Nvidia taking it easy on AMD to allow them to compete better against Intel?

G

GenBanks

Gawd
Joined
Feb 26, 2008
Messages
634
This is just a theory based on speculation, but it occurred to me that perhaps part of the reason nvidia isn't pushing the boundaries as much as we'd all hoped (with the 9-series and 200 series) is that they want to allow AMD breathing space so that AMD can stand up to Intel in the CPU department?

I mean, if nvidia could actually make a decision "let's try to stay just ahead of the Radeons, so that we make money but don't crush them" then it would seem that a good rationale for that would be that it would give AMD the strength to turn the heat up on Intel's CPU dominance so that Intel doesn't wipe the floor with both Amd AND nvidia with the combination of their huge CPU lead and investment into the graphics sector with Larrabee.

Basically, my theory is:
Nvidia gives AMD ATI room to breathe
AMD has the confidence and funding to put more money against Intel
Intel is put on the defensive in the CPU sector, need to spend more money on research
Intel has less clout / less of a threat in the graphics arena.

I know I sort of sound like an nvidia fanboy because I'm assuming that nvidia is capable of more performance than they have dished out. So let me just say that I think 4870 and 4850's are amazing cards. But I'm just curious if this sort of strategic thinking is a possibility in the nvidia camp. My understanding of the way corporations work isn't the best, and I know this is a sort of simplistic theory but I'm wondering if on some level this is going on.
 
Intel is in bed with AMD. Nvidia's out in the cold.

Nvidia can't "push the boundary's" with the GTX200s because it would seem there tries at 55nm were failures and the 65nm GT200 has a die the size of a small city, meaning getting it clocked any higher would be extremely difficult.
edit: that said, considering the RV770 sucks down as much power as the GT200, it sounds like ATI isn't in the ideal position with their 55nm stuff yet either.

Heres a comparison of the die sizes:
rv770vsgtxvspenryn.png


The number of GT200's you can pull from a single 350mm wafer is less than half the amount of RV770s you can pull from the same wafer. Because of the higher chip/wafer real-estate ratio, the RV770s also suffer from a smaller failure rate. Overall I suspect the numbers are 3:1 ATI's favor.

Rumers are the 55nm shrink to the GT200 is taped out, meaning it might even be here in time for x-mas. I wouldn't expect too much out of it if its just as bad as the G92b, but if nvidia at 40nm will be something cool. Of course by that time I suspect ATI will be on the R800.
 
I doubt they're just "letting" ATI get ahead. I mean, I doubt they built all that market share just to let ATI take it back with one generation.

Even great companies get complacent - Intel with NetBurst was caught completely off guard by K8. Then AMD got complacent and K8 was crushed by Conroe.

Nvidia had the entire FX5800 fiasco as well against the 9000 series with ATI but ATI also had the 2900XT...

However, I do notice that Intel and AMD seem to be pushing Nvidia out. They clearly feel threatened by Nvidia as both Intel and AMD's primary businesses are x86 + derivative CPU's. Nvidia has been advertising the death of the CPU and is pushing its GPGPU program hard and Intel and AMD would rather band together to stop Nvidia in the cold than let them overrun their bread and butter. That might also be why Nvidia is trying to work with VIA on their own line of processors...
 
Hooligan said:
lulz?

are u nuts
Click to expand...

nope.

Intel and Nvidia's little feud has played out to the point where AMD seems much more blue than green. Look around a little bit, I'm too tired to do it for you. I just did to find that die shot.
 
Maybe nVidia is taking it easy but that is not the reason for the higher card price.

GTX 280 won't be any much cheaper because the die size alone which is twice as big as the RV770 makes the yield lower. For the same die size AMD could get 2 GPUs instead of one from nVidia.

nVidia's choice to use a 512bit memory interface is also an expensive one because the board design is more complicated than 256bit but AMD's choice to use GDDR5 is not cheap either so I think that both companies spent about the same amount of money to get the memory bandwidth. AMD has an upper hand though because the 256bit interface is cheap and they can use GDDR3 for their HD4850 which makes the card much cheaper.

