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The Age of Nvidia
EyesWideOpen writes "There is an excellent (and lengthy) two part article (part 1, part 2) at Salon detailing the rise, and... rise, of Nvidia and how the company came to rest atop the 3-D graphics chip industry with a little help from Microsoft. The article discusses how Nvidia was able to persevere in the multi-billion dollar industry while other graphics chip companies, such as 3Dfx which was bought by Nvidia, did not fare as well."
Well, lets see, we could do a long long long analysis of why they're so successful, or we could just state the obvious.
They are the most successful GPU company because they make the best, highest-quality, fastest GPU's, and make a wide variety of them: models designed for gamers, for graphics designers, for businesses. Not to mention, they support a broad range of OS' very well: Windows, Linux, MacOSX, and at one time BeOS. Not only do they support other OS' such as Linux, but their drivers for Linux are actually damn good: benchmarks show that Nvidia Linux drivers operate about 99% as well as Windows drivers.
This isn't like MS where they're on top because of dirty business practices. They're on top plain and simple because they make the best products, from every angle imaginable. Best quality, best performance, best OS-support.
This isn't to say that they're infallible, or always make the right decision. Personally, I think its rather idiotic of them not to support Glide in their GeForce drivers, as Glide offers vastly superior performance in games which use it.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I find it interesting how nVidia doesn't really make its own cards, just mostly the chipsets. For example, their site only offers drivers for specific chipsets, but I have to go to Pine to get card-specific drivers for my GeForce 3 Ti. Could this also have something to do with their success?
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
They innovated once then just tried to scale the same tech (adding ram or linking a bunch of chips together) to compete.. Nvidia introduced the GPU and introduced a whole new set of features for developers to play with.
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
Nvidia has also faced recent SEC inquiries on two fronts. First, the company restated earnings for the past three years because of aggressive accounting, and the CFO took a leave of absence. Second, last year several employees were indicted on insider trading charges.
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I really wish they would have continued to develop drivers and such for the 3dfx cards... the 3500 its a sweeet card.. TV and Video card and encoder all in one... (i know there are a few of them out now, but why buy something that I already have...)
"It's not like your minds are as open as the source you love..." - Me to the majority of Slashdot.
I've owned about a half dozen different 3d accelerators. I still have a Riva128 based card laying around somewhere.
The 3d market was 3DFX's to lose.
What killed 3DFX was that their good cards rewuired a 2d card to run. They were 3d only. The Banshee, which did incorporate a 2d core was late and always seemed buggy.
By the time they got their act together with the 3000 series it was too late.
At least ATI is starting to provide some competition or the damn graphic cards will cost more than all the other components combined.
Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
Has nothing to do with their products. At least not directly.
Nvidia is one of those companies that has a stock (NVDA) that always seems to go up. I can't count how many times I've day-traded on NVDA and had good returns. Hell, I just played them yesterday and got a nice coin for my trouble.
I was lucky enough to not have any positions on 9/11. But when the market reopened (9/17?), I put all my cash into NVDA. Did they go up? Not right away -- I had to calm my wife when we were down ~25% -- but we ended up making money a few short weeks later.
I don't know as there is a point to my post, other than to say "me, too!". Perhaps some of the reasons Nvidia is successful are the same reasons that investors are drawn to the stock -- it performs, and it shows.
Don't take everything in the article as gospel. For example, the article talks about the Voodoo3 as 3dfx's first 2D/3D card -- "at last, 3Dfx had an integrated 2-D/3-D card!", but mentions the Banshee prior to that (which was a 2D/3D card).
Read the article for the point that 3dfx had the market and then went about losing a number of gambles. While that was going on nVidia got lucky and proceeded to execute a _deliverable_ plan like clockwork.
"All the darkness in the world can not quench the light of one small candle."
I have used both NVidia and ATI video cards recently. I found that the 2d image quality on the ATI card (a Radeon 7200) was superior to that of the Nvidia 2MX card that I had. This was only noticable on my apature-grille monitor but it _was_ quite noticable.
