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NVidia Vs. Intel: Fight To Come?
Mostly Monkey was the first to write to us regarding
a new article on Tom's Hardware. The article is about the launch by Nvidia of "...nForce, its integrated graphics, audio, Northbridge, and Southbridge chipset, also referred to as Crush." The implication is that Nvidia is setting itself up to move past the graphics/audio market and get into competing with Intel in the full on chip market. What with AMD's recent success, that doesn't sound so unlikely.
This is pretty interesting in the sense that no company since the original Amiga team has tried to create a fully integrated system with multimedia capabilities from scratch. Instead of building an initial architecture and keep tacking on bus loads until performance starts to suffer, build *everything* into the architecture so that bus transfers from competing chips don't step on each other (well, as little as possible anyway).
With all the talk about the new Amiga (software only), I'm more excited by this development.
Absolutely. With the "nForce", nVidia is promising a single driver that would support not only the mainboard and disk controllers, but also the on-board GeForce 2 GPU, Ethernet, and Sound Card. This should be a huge hit with the OEMs.
Like BIOS updates, kernel revisions and the like, you only update if you need the new features. On the other hand, if nVidia wanted to do 3 releases per year, and release X woudln't be released till feature Z was done, but could be released without feature Z but with feature Y or fix Y that you're after, you'd have to wait.
Release early/often works on the assumption that the user knows when to upgrade. Release rarely-and-when-its-done works on the assumption that the user doesn't
John
John_Chalisque
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"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
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"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
So tell me, just to make it very clear, why did you buy an nVidia card for your Alpha machine knowing it didn't work? It's not like nVidia has drivers for any OS for Alpha (not just Linux), so why'd you bother? Or is this just rhetorical FUD? Go away troll.
--
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
--
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
Sound is pretty much commodidy stuff these days, just go down to your local hardware store, pick up an SB Live, and you're done. There are some more powerful cards out there for people who need them, but otherwise SB Live is perfectly sufficient. nVidia is just doing the logical, integrating a more powerful sound solution, thereby eliminating most of Sound Blaster's market.
Ether is pretty much commodity stuff as well. Aside from all the no-name clones out there, it's best to just spend the extra couple of bucks and get yourself a real card, 3com, Intel, whatever. This nVidia chip should really also have a good 10/100 component.
And video? Well, I suppose nVidia is already in that market heavily, with all the cards based on their chip, and it's best to leave this part alone, as video cards are the most often performed (and most expensive) upgrades (how many times did you upgrade your sound card or network card, or even cpu?), so it's a cash cow as a stand-alone card.
The only threat to Intel in this chipset is of course the integration and elimination of the North/South Bridges, but most importantly, nVidia's alignment with AMD. It's all AMD this, AMD that, and DDR also features prominently. Good stuff.
--
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
I can't agree more with your statement. Ever since I read the first write-up on the Geforce3, I've been waiting for someone to bring the memory crossbar to the mobo. I know anandtech had a nice bit on the ServerworksHE or whatever, but that's a server/Highend workstation board. This is the first modestly priced board with these features.
What questions I have remaining concern i/o and busses. Sure, the HyperTransport is fast between north and south... but how many PCI busses does the south bridge handle? How about PCI-X or 64bit/66Mhz PCI? Firewire? IrDA? I also wonder if interleaving wouldn't have been better than the "neat" feature allowing different types/amounts of memory on each bus.
I am impressed by the feature list and eagerly await the first test drives by Tomshardware and others. This could get interesting.
_damnit_
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
Now I've had an ATI Radeon for a month or so, and have yet to experience a single crash. And the Radeon DRI drivers are still alpha code... Go ATI, I say!
Until you realize that they too are holding out... TV-Out, hardware MPEG2 decode... these things aren't available on your beloved ATI cards when used under Linux. Go Trident, I say! :-)
Hmm, would be nice if all modules worked that way. I had to add some modules for ip_sec to my firewall this weekend and tried doing it without recompiling everything. Sure enough had to patch the kernel also and recompile and stuff. Kinda sucks on dual 50Mhz Sparc procs.
Sounds like development code to me. If you're gonna run dev code, get a development machine. My firewall is an 80386DX/33 but all my compilation takes place on a dual Cel433 with 256M of memory. It takes the sting out, let me tell you. :-)
Use kernel modules, then. Want to use a new feature? Just compile the module, and set up the appropriate config in modules.conf... I use ALSA sound modules to configure my sound card, for instance.
