarily, going to have a physics processor or want to get one. If all the physics processing is done on gpu's, then the user simply needs to decide between how much they want awesome graphics or awesome physics. Now, to not really have to make that decision, you just plop in a second card. Would it be as effective as something that could only be used for physics? I dunno, but I will say that its dynamic nature- its ability to seamlessly flip stream processors from physics to graphics- would probably make it the better value, and it would also likely have a much larger market because of its dual usability.
 
Bdbtoys said:
Why do people want to put this on the video card? I suppose next you will want your sound acceleration on your video card too... heck why not usb, LAN, etc. (yes, I'm being sarcastic here).

This is better off as an add-on card (cough...PCIE...cough). What would be really nice is if they would raise the bar on the card. Make it so powerful and so full featured nobody would want to be without it (like 3DFX did back when accelerated graphics was in the infant stages).

The video card is for rendering acceleration... let's keep it that way. I personally don't want to see multiple components bundled together. It's the same reason gamers don't buy AIO video editing gaming cards anymore. Every time you upgrade your video card you have to update your capture component too. If your capture component is seperate, you can upgrade 'that' component when you want instead of buying the same capture component over & over again. Also bundling it together would hurt the consumer IMO because it could force the user to stay with brand-x video cards regardless of actual rendering power beacause the user can't afford to lose the PPU acceleration.
Click to expand...

What makes you think Ageia's card isn't for acceleration? It's doing the job that the CPU used to have to do or was left out because the CPU couldn't handle it and every thing else too.
 
C'mon guys.. we all know this is a preemptive strike against Intel's Larabee with its built in Havok processing.
 
TerranUp16 said:
My point though, is that it doesn't need to be separate. If you're a gamer, you're going to have a gpu. You're not, necessarily, going to have a physics processor or want to get one. If all the physics processing is done on gpu's, then the user simply needs to decide between how much they want awesome graphics or awesome physics. Now, to not really have to make that decision, you just plop in a second card. Would it be as effective as something that could only be used for physics? I dunno, but I will say that its dynamic nature- its ability to seamlessly flip stream processors from physics to graphics- would probably make it the better value, and it would also likely have a much larger market because of its dual usability.
Click to expand...

You do realize at one time that us gamers didn't have dedicated video cards right? Same goes true with the PPU. It's not widely spread yet.

Now to comment about the first part of your reply...
Doing everything on one card all at the same time might sound nice, but I don't see it happening. What benefit will the people have being able to select some physic options, but limiting themselves to the aggressive gameplay changing ones. In a card that's trying to do everything you most likely will not get the full effect physics has to offer without taking a severe rendering hit. If physic acceleration is going to succeed, it has to do it BIG! The little effects that we have seen commonly added are not going to sway the masses to needing a PPU. Thats why I feel it needs to be standalone.

As I pointed out before a card that could "switch" modes completely would be welcome for upgrading purposes. However you would have to ask yourself... would we all be better off making with standalone cards strictly for PPU tasks instead of making a jack-of-all-trades card? (Keeping in mind that current video cards cost 2-3 times the amount of the current Physx card.)
 
Cinge said:
What makes you think Ageia's card isn't for acceleration? It's doing the job that the CPU used to have to do or was left out because the CPU couldn't handle it and every thing else too.
Click to expand...

When did I ever say that Ageia's card is not for acceleration?
 
digitalfreak said:
I'd wait and see what Intel does with Larrabee when it hits in '09. Wouldn't surprise me if they do graphics and physics on that thing, or graphics on the Larrabee and physics on the CPU. Intel's not stupid (like AMD has been as of late).
Click to expand...



Agreed,2 years from now it would not surprise me at all to see Intel as Nvidias main competetion in all graphics segments.
 