I also dislike the fact that NVidia's Linux drivers are closed-source, though of course most people do not care about this.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
I've had a GeForce 2 MX 400 in my machine for a year or two now, and I can't say I've ever had a complaint with it. The one thing I wish is that nVidia would roll out a card with a tv tuner and remote (a la ATI Radeon 8500DV). My friend has one of these, and after sampling it, I've come to the conclusion that "I want". But I also want a nVidia card. What I would personally like to see should nVidia attempt this is this idea, but on a GeForce 4 MX 440. This way, the price remains low enough to be competitive, and say what you will about the MX 440 not being a real GeForce 4, it's still a pretty nice card for a good price. But for now, looks like I'll have to make do with my (ATI) PCI input card.
I bloody well care about it! When I went through an Urban Terror (mod for Q3) faze I had to use them for GL. They are the buggiest piece of crap ever written. They would play havoc with my console and mouse cursor in X. If I select text in Konq they would crash X completely meaning a reboot (unless I ssh'd in and killed it.) NVidia card are also shite for video just ask the MPlayer hackers (you won't be hard pushed to get an oppinion!)
That may be an unfortunate turn of phrase. Hopefully Gordon was thinking of the automobile manufacturers.
Is this from Exile? I haven't played that one yet.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Come on,
NVIDIA was able to make the fastest GPUs on the planet because of the engineers they have.
SGI was really not a very good place to be if you were interested in pushing the envelope w/regard to 3D hardware, so a new company was formed, and many extremely talented people from SGI went to work for it. That company was NVidia.
Its sad to see SGI in it's current state, but it is also good to see that SGI's technology, with the proper focus, marketing and pricing, is capable of breaking into almost every segment of the computing market.
Obviously, kudos to the NVidia management team, but lets not forget either the engineers and the company that built the foundatation of 3D graphics on the desktop.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
"NVIDIA was able to make the fastest GPUs on the planet because of the engineers they have" And because they have strong competition. It makes them improve constantly. When 3Dfx was the "king of the 3-D hill" they gave themselves the chance to became obssesed with their Glide API. Not a smart move. If nVidia were to become the new undisputed king, I'm not very sure they would continue to improve as fast as they do now, no matter what kind of engineers they have.
Hetz (Heunique)
nVidia may not have climbed as high and fast as it did if 3Dfx didn't hand them the entire market on a silver platter. If you would recall, 3Dfx all of a sudden decided they wanted to pull out of the OEM chip market and manufacture their own boards. So they bought STB and called up Diamond and Creative and all the other major video vendors and went something like: "No more 3Dfx chips for you. All your base are belong to us. Ha ha ha."
And who stepped into their place to fill the void left by them? nVidia.
Now the problem is that STB boards, by my many years experience in building systems, were incredibly low quality. I loved Diamonds, and had never had a problem with them. 3Dfx was gone from the Diamond line now, and I sure as hell wasn't going to start throwing money at STB boards, so I stuck with Diamond and bought a Viper v770...By then many games were supporting OpenGL and DirectX, so compatibility wasn't really an issue, unless I wanted to play Tomb Raider or something, but my old Voodoo would still work with the Viper. As an added bonus, and as you all know, nVidia's chips blew away anything 3Dfx had. nVidia's hardest battle, market acceptance, had been handed to them by 3dfx complete with bow and ribbon.
And then it was with complete irony that nVidia purchased 3Dfx. I love the tech industry.
-R
I've often heard Nvidia boards compared to Corvettes and ATI boards compared to Porsche's. Sure, the Nvidia board will render faster, but let's face it, quite a number of people seem to agree that the Radeon's just look better. I'll take accuracy every time over speed. It's not like the Radeon is a slouch, it's just not the fastest thing out there...
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
well -- back then the original TNT really did'n compete with the 3Dfx stuff at the time (SLI voodoo2s) -- i seriously considered getting one (pair) except it was way too much (close to 500 bux) while the TNT, albeit a bit slower, was darn cheap. Nowadays I shun away from Nvidia for exactly the same reason too -- Radeons, while not exactly FAST FAST, is dollar for dollar a better bargain. What is it with "king of the graphics hill" companies that think they can charge 3-400 bux for a video card anyway? (and no i am not all that tempted by the restricted MX series, for the same money ATI is faster/more featured anyway)
I wonder if anyone else is in the same (poor) boat here?