The single unified driver that nVidia is promoting may help with copatibility issues, but it practically guarentees that this motherboard will be Linux incompatible. nVidia has long sinced closed the GForce drivers, and I bet that Dolby will have some reservations about opening up the APU. A partial doc/source release may staisfy GPL and kernel requirements, but the performance is likely to stink...
nVidia's integrated GForce2 chip communicates with the rest of the chipset at the equivalent of 6x AGP. Yet the integrated chip is not "top of the line"--if you want to upgrade your graphics capability (to say, a GForce3) you'll have to use a slower 4x AGP interface... A difficult tradeoff?
Yeah, but that makes no sense. Banks don't need to communicate with each other.
In parallel computing, a 'cross-bar' is where every node has a p2p link with every other node. Basically this is the optimal setup, as long as you don't count cost or complexity.
I'm trying to imagine how this idea could be applied to a memory bus, where chipset communicates with ram and that's it, and I can't. Oh well.
The enemies of Democracy are
Sounds very nice, but it doesn't mean a thing if it doesn't push bits as fast as the old guys. Or if they can't get the thing to market.
Hmm... what part of dual-bank DDR with h/w prefetch didn't you understand? That's double the memory bandwidth (4.2 GB/s) of any existing mobo, with a possibility for greatly reduced latency due to prefetch. And while the CPU still communicates to the chipset over a mere 1.6GB/s bus, remember that this leaves another 2.8GB/s for prefetches and DMA from the graphics chip and other components. Also, EV6 still has room for further speedups, and this will give AMD a reason to do so. I don't find their claim of 20% improvement to be unbelievable (I'll believe it when I see it, but it isn't unbelievable).
I have no idea where the "cross-bar" part of the memory system comes into play... The idea doesn't even make sense. You have a chipset, and two banks of DDR. That's two point-point links, for which the term cross-bar seems ill-fitting. Anyway...
Also, they've got a demo board using only 4 layers! Number of layers has a high impact on board cost, and having only four is very good. Also, according to the article a number of major board manufacturers have made commitments. So it looks like this thing will see the light of day.
The enemies of Democracy are
END OF LINE.
Not that I really disagree with your post, but how often again do the CPU sockets change? .. about once per generation? .. yup. Can you plug an Athlon into a pii slot? .. nope. CPU sockets is a really weak example for 'expandability'.
(Even within a generation, my supermicro mobo won't take piis (it's smp) above 5(6?)00 mhz.. they didn't exist at the time. I'm currently at 350, a bargain even when I bought them .. how much exactly am I gaining there?)
Not counting that, provided everything works, all-in-one chipsets are cheaper.
It's not like nvidia is preventing you from sticking a matrox card in your box.. yet :)
Pfft. Don't worry about it - they'll just be leaking about 3 driver sets a week, and expect you to sort out which ones work and are worth keeping. This way, they'll have everyone playing beta-tester/lab rat, rather than just their video card customers...
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
For the graphics card market, they've certainly become the standard these days, and perhaps a little complacent about how they approach things.
However, they're the newcomer to a very cutthroat market, and very soon they'll have Intel and VIA (and probably SiS and co. too) breathing down their necks.
If they keep the programming info close to their chests, they'll be limiting the compatibility of their board. And any limiting factor these days is a Bad Thing (TM).
A good dose of open-ness wouldn't hurt the adoption of the board early on, and may even become a deciding factor in it's continued survival in the marketplace, once all it's competitors wake up and produce a more open answer.
One can but hope.
Malk
Precompiled modules?
Though, I very much hope that this doesn't come to pass.
Malk
The article says it's hardware accelerated for DirectX.
This, I'd assume is because a lot of this is X-Box spinoff tech.
If I understand the article fully, then it'd Cirect-X compliant from the word go.
Malk
Well, as per usual, it seems to prove that extra competition in an industry forces innovation. :)
With the Intel/VIA etc. wars, it just seemed to be a war to see who could produce the same solution at lower cost. Very little new actually happened.
When NVIDIA talked about their memory specs in the GeForce3, I was wondering how long it would take for the powers that be in the industry to have the same kind of foreward thinking on motherboards.
Now it seems that it took NVIDIA to jump in with both feet to wake everyone up.
Well, succeed or fail in this new venture, they've certainly given everyone a lot to think about, and I'll definately be putting money aside to buy one as soon as I hear they're settled in and stable.
It'll be fun to see where this race of new ideas ends.
Long live innovation, competition, and hats off to NVIDIA.
Malk
Well, as they said in the article, when queried about why they didn't have an Intel version:
"We don't have an Intel bus license"
From this, I assume that Intel are trying to do what IBM did with the MCA architecture over a decade ago.
They're forcing developers into restrictive licenses, and possibly expensive ones, to use an architecture.
This was a really bad idea, as IBM found when nobody used MCA, and instead went for the inferior EISA bus, which didn't have such heavy restrictions.