AMD could sell their HD4870 at a higher price but they decided not to because they want to sell it at a price that nVidia could never reach, at least not with the current GTX280 and GTX260.
 
Nvidia are not taking it easy.. They simply were not able to create a more interesting GPU than the GTX280 this generation. This is as exciting as it gets.

A 55nm GTX280 might be a little faster and a little cheaper, but I honestly think they need to drop to 45nm. Even at 55nm, the GTX280 would be almost twice as big as the RV770.
 
Personally I think nvidia just did its normal thing... the GTX280 is about as fast as two 9800GTX in SLI and friggen expensive. What generation did they do something different?
5--->6 ... check
6--->7 ... check
7--->8 ... check
8--->9 ... fail - marketing bs
9--->280. check

*edit for wording something wrong
 
Actually, the GTX 280 is about the same speed or a little faster than two 9800GTX in SLI, not twice as fast.
 
oops I worded that wrong, I mean twice as fast as one card, or the same speed as they were in SLI.
 
nvdia was just lucky because ATI was busy with its merger business. It is not that it is better or what, so there is no possibility for "taking easy" . That is exactly where its lubing ass belongs after ATI settles down. Get over it.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
nope.

Intel and Nvidia's little feud has played out to the point where AMD seems much more blue than green. Look around a little bit, I'm too tired to do it for you. I just did to find that die shot.
Click to expand...

AMD and Intel have been competitors for years.

its like saying Pepsi is suddenly siding with Coca Cola against Red Bull.

not
gonna
happen.
 
wow you gotta be pretty dull if you think even for a second Nvidia let this happen............
 
The current GTX200 cards dont slouch. Their prices just weren't attractive, and the HD 4000 cards made those prices even uglier.
 
Hooligan said:
AMD and Intel have been competitors for years.

its like saying Pepsi is suddenly siding with Coca Cola against Red Bull.

not
gonna
happen.
Click to expand...

AMD and intel may not be friends, but intel is closer to AMD than it is to nvidia.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
nope.

Intel and Nvidia's little feud has played out to the point where AMD seems much more blue than green. Look around a little bit, I'm too tired to do it for you. I just did to find that die shot.
Click to expand...

i agree with you mrwizard.
 
Hooligan said:
AMD and Intel have been competitors for years.

its like saying Pepsi is suddenly siding with Coca Cola against Red Bull.

not
gonna
happen.
Click to expand...

You should really open your eyes more. More gaming laptops use Mobile Radeon processors than GeforceGo processors. Being that AMD owns ATI, Intel has to work with them to make their processors coexist in harmony.
 
Azhar said:
You should really open your eyes more. More gaming laptops use Mobile Radeon processors than GeforceGo processors. Being that AMD owns ATI, Intel has to work with them to make their processors coexist in harmony.
Click to expand...

Since when? i havent seen NEARLY as many gaming laptops with any kind of 3870s in them at all. Pardon me, but i believe that nvidia has a pretty firm grasp on the laptop gaming market.
 
Yoshiyuki Blade said:
The current GTX200 cards dont slouch. Their prices just weren't attractive, and the HD 4000 cards made those prices even uglier.
Click to expand...

Exactly. The cards are very good, but the prices are just not up to par, especially after the competition released their cards, for much less.
 
Nuker said:
AMD and intel may not be friends, but intel is closer to AMD than it is to nvidia.
Click to expand...

I agree with this, I mean INTEL boards use crossfire technology. You would think they would rather support SLI instead of using parts from there direct competitor.
 
Occam's Razor -> Nvidia made bad engineering decisions. No need to cook up conspiracy theories.
 