My life in the land of the rising sun.
If ATI cards are so much better, how come every benchmark shows Nvidia wiping the floor with ATI? All a vast "Nvidia-wing" conspiracy?
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I know a lot of gamers don't care about driver stability since they enjoy fooling around with their system hours on end.
However, rock solid drivers are nvidia's underrated asset. You don't know how much you miss stability until it's gone. Love to see them get more props on this.
Since nobody seems to think that Nvidia has any chance of failing anytime soon, I think I'll play a little devil's advocate.
Nvidia has many things going for it, great reputation , great drivers, and the best speed so far. However, the market is very fickle and whomever gets the highest frame rates will become the market leader within the next cycle. It wasn't until nvidia beat 3dfx card in more then one or two games that they started to even get close to them in sales. If you go back to the days of Quake 2 and Unreal, then you see that many people would spend insane amounts of money on their dual VooDoo2 setups, just for the sake of some FPS.
Nvidia has gotten to the top through technical ability, and may stay there. We may some day all be running nvidia chips in most desktops like x86es.
All matrox, ATI, etc. have to do is produce a card that will beat them in FPS even if it crashes more, it will win. Of course, right now we are at a plateau of graphics. We need another generation of tools to help the artists generate art and programmers code to get the most out of even the current generation of cards. Maybe we'll see some real uses of technology after this year's E3.
As usual, it's all a matter of what your price point is. The ATI Radeon 8500 is a very nice card, and the image quality is really stunning. However, the $199 price is a bit more than you can pay for a slightly-slower and comparable in quality GeForce 3 Ti 200. I got one of these for $119 at Best Buy (Bah), after a rebate.
As to the drivers, I don't see drivers that actually get support from the manufacturer as a problem in the slightest. As long as the Linux drivers are being updated and enhanced like the Windows ones would be, I'm perfectly happy. Now, if nVidia were to discontinue driver support when they retire the current line of chipsets, and keep them closed... Then I'd be rather upset.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Yes, actually MS did get on top by dirty business tricks -- like stabbing IBM in the back, trademarking "Windows", using Apple's IP, purposefully introducing backwards incompatabilities to force upgrades, OEM-blackballing, and so on and so forth.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I think the author overstates the influence of DirectX (nee Direct 3D) on early 3D gaming. Glide was certainly influential -- not to mention the fact that it actually worked -- but worthy of at least as much credit was OpenGL.
The reason OpenGL was (and is) important is because that's what you had to have if you wanted to run 3D-accelerated Quake. And Quake was the undisputed king of first-person shooters. OpenGL support for Quake required downloading a new executable, but Quake2 shipped with it.
OpenGL's API, designed over the course of more than a decade by SGI engineers, beat the crap out of Micros~1's Hacked-Up Losing Kluge. Only now is DirectX starting to approach OpenGL's usability.
Things are a bit more flexible these days, but back then, if you wanted any hope of selling your 3D card, you had to run Quake. And to do that, you had to support OpenGL. Period.
Oh, and NVidia has always had the best OpenGL implementation out there. Funny how that worked out :-). (Permedia's might technically be better, but have you seen what those cards cost?)
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
What do you think i'm talking about?
Try looking at the histroy of NVidia and SGI before you post silly flames which make you look like an ass.
SGI were once the pioneers and undisputed leader of the 3D graphics field. They invented lots of stuff, including, as you say, the popular OpenGL API.
What I am saying is at the time of NVidia's formation, SGI was an extremely suckful place to work if you were a hardware engineer - Knowing exactly how to build 3D hardware that would rock the world, but being unable to do it because of, among many factors, SGIs management strategy.
These guys' talents were being wasted, and they saw that with NVidia they could put them to good use.
I'm certainly not trying to belittle SGI's accomplishments in the field of 3D graphics, however i do feel it is unfortunate that SGI-as-we-know-it wasn't able to capitalize on its engineering assets as well as NVidia has to realise some of the vision of Jim Clark etc. w/regard to bringing the benefits of 3D graphics technology to the public.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
I agree. In high resolution, ATI's 2D is far superior to the nVidia cards I've seen. nVidia has gotten better since the TNT2 (which was just aweful at 1280x1024). However there is still a noticeable difference between a Radeon and a Geforce3 (i'm not sure about Geforce4).