I can't blame NVIDIA for trying to get their dedicated graphics cards looking and performing to the best possible standard (as they already have optimisations for the PIII and AMD processors), and it's only logical for them to optimise for P4 if they can. And they have.
However, this new chipset is simply saying that AMD are more open, and easier to develop with, rather than having Intel breathing down their neck with licensing issues at every step of the way.
My view on it is that AMD just gave NVIDIA the license to innovate properly, and good things are now happening.
Malk
right here
Hell is being intelligent in a world full of idiots.
I didn't have much luck with the original link.
here's another one that seems to work better.
stay frosty and alert
The suggestion that NVidia is getting into integrated chipsets in order to compete with Intel on new ground is wrongminded.
This is a defensive mood, pure and simple. If NVidia doesn't get its hooks firmly into the integrated chipset market then they will see their share in the total graphics chip market dwindle as a larger and larger percentage of new motherboards/systems are built with integrated chipsets.
In a similar vein, Intel's presence in the graphics chip market is itself defensive. Graphics chips are more competitive for graphics price/performance-wise than general purpose CPUs. That is to say, spending 50 bucks on a 3D chip is going to do more for graphics performance than spending 50 bucks to get a pentium IV 1433MHz instead of a pentium IV 1375MHz. Therefore, each graphics accelerator sold potentally means that people buy a cheaper CPU, which eats into Intel's revenue. Selling graphic's chips helps them hold on to some of that revenue.
nVidia has a motherboard chipset that offers integrated sound, video, and an extremely high bandwidth between the two chips?
So now the PC platform has finally come full circle in it's design and reached the point that the Amiga was in 1987
My biggest problem with integrating so much into the systemboard is the lack of upgrade options. A standard PC, with seperate sound, video, and other cards allows you to upgrade any component (including the systemboard/processor) without "losing" the others.
eg. if my systemboard blows, I can buy a new one and salvage the video card from the blown system. However, if the component is integrated into the systemboard I loose this feature.
I'd be hardpressed to buy or recommend something like this for personal use. Perhaps computer labs would be interested (where there are 200 identical computers and any problem systems are swapped for new systems). In that respect I do see the advantage (drivers, integration, etc).
It's cool now, but five years from now? I just don't like throwing things away because they are obsolete. Even if the system board is current, the video card may become useless - install a "full" video card into the AGP slot and the onboard chipset becomes a useless waste of space.
Why not focus on improving memory access or AGP speed? Why not further communication between the graphic chipset and the CPU instead of developing these (IMHO) silly integrated solutions?
Bah.
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Computer Science: solving today's problems tomorrow.
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
They're already the Microsoft of the Video card industry, why not take the Microsoft practice of "embrace-and-extend" as well?
Look at history though. I think you'll see that NVIDIA won because it produced better stuff in a tighter development cycle than it's competitors. And it's competitors still exist. I think ATI has a lot of strength in the TV-Video thing and is leverging that strength in the 3D arena. Even though NVIDIA bought up 3DFX, that doesn't leave the entire market to them (although they do have a large chunk).
If I were NVIDIA, I'd be worried about the DOJ and see if they want to attack their monopoly.
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Computer Science: solving today's problems tomorrow.
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
> Look at the Linux driver - sure it's legal, but
;)
> is it open source? I know about the NDA
> problems, but why does that prevent them from
> releasing a lower performance open source
> driver? Answer: Because it's not in their
> commercial interests while they have the best
> performance on Linux why let that good
> performance get back into the community where
> other vendors might take advantage of it?
I suffer from this problem. I have never had a system that could run X (XFree86) properly. 99% of the problem was not having proper drivers. On my 486, I had some no-name trident that could barely pull off 72Hz at 800x600. I lived with Linux on the commandline and booted to Windows for gui stuff. On my newer comps, I went thru another Trident AGP card, a TNT, a GF1, GF2, and now a GF3, and I still get a shitty display.
Now that 3Dfx is dead, why can't they release their friggin drivers? Arguh.
> Who knows what the long term holds in this
> industry - we might all be using OS/2 on PPCs
> in 5 years!!
Hey, that sounds sweet.
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Computer Science: solving today's problems tomorrow.
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
You didn't answer the question, "how is this specific to the GPL?"
If nVidia can't release 3rd party source-code then they can't BSDL it, put it in the public domain, or GPL it. It's all off-limits.
So how can the GPL be to blame?
G13 technology. Like Emil's arm.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Here's a great summary of the architecture for people (like me) who aren't engineers on HardOCP: http://www.hardocp.com/articles/nforce/index.html
... who _really_ cares?)