RussianHAXOR said:
Since when? i havent seen NEARLY as many gaming laptops with any kind of 3870s in them at all. Pardon me, but i believe that nvidia has a pretty firm grasp on the laptop gaming market.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure ATI dominates it though. I'm sure nVidia has quite a lot of mobile GPU out there but ATI has the upper hand.. at least that's what I've read awhile ago somewhere. Maybe it's changed since. I haven't been keeping up with the mobile gaming machines. Just business machines mostly with Mobile Radeons and Intel IGP
 
Doodies said:
I agree with this, I mean INTEL boards use crossfire technology. You would think they would rather support SLI instead of using parts from there direct competitor.
Click to expand...

No, Intel boards use PCI-Express technology ;)

The only difference between a board that supports SLI vs. Crossfire is what artificial limitations are imposed by the drivers. Crossfire works on Intel boards because AMD/ATI allows it, not because of anything hardware-wise on the Intel boards, or because of anything Intel did. The only reason SLI doesn't work on Intel boards is because NVidia is restricting sli to only nforce chipsets, there is no technical reason (and if such a restriction was removed, all current boards with 2 x16 slots should then work with SLI)
 
Azhar said:
I stand corrected. ATI did dominate until nVidia caught up last year. This year, nVidia stomped ATI with 31% to ATI's 17%

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2291333,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532

Intel is king at 40%
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And thats not even in the gaming laptop market. Since the gaming laptop market is even smaller and built from more enthusiasts id say its pretty safe to assume that nvidia has the gaming laptop market almost all to themselves since intel doesnt have anything nor does ATi.
 
Nope,Nvidia just got fat n' lazy and got caught with their pants down,just like Intel was by AMD a couple years back.They got arrogant and took it for granted that ATI couldn't catch them,and kept playing games with the consumers.
 
Yep its an artificial limitation. The 975X with hacked drivers were able to run SLI a while back

And the likeliest answer is just that poor engineering decisions + poor yields + suddenly competitive rival makes the cards look worse than they actually are.
 
Intel and AMD may have been rivals for years, but both Intel and AMD know that they've gotten to where they have with their CPU lineup. Nvidia making hostile overtures towards your bread and butter means that the two primary x86 holders will do everything to maintain their dominance in CPU's together.

The Intel vs. Nvidia feud will only drive Intel to cooperate with AMD more. But anyways, every company has made poor decisions in the past.... Netburst vs. K8. Keeping K8 for 3 years vs. Conroe. FX5800 vs. 9700Pro etc.
 
Yoshiyuki Blade said:
The current GTX200 cards dont slouch. Their prices just weren't attractive, and the HD 4000 cards made those prices even uglier.
Click to expand...

Actually prices wise, GTX200 cards are about the same or even cheaper than the introductory prices of 7800GTX, 7900GTX, and 8800GTX few years back.

I bought 7800GT at $450 a piece.
My brother bought his 7800GTX 512MB for $750 on sale.
My 8800 Ultra first came out is $800, I got it for $720 couple month later.
 
semisonic9 said:
Lol. You know who owns Red Bull, right?

~S
Click to expand...

No, who?

When I told my wife about my Eurika idea of a cola drink with added gingsing and more caffeine, couple minutes later Pepsi came out with the commercial about Pepsi gingsing with more caffeine.
 
RB30 said:
No, who?

When I told my wife about my Eurika idea of a cola drink with added gingsing and more caffeine, couple minutes later Pepsi came out with the commercial about Pepsi gingsing with more caffeine.
Click to expand...

Actually, I am mistaken. I was thinking Coke did, but I must have been confusing it with some other athletic or energy drink. Red Bull appears to be, in fact, its own company. :D

~S
 
lol at all of the nvidia fanboys saying Nvidia is allowing AMD to do this............are people really this ignorant?
 
I'm not saying nvidia is 'allowing' them to do this... I'm just wondering whether nvidia has a strategy for undermining intel which involves AMD. I'm sure ATI are capable of beating nvidia without nvidia helping them. It's just that I'm wondering about what the big picture is for the suits at nvidia.
 
Well I don't think so because Nvidia's primary product are still discrete GPU's while AMD's primary product is still their CPU's. Nvidia might want AMD to help fight Intel but losing discrete GPU sales and market share (and thus leverage on developers and coders) will not help them at all.
 
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