> we could do a long long long analysis of why they're so successful, or we could just state the obvious.
:-)
Or even better, the not-so-obvious.
> They are the most successful GPU company because they make the best, highest-quality, fastest GPU's
They're the most successful for two reasons. First, unlike 3Dfx, they focused on quick turnaround of incrementally faster processors rather than spending a long dev cycle working on very advanced technology that was too complicated to fit into a 6-month product cycle. The 3D graphics world was *starved* for more horsepower, and quick to jump on the bandwagon of whoever could deliver more faster, rather than the long-term strategy 3Dfx got mired in when their tech missed a whole dev cycle. This was an excellent strategy on nVidia's part, since 3Dfx's Rampage technology was taking far too long to pan out and forced them to release a "stopgap" line of cards that was short on features and performance, in order to try to struggle on until their mythic Rampage chipset could produce working silicon. 3Dfx poured all their investment into a product which would have been groundbreaking, but was so long to market that nVidia was running rings around them with their incremental strategies.
Second, much like Enron, nVidia (allegedly) inflated their financial statements in a very unethical manner in order to draw in more investment due to steadily rising stock prices during the investment bubble. Honesty is punished by investors if it isn't all wine and roses; inflated financial statements draw more investment. In the case of Enron, the house of cards collapsed. In the case of nVidia, the tail wagged the dog--inflated financials drew more and more investment, which funded more and faster product cycles, which allowed nVidia to really pull ahead of 3Dfx, just as 3Dfx fell further and further behind thanks to their Rampage sinkhole. The high investment due to questionable financial statements is what allowed nVidia to fund its whirlwind snowjob, culminating in the purchase of its beaten and devalued old rival. There's been an SEC probe into these purported financial improprieties, and from everything I've seen, it looks like nVidia's creative accounting was their source of power, funding their product cycles--kind of like winning by cheating. No, *exactly* like winning by cheating...
This demonstrates a few principles we already know from much practical experience. In computers, short-term strategies which produce small gains *now* are much more likely to be successful than long-term strategies which would pay off big, but not in the near future. IA-64 is a prime example of this--Intel's roadmaps when Itanium first shipped showed it being adopted in droves by this point in time, yet it hasn't been; if an when it succeeds, it will be because of Intel's unusually deep pockets, but meanwhile x86-64 Yamhill has been developed "just in case" AMD's Hammer architecture captures the low-end-server and mainstream desktop markets, markets which Intel had *insisted* would eventually have IA-64 trickle down to without any interim architectures. This same principle was seen in the software world, with for example every single version of Windows that was built atop DOS rather than NT.
The second principle of success which nVidia's strategy illustrates is a financial one, illustrated well by Enron. People invest more money with companies which are already financially successful than with ones who really need the money, so that inflating the bottom line is rewarded immensely--and punishes companies which are honest, by giving fu7nding to their competitors. With Enron the bubble burst. With nVidia, the bubble carried them to the top, and funded dev cycles which neither 3Dfx nor Matrox nor for most of that period ATI could compete with. It's a gamble, and the dice rolled in nVidia's favor. That doesn't make their alleged financial improprieties right, but it makes them (if true) a *major* factor in nVidia's success.
> models designed for gamers, for graphics designers, for businesses.
3Dfx did the same, so nVidia is in no way unique there. In fact, high-end graphics maven Quantum3D was a 3Dfx spin-off intended by 3Dfx to be a major user of 3Dfx's highly scalable chip architectures (8-way Voodoo 2's and 16-way VSA-100's, for example, which *killed* everything else at the time for the high-end). For mainstream businesses, 3Dfx had their line of STB boards (following their STB buyout, which many see as a huge mistake, since they got into the board business instead of concentrating on just chips). And for gamers, obviously, the famous Voodoo lines. Low-end-professional 3D graphics wworkstations were the only market not really targeted, since Quantum3D boards compete in a higher-end space than Quadros did.
> Not to mention, they support a broad range of OS' very well: Windows, Linux, MacOSX
As did 3dfx, but 3dfx bettered nVidia in this respect by releasing a large chunk of code. nVidia has on the other hand been excruciatingly secretive with almost all code.