Also, in addition, I personally really like AnandTech, so here's a link to his detailed article: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1484
(And no, I'm not a 'karma whore'
Thanks - good point! They go together rather well. It'll be interesting to see the Sandra scores for this one.
It's certainly going to be good for real world apps (I just read a review that pointed out it's essentially like having an L3 cache in the chipset), but I'd have thought it'd show up in a synthetic streaming memory benchmark also - unless the CPU was already achieving it's theoretical max (which seems unlikely).
The Tom's article says that the chipset does speculative data prefetch to improve memory-CPU throughput by up to 20%...cool... but why are they bothering to do this when Athlon is about to be replaced by Palomino that has hardware prefetch built in?
I hope you're joking...
MS is one of NVidia's biggest supporters...there's a reason just about every nvidia request makes it into the next version of DirectX. On top of that figure that all of thise hardware is made especially to fit perfectly within the DirectX specs and functionality to provide the best DirectX support out there. Ditching MS in the PC market is something akin to stopping breathing. Sounds like something to try, but give it a few minutes, you'll regret it.
I suspect NVIDIA is more interested in becoming the next Intel, not the next Microsoft. Microsoft is known for its crap products and market dominance due to cut-throat business practices.
Intel is also fairly brutal on the business side of things, but they consistently produce high quality products. NVIDIA got to where they are today by making top-notch hardware, combined with aggressive marketing. I don't see that changing any time soon. When you have a formula that works, stick to it.
-Mark
"Good people drink good beer"
Where did you get the info that the GF2 was optional? All the stuff I see says it is part of the North Bridge (or IGP or whatever). The Dolby Decoder and twin memory controllers are the only configurable options I can see (look at http://www4.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q2/010604 1/nforce-12.html)
It will never be as easy to use an ATI card with an nVidia mobo as it is to use an nVidia card because of the driver issue. You plug in a GF3 and it will just work - the existing drivers will just pick it up and use it. You are effectively getting your GF3 drivers bundled with the mobo driver package. You plug an ATI card in and your first experience is the good old 640x480 resolution in Windows (assuming we are talking mass marken here - Linux people tend to be cool with figuring out drivers). You also can get weird interactions - ATI end up having to devote time to make their drivers work with nVidia's mobos, while nVidia don't have to care about ATI (remember the nVidia/VIA/AGP4x thing a while back?)
Whatever happens, if nVidia gets a monopoly (very doubtful really) then there is little chance of them not exploiting it by the simple fact it exists. You can't fault a company for testing that it's own products work well with each other!!
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
They do 'embrace and extend'. Ever seen the OpenGL nVidia extensions? Guess what are the first extensions to get coded for these days? Oops - extended a supposedly open spec!!
Look at the Linux driver - sure it's legal, but is it open source? I know about the NDA problems, but why does that prevent them from releasing a lower performance open source driver? Answer: Because it's not in their commercial interests while they have the best performance on Linux why let that good performance get back into the community where other vendors might take advantage of it?
nVidia, just like Microsoft, won out of sheer bloody minded persistance. The NV1 failed badly, so nVidia sided with Microsoft and DirectX and had cards supporting the next version of DX on the shelves as the versions were released. If you wanted T&L with your DX7 games then you had to get nVidia. If you got anything else then you were SOL. Now that nVidia is king of the hill they can afford to take on the bigger challenges - kinda like MS shrugging off IBM and going it alone.
nVidia is one company that I would be very careful of in the future. I think they have a big potential to be the next Microsoft, but don't have a monopoly to speak of at the moment and probably won't for a few years yet (ATI has to roll over first which ain't gonna happen easily). The battle is heating up at the moment and the consumers are going to be the winners in the short term. Who knows what the long term holds in this industry - we might all be using OS/2 on PPCs in 5 years!!
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Oh. Yeah. Throx is stupid. Bad Throx. :-(
You are also right about the exploitation. Thanks for setting me straight.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
The reason they are using a GF2 and not a GF3 is simple really - if you want a GF3 then you have to buy it from nVidia and they get to make more money. If you don't want a GF3 then they've sold you a GF2 already which will keep you from spending money at their competitor.
Remember the GF3 driver is likely to be included in the unified driver they are going to be shipping, but if you go with the competitor then you have to worry about driver issues. Looks like nVidia is set to become the Microsoft of the chipset/hardware industry!
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Why the hell would they not want to be the next MS... I mean, I want to be the next MS.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Someobody came out with a chipset for Althlon/Duron CPUs that isn't from VIA.
The VIA chipset (and USB controller) on my board (Asus A7Pro) is the crappiest, most unstable piece of junk i've ever used. - and its not even overclocked.