The question whether of not this is a good purchase or not lies very little with ageia and the ppu tech but rather with how much processing overhead there are in modern multi core cpu's.
How many games take advantage of more than one core? Better let one of the non used cores take the overhead and process physics. Everyone has a cpu, so implementing support for that physics in games is risk free but using one or the other of the competing others isn't.
 
peo said:
The question whether of not this is a good purchase or not lies very little with ageia and the ppu tech but rather with how much processing overhead there are in modern multi core cpu's.
How many games take advantage of more than one core? Better let one of the non used cores take the overhead and process physics. Everyone has a cpu, so implementing support for that physics in games is risk free but using one or the other of the competing others isn't.
Click to expand...
Ah jeez, how can someone still be arguing ‘one core to rule’ after what has gone on over the past two years?
 
AnnoyedDragon said:
Ah jeez, how can someone still be arguing ‘one core to rule’ after what has gone on over the past two years?
Click to expand...

And Nehamlem is going to shake that notion even more...
but it's not about the cores, it's about SIMD...and there even a qaud-core CPU sucks...
 
Now this confirms my suspicions that the next physics card would be a nvidia built. :D
 
Atech said:
Sorry just got my Killer NiC...
Click to expand...

divinelolwut.jpg
 
TheBluePill said:
Could this be the reason for the "9" series Delays(Or at least time it has taken to come to market)? Maybe the deal has been in Development for so long and the plan was already in place to use onboard PPUs on all 9 Series cards?
Click to expand...

What kind of market does Ageia have now? It is a very limited and small one. There isn't enough profit incentive in that market to delay a product line that has far more mass appeal. I highly doubt the 9 series was delayed to add a "PPU". The required transistors and programming thereof would increase manufacturing and development costs.

However, it is possible that Nvidia is using some of Ageia's algorithms and programming them into their current shader based architecture. This would only cost Nvidia some development time, but I still doubt it would help nvidia sell significantly more cards as tech demo's only have so much appeal...
 
TerranUp16 said:
And, as already mentioned- the 9-series gpu's already have "PPU's" of sorts.
Click to expand...
Why does everyone I see seem to refer to it this way?

Why is it so hard to understand that it is the GPU itself doing the processing, not some physics processor slapped onto the board?
 
AnnoyedDragon said:
Why does everyone I see seem to refer to it this way?

Why is it so hard to understand that it is the GPU itself doing the processing, not some physics processor slapped onto the board?
Click to expand...

Perhaps unified shaders are a difficult concept? ;)
 
AnnoyedDragon said:
Why does everyone I see seem to refer to it this way?

Why is it so hard to understand that it is the GPU itself doing the processing, not some physics processor slapped onto the board?
Click to expand...

lol, what do you expect to draw things on the screen?
Sound cards havent developed far enough yet (j/k) and as CPU's dont do graphics very quickly the engineers thought, hey, lets make a graphics processor.
They would be daft not to use it for drawing things on screen you think?

Doesnt it also seem odd to you that all of a sudden the GPU comprises of a huge amount of stream processors which are strangely ideal for Physics processing too,
They "can" be used purely for 3D video and are without a decent API to use them for Accelerated Physics, but thats on its way.
A bit like the chicken and egg, you might know that story :)

It was all part of the master plan before you started to think about it.
Instead of giving us silicon to only do Physics, they made it programmable and capable of other tasks so the power isnt wasted when not doing Physics.
It seems to work very well.

:)
 
AnnoyedDragon said:
Why does everyone I see seem to refer to it this way?

Why is it so hard to understand that it is the GPU itself doing the processing, not some physics processor slapped onto the board?
Click to expand...

Note the quotes around "PPU's"- those were intentional and those made a subtle point, which you apparently missed. When I said "PPU's", with the quotes in that exact manner, I was referencing the stream processors, which, as you undoubtedly know, are the versatile workhorses of modern gpu's. My point was that as part of their versatility, they can do physics processing- therefore, modern gpu's and the 9-series already have "PPU's" of sorts.
 