> This isn't like MS where they're on top because of dirty business practices.
Then why did there need to be an SEC probe into their financial (mis)statements? Again, if not for the funding attracted by reputedly "too optimistic" financials, nVidia could never have pulled off the quick incremental development cycles which kicked 3Dfx's ass.
> Personally, I think it's rather idiotic of them not to support Glide in their GeForce drivers
This is the one thing I agree with you about. Glide is rightfully dead--its limitations are well-known, and today DX and OGL are the clear choices. However, a "legacy Glide module" would have been *very* nice, as almost all older games with Glide support work much better in Glide, and some older games *only* work in Glide. This is precisely why I bought an old Quantum3D Voodoo2 X-24 dual-Voodoo2-on-a-single-card board as a secondary adapter for my gaming rig--it's the only way to have full compatibility with many older games. If nVidia were unwilling to spend their time writing it, the Open Source community would likely be glad to do it for them since many are avid gamers and fans of old classics--but nVidia refuses to release any code, even the obsolete Glide code.
Now, let me go play a round of Turok in asskicking Glide mode, courtesy of my dual Voodoo2 card, in honor of the dead.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
The article is interesting, but it has several mistakes. First of all, T-Buffer tech was introduced on the V5, and the article mistakenly stated that the V4 came prior to the V5, when they were released at the same time. These are somewhat minor quibbles, to be certain.
If any of you remember, the purchase of STB befuddled everyone, and for good reason; STB's products were a mix of Nvidia and 3dfx chips, and OEM's had the freedom to pick and choose what they wanted to buy. Furthermore, 3dfx had great co-branding with companies such as STB, Creative Labs and Diamond (I still get all twittery when I remember waiting to get my hands on a Diamond Monster Voodoo II). In one fell swoop, 3dfx destroyed what was best about STB, and it's co-branding with other manufacturers.
The smart money left shortly thereafter.
The ensuing fiscal mayhem following the purchase of Gigapixel was a financial blow (coupled with late product releases) that they simply would be unable to recover from.
Had the Voodoo 4 and 5 been released on time, they simply would have crushed the TNT 2 Ultra and put them in a much better position to pay off all that enormous debt. But, the card was late, and it had to compete against a far superior offering from Nvidia, which was the Geforce.
And the smart money that left a long time ago was not wondering if, but when.
So, not any single decision led to the downfall of the once dominant player, but many. Not listening to the market (we don't have 32-bit support for color in games since people don't really need it...take 16-bit or else!). Excess execute hubris such as the purchase of STB and Gigapixel and the foundering on product release dates. Trusting on name brand and uncompetitive products all eroded the company to nothing.
In terms of Nvidia, their executive staff has always been able to seize on opportunities, and possess a remarkably clear vision of where they want their company to go in the marketplace. Their purchase of 3dfx's IP (which also included Gigapixel's IP) for only 70 million was absolutely brilliant, as was the absorption of 100 of 3dfx's top engineers ensures that Nvidia will be able to utilize all the fantastic goodies 3dfx had sitting in the R & D lab.
It's also really great that ATI is able to mount such a good force of competition in this arena; along with maybe-will-runs such as Matrox and 3D Labs...all this competition keeps em on their toes.
Have the Bit Boys ever gone into tape-out? Or did they soak up the former executive staff from 3dfx?
Ultimately, they're the biggest because they're cards are the best. I wouldn't buy an nVidia card just because their stock prices inflated.
Stock-inflating or not, they make the best graphics cards. Not to mention, their shareholders in this case can be happy, because if they did use creative booking, it ultimately benefitted them: i.e., now they're reaping the benefits.
As for the financial mis-statements, until we get something solid, its all conjecture and speculation. In that regard, we know Enron acted illegally, and we know that so did Global Crossings. However, the punishment is affected by the outcome: in the case of Enron and Global Crossings, thousands of employees were laid off and investers were screwed over. In the case of nVidia, investors are almost assured continually rising stock prices and the consumers are very happy.