I just hope NVidia does a better job of delivering a chipset that works properly than VIA has.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
... Intel has proven it can't make a decent video card -- why should Nvidia be able to make a processor?
Grip
Failure is not an option. It comes automatically enabled in every Microsoft product.
While this looks like an interesting development, it looks like nVidia is trying to play both sides of the battle. The top graphics article on Tom's Hardware, here at http://www4.tomshardware.com/graphic/01q2/010511/i ndex.html, discusses the next nVidia driver release, which focuses entirely on Pentium 4 optimizations to the nVidia drivers. I would decalre an all-out war yet, guys. ;-)
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
Hmm, would be nice if all modules worked that way. I had to add some modules for ip_sec to my firewall this weekend and tried doing it without recompiling everything. Sure enough had to patch the kernel also and recompile and stuff. Kinda sucks on dual 50Mhz Sparc procs.
(laugh) oops!
- crossbar memory architecture, with point-to-point connections between individual memory banks and I/O devices and CPU.
Sun's UPA bus architecture works this way, as do various proprietary SGI, IBM, and HP(?) workstation and server busses with various minor distinctions among them. AGP, in a sense, has kinda provided a "good enough" variant of this by segmenting graphics to a separate bus, but a crossbar approach is more general solution for the same problem- maximizing bandwidth utilization without the data traffic conflicts that arise in bus-based solutions.--LP
- ability to guarantee bandwidth and latency for specific I/O requests (what they're calling "StreamThru"), a feature previously only available on mid-range (Octane) and high-end SGI systems with the XIO bus.
This can be quite handy for things like handling multiple video streams without dropping frames, or mixing video with other I/O requests. I wonder if there are other cool things you could do once you can allocate bandwidth for I/O and have said allocations enforced in hardware?I've never seen this capability on the Intel platform before. It was a cutting-edge SGI feature back in 1996 or so. Sun/HP/IBM/Intel were never concerned enough about video to implement this on their workstations, but I do recall some discussion about whether it'd be in Infiniband or not (don't remember the outcome).
--LP
- Competition--the GF3 is still pretty new, and budget cards (the "MX"s) are expected in the fall (at the earlies). Including the same level of graphics power in a supposedly cheap motherboard chipset would compete directly with graphics board sales.
- Transistor counts--the GeForce3 is >57 million transistors. Perhaps it was a bit too much to integrate?
- Memory bandwidth--a GeForce3 typically has a 128-bit DDR memory interface, clocked at 230 MHz. That's 7.2 GBps, or more than 50% more than all the memory bandwidth provided by the nForce!
Now, let's just hope NVIDIA are kind enough to allow Linux to run on motherboards based on the nForce. Darn, I think my formerly so simple next-computer-purchasing-plan ("must have SMP Athlons, must have SMP Athlons...") just became a bit more complex. The nForce is *cool*!!main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
It's all been caught on video, right here.
Pretend there could be more effective chips out in the future (or now).
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
At least NVidia is still innovating at a brisk pace.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Why do so many people think this is funny? NVidia releases new drivers more often than a typical person would ever want to download them. see here. Version 12.40 came out about three weeks ago. 12.60 is already out. And the current Linux release is 12.51.
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But, yeah, obviously their 2D specs are available (XFree includes a 2D NVidia driver), and they did release those 3D specs that they could at one point. Those specs were for the TNT2 and below (GeForce didn't exist then), but due to NVidia's hardware design philosophy they should work with the GeForce line as well. Of course, you won't get the GeForce features, nor the NDA'd stuff. Oh well. Frankly, after the Voodoo 5 driver fiasco, I don't really think the open source community could write a better driver anyway. (BSD support would be nice, but I'm told that BSD hackers are on the verge of getting the Linux binaries to work with BSD anyway.)
If you love writing your own graphics drivers, then, yeah, don't buy NVidia. Personally, I prefer to write higher-level code, and have the stuff below it do what it's supposed to do.
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Key words: "seemed to be"
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I see people making this mistake time and time again. Everyone seems to think that a graphics driver is just like any other driver. They think that the code for the driver is mostly useless for any card other than the one it is written for. With graphics drivers, that is not the case.
In order for your driver to be OpenGL certified, is has to implement *all* of OpenGL. That includes T&L, NURBS, and much much more. NVidia has an *excellent* software implementation of T&L, and I'm sure the people who made the Kyro and Kyro II (neither of which have hardware T&L) would *love* to get ahold of it. You expect NVidia to just give that to you for free? Um, I don't think so.
Motherboards are a different issue, and I don't really think NVidia would do something dumb like keep their motherboard specs closed. I suppose we'll find out, but their record with graphics cards says nothing about it.