Nenu said:
It seems to work very well.
Click to expand...
Yes, it works so well that there is not a single game that uses it. Until Nvidia sorts out the CUDA platform compatibility issues I'm not going to look at GPU physics very fondly. As far as I'm concerned, in its current state GPU physics is worse off than the PPU.

TerranUp16 said:
[snip]
Click to expand...
Got yah, next time you say physics processing unit I'll remember that you are clearly referring to shader pipelines...
 
AnnoyedDragon said:
Got yah, next time you say physics processing unit I'll remember that you are clearly referring to shader pipelines...
Click to expand...

Stream processors aren't really... whatever. Anyway, my point was that it was all in the quotes- had I just said PPU's w/out the quotes around it, the interpretation would have been different.
 
If Agea card owners fair no better than 3DFX's did once Nv bought them, then current physx card owners are SOL. You will get one more official driver update, and eventually Nv will send anyone that tries to write updated drivers for it a cease and desist, and if the card requires RMA 6 months from now it will be your problem, Nv will not care even if you bought it yesterday. That is exactly what happened after the 3DFX buyout by Nv. I have little reason to believe Nv will do anything different this time.

Some of the tech will end up on gpu "eventually" for the PC. For the console, Nv will use the tech to help win console contracts. How much they will bother to advance the tech, or not bother, is another question. I hope I am wrong, but I really think many of you are being overly optimistic. We will see I guess.
 
GORANKAR said:
If Agea card owners fair no better than 3DFX's did once Nv bought them, then current physx card owners are SOL. You will get one more official driver update, and eventually Nv will send anyone that tries to write updated drivers for it a cease and desist, and if the card requires RMA 6 months from now it will be your problem, Nv will not care even if you bought it yesterday. That is exactly what happened after the 3DFX buyout by Nv. I have little reason to believe Nv will do anything different this time.

Some of the tech will end up on gpu "eventually" for the PC. For the console, Nv will use the tech to help win console contracts. How much they will bother to advance the tech, or not bother, is another question. I hope I am wrong, but I really think many of you are being overly optimistic. We will see I guess.
Click to expand...


Well, you are not really correct. All nvidia bought from 3dfx were assets, if you wish to place blame, blame 3dfx. If a company that designs tractors in your neighborhood goes out of business, and you buy all their pc's at their liquidation sale... are you expected to provide warranty for those tractors now ??? no, same case.

Nvidia might dissolve agea as a company and do the same thing... and IF they do, then people could complain, but right now you are making assumptions based of incorrect information.
 
Verge said:
Well, you are not really correct. All nvidia bought from 3dfx were assets, if you wish to place blame, blame 3dfx. If a company that designs tractors in your neighborhood goes out of business, and you buy all their pc's at their liquidation sale... are you expected to provide warranty for those tractors now ??? no, same case.

Nvidia might dissolve agea as a company and do the same thing... and IF they do, then people could complain, but right now you are making assumptions based of incorrect information.
Click to expand...

Yes, I was correct.
I made no mention of whether I thought NV should have honored 3dfx's warranties or not. Your analogy was wasted, I never thought they should have honored them in the first place. I placed no blame on NV over it either. 3dfx died and was bought out due to their own monumental and continuous mismanagement as well as their piss poor business strategies.

I was merely stating what happened when NV bought out 3dfx, raising the possibility that something similar may happen again. Nothing more. I was hoping to quiet some of the excessive optimism. The way some people are talking in this thread it is like the second coming of PhysXcrist or something. When the reality may be far less than we desire and may take us a while to actually see.
 
“I was merely stating what happened when NV bought out 3dfx, raising the possibility that something similar may happen again.”
It’s not the same. NV didn’t buy 3DFX they bought some of 3DFX’s assists. NV didn’t and don’t own 3DFX the company. It was 3DFX that chose to stop driver support not NV.
With Ageia NV did buy the company and do own them.

How can NV buying some of 3DFX's assists and not the company be classed as similar to NV buying Ageia the company? NV have to honer the Ageia warrantees e.c.t They didnt with 3DFX as they dont own them.
 
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