Not that I'm saying it would be OK if nVidia were to become a monopoly; should that happen, they're products will become inferior (like MS') due to lack of competition, and they'll undoubtely use black-ball tactics, as is a trademark of all monopolies.
nVidia does have serious competition from ATI. But ATI would do well to start supporting Linux better. Also, ATI probably should switch to a shorter development cycle -- he who takes many small steps rather than one big step is less likely to fall on his ass. Furthermore, ATI is consistently plagued by performance problems -- ATI chips released to-date often don't perform as well as nVidia chips released 6 months ago.
But ATI is very smart to Open-source their drivers. nVidia would do well to do that too: graphics companies don't make any money off of the "drivers" they make; just the GPU's. Also, if nVidia open-sourced their drivers, many people would offer improvements, which would make nVidia chips more stable and "faster".
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
1.)Are they Hiring?
2.)Do they have free samples?
http://www.kubuntu.org/
The 3000 was great. It was fast and looked good, for its time. What killed 3dfx was that they didn't keep up the pace.
John Carmack warned them (not directly) when he wrote about wanting 32bits through the entire pipe, and 64 soon after. He explained about cumulative round off errors, use of the alpha channel, and other ways in which lots of data makes sense.
Woe be to any who do not heed the word of someone who Knows His Shit.
Second, much like Enron, nVidia (allegedly) inflated their financial statements in a very unethical manner in order to draw in more investment due to steadily rising stock prices during the investment bubble.
After the IPO, any increase in the stock price had no direct benefit to Nvidia the corporate entity - other than as leverage for possible acquisitions. Shareholders of course benefited - some of whom are employees of the company. Which brings us onto the SEC investigation.
Then why did there need to be an SEC probe into their financial (mis)statements? Again, if not for the funding attracted by reputedly "too optimistic" financials, nVidia could never have pulled off the quick incremental development cycles which kicked 3Dfx's ass.
The SEC investigation was triggered by material discovered during an investigation into some insider trading by a couple of engineers. As it turned out, this resulted in a restatement of earnings upwards. Here's my source.
As for 3dfx' failure, that was as much their own doing as nvidia's. But then you'd know that if you'd read the salon article, with particular attention to Brian Hook's comments.
> Ultimately, they're the biggest because they're cards are the best. I wouldn't buy an nVidia card
> just because their stock prices inflated.
You seem to miss the point: did their incredible product cycles happen because of incredible funding gotten by cheating on financials? If so, then they created those products by cheating, and did not succeed on their merits at all. Read on below for why this is important.
> However, the punishment is affected by the outcome: in the case of Enron and Global Crossings,
> thousands of employees were laid off and investers were screwed over. In the case of nVidia,
> investors are almost assured continually rising stock prices and the consumers are very happy.
Yes, nVidia investors are ultimately happy with the outcome even if their money was invested under false pretenses, since nVidia succeeded. *However*, for every winner there are losers in the market. The best example is 3dfx shareholders, who lost the proverbial king's ransom when 3dfx collapsed--and of course Matrox and ATI investors, since Matrox in no way could keep up with nVidia's product cycles, and ATI's cards could never keep up until recently. Now, if nVidia's alleged financial cheating is true, those 3dfx investors, Matrox investors, and ATI investors, *were cheated*, since nVidia's bottom line and their financial capability to pull ahead with phenomenal development times were all based on Enron-like financial impropriety.
We'll have a good idea whether or not this is the case when the SEC probe issues final results. But if nVidia did win through financial cheating, then they essentially "stole" money from the investors of competing companies by deflating the value of rival investments as theirs went up on false pretenses, and killed one competitor off entirely.
That isn't to say that the financial impropriety definitely occurred--we don't know for sure until the SEC finishes its investigations. It does not, however, look like nVidia acted properly, from what I've seen so far. And that isn't to say that companies like 3dfx didn't make severe errors which nVidia rightly exploited--they did. But it is to say that, yes, if nVidia is guilty of its alleged financial improprieties, they played a key role in securing the investments which made it possible for them to carry out Herculean product development cycles--and in doing so cost the investors of rival companies hundreds of millions in losses which are unfair and due to illegal financial cheating. We'll know when the SEC has concluded its dealings. Success and crushing the competition through the fruits of illegal practices is unacceptable.