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Now, NVidia is just jumping right on in to the motherboard and sound processing markets. And from the looks of it, their very first product already blows the competition out of the water. How long has this competition been here? We're talking about *Intel* and *Creative*, for crying out loud! You don't just beat these guys overnight! What have they been doing all this time? Why is NVidia able to take them out so easily? Why can't ATI or Matrox touch the GeForce 3? Why is NVidia not afraid to spend Microsoft's money to develop Linux and Mac drivers? What is going on here? At this rate, NVidia will rule the world in five to ten years!
Obviously, NVidia's technology is being provided by aliens. There just is no other explanation. We have to stop this conspiracy before it's too late!
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And your point regarding the GPL was what? I can't see any connection in your post that connects GPL to the problem that isn't already a problem with public domain, good ol' copyright or IP laws in general. In short you blame GPL, when you should've blamed nvidia for using 3rd-party code with various different license limitations. Unless I got the whole thing wrong? What I gathered from the post was that you hate GPL for some reason, but not why.
;*)
Unreal Memory Leak was funny though. What few people know, is that Unreal got a very sophisticated Crash-Probability-Drive(TM) too
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Yes (from Asus), dunno (but look here for benchmarks), and I think so :-)
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Lookie here!
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Now, as virtually every game requires a 3d card, why not just integrate the damn things into the motherboard? Strikes me that this more or less follows the traditional progression within the computer industry.
So my question is, why the Hell do I still need a sound card?
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
First, Microsoft was expected to lose about $200 per unit on early Xbox units. With this NVidia announcement, there's a path to an NVidia/AMD Xbox implementation at a lower price point. This gives Microsoft much more leverage with Intel in bargaining for discounts on parts for the Xbox. Microsoft probably won't lose $200 per unit. Intel will get squeezed hard.
Second, it makes it very clear that entertainment apps now drive the PC industry. More transistors are now devoted to 3D graphics and audio processing than to the main CPU. The PS2 had that balance too; all the innovation is in the graphics and media processing, while the main CPU was an old design. Now it's taking over. Business desktops will have full 3D graphics and 5-channel audio, even if they never use it.
Third, it's now clear that one more generation and one-chip PCs will go mainstream. There have been one-chip PCs, but they were low performance. As the chip count goes down, motherboards get smaller. With this level of integration, there's little need for slots for plug-in boards. AGP goes away, and probably so does PCI. Add-ons will go on FireWire, USB, or Ethernet.
Finally, this all leads to downsized packaging. The computer can fit in the base of a flatscreen, and will probably end up there.
It's not clear why this new chip is GeForce 2, rather than GeForce 3 architecture. The XBox uses GeForce 3. It's probably a production bottleneck; NVidia was having trouble getting GeForce 3 parts out the door in volume. But NVidia will fix that.
The reason that the Kyro's don't have T&L is because it is very difficult to implement with tile based rendering (or so I've read, I couldn't say for sure). Some people have said its impossible, but it been said by Thompson that they're next card will have T&L so we'll see if that can stand up to the mightly Geforce 3. Not to harp on you though, I realize that I responded to another comment of yours too.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
Now I've had an ATI Radeon for a month or so, and have yet to experience a single crash. And the Radeon DRI drivers are still alpha code... Go ATI, I say!
I'm pretty sure that the whole board is using a unified driver, so they might not want to open it up after all... check socketa.com's review for more info.
If they don't open the video driver, they can't open the video++ driver...
Considering PowerVR have already created hardware T&L for their chips that Sega use in their arcade machines, I wouldn't say it's impossible...
I remember some time back when this issue was brought up, someone from SGI said that there was nothing SGI specific in their drivers that they couldn't open source.
I think it's great to see some innovation/competition in the chipset market. Now that they are tightly integrating all of the chipset functions, it would be nice to see some innovation in the BIOS area to go along with it. That's an area that's been stagnant since the PC-XT clone days.
I saw no mention of SMP support in any of the material I read. From what I can see, that's the only thing holding this back from making the ultimate system.
And the nVidia drivers come with 90% of the performance they have under Windows. nVidia's Linux drivers are some of the best 3D/2D drivers available for Linux, and the cards all work basically without a hitch. So while you can whine about them not opening the source to their drivers, I'll continue to use my GeForce2 under XFree4 and continue to play QuakeIII and Unreal Memory Leak - I mean, Unreal Tournament - under Linux.
Bash them for being closed all you want, but you have to realize that unlike the people making XFree and the people making Apache, some nVidia technology is licensed from other companies. nVidia can't release the driver source, as it isn't all theirs. (Honestly, though, I doubt they would anyway - I know I wouldn't.)
And as far as I know, every current nVidia card is currently supported via their drivers for Linux. (Which, admittedly, are for x86 only - one of the disadvantages of binary only, but there isn't much to be done about it.)
So Linux support may not be as far fetched as you seem to believe.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
This is the one angle of this story that I feel has not been sufficiently explored. This new chipset is a potential godsend for IT managers and workers. Why? When you troubleshoot a PC, one of the first things you have to look at are Video Drivers, Sound Drivers, NIC Driver, IDE Driver, Chipset Driver, etc. NVidia is going to make sysadmin's lives much easier if this product is 1/3 as good as it looks. Much easier to properly maintain PCs this way. This gives AMD a much bigger wedge to use to pry into the corporate market. Saving a few dollars per unit when buying PCs is nice, but anything that drops TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) gets major attention.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
The reason their Video Drivers are so closed is first because of various NDAs that they (Nvidia) had to sign to get bits of tech from other people and also because one of their great strengths in the video market is the unified driver setup that they have. Whether you agree with then or not (I don't) it seems clear why they would think that keeping that info close to their chests would be a good thing. In the MoBo chipset market it is a diffrent story these things need to be open and everybody else has them open. Also the entire history of the Linux drivers seems to indicate that they really did want to open them and just found themselves unable to do so. Comparing that with this is apples and oranges and it seems obvious they will do the right thing here.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I know you are just a simple AC but please don't try to deprive the slashdot whiners of their whining material.
Since you are new here I will explain how it works:
If Nvidia releases 10 driver revs a year, that is too much and Nvidia is using us little guys as free beta testers (burn in hell you bad company you!).
If Nvidia releases 9 driver revs a year, that is too little and Nvidia is a bloodsucking monopoly that doesn't listen to the little man.
You see where I am going with this? The beauty of this setup is no matter what Nvidia does all the slashdot whiners still have plenty to complain about! Brilliant!
Now what I want to know is where did all these passive aggresives come from? Little Man Syndrome runs rampant on slashdot.
Forget the trolls, don't feed the whiners.
- Toby
I might be taking this wrong, but it looks like this architecture might bridge the gap between console gaming and PC gaming. Its like the in-between. With all the audio and video integration, it looks like a nerd-souped-up-super-gaming-setup.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
That's obviously not true, all nvidia cards are supported by Xfree86's drivers. They may be a little resistent about dolling out the needed information, but it's clear that they have.
OK, they needs too open up some of the MOBO desing. Everything they desinged entierly them self can and will be opened up. I bet linux will be runinnf on it in no time at fulle speed.
But ther are more things to this chipset. The southbrigde has an excellent sound chipset integrated. HOWEVER this does (also) use a dolby(C) digital 5.1 output.......
I bet this dolby thing will not be open sourced, and if anyone figures out how it works it will be an very raw mode.
More work has to be done also on the integrated modem (I cannot read if it is a winmodem from the specs) and the 100Mb lan. Will the open up specs for this as well?
who can shine some light on this.
It's not the OpenGL implementation I'm concerned about -- they refuse to give ANY programming information whatsoever.
-John
What, so now I have to sign an NDA to get chip programming manuals, if I can get them at all?
No thanks... nVidia is one of the least-open companies out there, repeatedly denying requests for programming information. They finally did produce Linux drivers for their cards, but they are binary-only. How would you like binary-only kernel support for your CPU?
Or maybe they would support Linux. It's a fairly lucrative market in the server area, at least. But based on their past attitude I wouldn't count on it.
-John
Anything higher than 6.50 is a "leaked" driver, usually released by an Nvidia employee to certain news sites, not a "released" driver, available from Nvidia.
Ya know, when a whole bunch of highly trained SGI graphics wizards get together to start a new company, then really odd things happen! ;-)
nVIDIA is trying to be the next MS? Isn't everyone trying to be the next MS? You speak as if all companies aren't trying to take control of their respective markets.
Uninnovate - Only the finest in engineering.
Microsoft gave nVidia the resources to produce these chipsets, which were originally for the X-Box. The Multimedia & Communications Processor on the X-Box that handles the sound and network and hypertransport bus are the same as found on this chipset. The graphics core is even integrated into the chipset about the same way that it was on the X-Box. The only thing they added was the PCI bus on the south bridge, because the X-Box had no need for this.
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
...is that we the consumers end up winning no matter what happens.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Tom's Hardware had a Micro ATX demo motherboard, but does a full ATX demo board for nvidia's new chipset exist?
How does this board benchmark against the MSI K7-Master? Is the inverted PCI slot supposed to be a CNR riser?
"I have no idea where the "cross-bar" part of the memory system comes into play... The idea doesn't even make sense. You have a chipset, and two banks of DDR. That's two point-point links, for which the term cross-bar seems ill-fitting."
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If this is anything like their X-box setup, I'd guess that each bank is cross-barred. But I don't right know.
C//
If not, then I brought up that question to ask this one... maybe it'll give us Linux/BSD users a chance to NOT have to play catch-up to Microsoft on a new architecture?
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
That's awesome. Now I get to have outdated and nonexisting drivers for my motherboard from nvidia instead of just this goofy video card!
(If you don't see the sarcasm in that statement I pitty you)
That is why nvidia made this chipset in the first place, integrated geforce and sound, better than ati for a small price, this will rock the bottem market, Chainstore salespeople love to put things like geforce etc on their low budget pc's.
Make a man a fire and he will be warm for a day, set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life
With all the enemies Nvidia will make with this chip, Intel,Creative,Via... It seems like their steppin on the toes of most major players in the industry. I wonder how far the existance of unified drivers for linux would push them towards alientating MS as well. Unified motherboard,netwrok,video,and sound drivers in one install would certainly make large strides to an easily installable Linux distro atop a very xbox'ish equipped pc.
The point is that the two channels aren't "crossbared", but the connection to them is.
...
... the crossbar allows the north bridge (IGP) to allocate memory in both channels at the same time, thereby reducing the latency, since it can write/read to/from them simultaniously.
How to explain it
uhm
I hope that helps a bit.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
And no, a PS2 or XBox is not like a computer with a keyboard, mouse, and expandability built into its design. (Although they are getting closer to this realization).
2 monopolies?
OK, Micro$oft and who?
Pity.
Aside from all the no-name clones out there, it's best to just spend the extra couple of bucks and get yourself a real card, 3com, Intel, whatever
I have a question about that. WHY exactly is it better to do so? I recently bought a "cheapo" 10/100 network card because the Intel card (with, as far as I can tell, the same features) cost three to four times as much. The cheapo card is supported on all Linux/2K/NT etc. So I was wondering, why is it better to buy the expensive one? What advantage is there?
Makes sense. The card in question which I bought was an SMC 1211TX, and its not exactly for a mission critical application - its just for my home PC and to play games at the occasional LAN (frankly I haven't even used it yet). Anyway, I did a deja search before I bought the card (as I usually do before buying hardware) to see if there were reports of other people having problems with the card, and the only problem I found was that some people had slowness problems on somewhat older versions of Linux. I tested the card on both RH7 and W9X before I bought it (fairly informal arrangement with my supplier luckily), and it seemed to work fine on both.
It's funny to see that a while ago nVidia was the underdog and 3dfx were the bad guys. All of a sudden nVidia has turned into the bad guy.
Is this some kind of dillema in today computer industry? You cant be big (and make lots of $$$) and good a the same time?
Anyway i hope ATI's TRUFORM will kick their butt a bit. Competition is a good thing.
keep it simple.
Sounds very nice, but it doesn't mean a thing if it doesn't push bits as fast as the old guys. Or if they can't get the thing to market.
..."with the [ECONOMY'S RECENT COLLAPSE](instead of "AMD's recent success"), "that doesn't seem so likely." I think you'll find it fits a bit better. No, seriously, I dislike Intel's BS as much as the next nerd. And AMD has dark-horsed its way up to the head of the class, but Intel gave it to them last year with all their miscalculations(and every level). AMD just picked up the fumble.
You know the Microsoft destroys the night, Linux devides the day...
For all of those that don't want to go throught he entire article to find out when they would be able to lay their hands on those puppies:
"First shipments of the chips should be reaching the mobo vendors and PC OEMs by July or August, and the first nForce mobos, and possibly top tier OEM PCs, should hit the shelves in the Fall."
That's pretty soon, if you ask me. I wonder if nVIDIA comes out ahead of Intel by offering much lower priced solutions (as the article suggests) and still reak up the profit and keep the slowing economy rolling.
Take a look at HardOCP for pictures of the new board (Abit MicroATX featuring NV22 and the Crush 12).
===> An eye for an eye makes everyone blind - MG
My video card is the only thing I don't curse!
Only two? Do you mean hardware or software? Microsoft, definitely. AOL, certainly for the computer illiterate. Intel, formerly before the Athlon. Apple, mega monopoly(certainly not the most profitable one but certainly a monopoly.) Creative, formerly in the Sound Blaster market. Their are just too many to name them all. I hope nvidia doesn't become a monopoly either. This is like rivers that flow north. Their are hundreds out their but people only seem to want to mention the top three, the Ganghes, the Nile, and the Mon.
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Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
I like Nvidia technology but how long before we, as end-users, suffer from the lack of competition in the graphics chip area? Its good to see another Intel competitior though!