As for whether consumers are happy--I am not. Not if a venerable, though prodigal, company was destroyed by unethical business practices as much as or more than its own mistakes. Not if, were it not for "creative accounting," nVidia were unable to keep up its incremental product cycles and its rival were finally able to release Rampage, a product in development since the days of the Voodoo 2 which reputedly may have revolutionized the experience for all of us. When companies get ahead by cheating, and kill their rivals through unethical financial manipulations, consumers lose out. nVidia has been feeding us incremental change ever since the original GeForce. 3dfx's Rampage was supposed to provide a paradigm shift, and if not for nVidia's financial manipulations (if they are true--they may not be), it was to be brought to market before now. We know they had working alpha silicon when they closed their doors--the question is, did they close their doors because they couldn't keep up due to nVidia's alleged financial cheating? If so, consumers benefitted in the short run, and lost out in the long run.
There are many questions which remain. Is nVidia innocent of the charges the SEC is investigating? We'll find the likely answer as soon as the SEC is ready to announce findings. Would 3dfx have failed, if not for nVidia's incredible (illegally funded???) product cycles? We'll never know, but my money's on "no". Would Matrox have (temporarily?)abandoned their foray into the world of 3D gaming so readily if not for those well-funded nVidia product cycles? It's debatable--they couldn't keep up with 3dfx and nVidia in speed, but they had the 3D visual quality crown. Would ATI be more profitable in the 3D performance market? Who knows. Could 3dfx have revolutionized 3D gaming with its long-in-development Rampage? Very possibly--it was about a year from final silicon, so if nVidia did raise money for product cycles (and thereby put pressure on 3dfx and other competitors) through illegal means, 3dfx would definitely have been in much better financial shape.
We'll just never know what might have been. All we can know is that the 3D graphics card world changed dramatically across the span of a couple of years. *If* the SEC concludes that nVidia raised investment funds by inflating their financials, then it's a foregone conclusion that that played a *huge* role. It (if true) definitely provided short-twerm benefits to gamers, and likely robbed them of the long-term gains of Rampage technology, and definitely cost every investor in one of its rivals money.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
> After the IPO, any increase in the stock price had no direct benefit to Nvidia the corporate entity
:-)
A standard line, but not at all true. Ignoring the issuance of outstanding shares (I don't know offhand if nVidia ever issued significant numbers of outstanding shares in that period), there are several factors to consider. Inflated financials can get a corporate entity much greater lines of credit, much better relations with and leverage with third-party entities (important when you make chips which card companies decide whether to buy), attract many of the best employees, and I could go on for a while. Were it not for benefits, no companies would ever misrepresent their finances.
> The SEC investigation was triggered by material discovered during an investigation into some insider trading
Yes, it was. And as the article linked in this story, and many others, note, the SEC probe isn't limited to insider trading by a few, but questions whether the company intentionally misstated its financial position. Your Yahoo link is a quickie which only details one of the purported problems. You ought to watch "Your World with Neil Cavuto" each day to keep up with the haps in the securities world.
> As for 3dfx' failure, that was as much their own doing as nvidia's.
I never said it wasn't--3dfx missed a whole development cycle, and that was their own fault. They focused too many reasources on their long-term Rampage solution, to adequately keep up with real-world pressures from competitors--which is their own fault entirely, *unless* nVidia really did engage in financial improprieties which affected the outcome of the "3D wars."
> But then you'd know that if you'd read the salon article
I read it, and it didn't tell me anything people interested in the subject haven't known for months in the case of the nVidia allegations, or years in the case of the video card history. Personally, I found the article unremarkable. There are many much better and more in-depth articles on video card history scattered about the enthusiast sites, since the Salon article is meant for a fairly general audience.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
You have good points, though I think these companies would have failed anyways. The model of long update cycles just doesn't work in an industry where new games bring previously "excellent" graphics cards to their knees as a matter of course. nVidia's 6-month cycle was and is impressive, but nothing "herculean". They don't release revolutionized cards every 6 months -- they release incrementally improved versions every 6 months. For example, consider the GeForce 2, GeForce 3, and GeForce 4. The GF4 isn't worth the cost of upgrading over the GF3; but its definately a big improvement over the GF2. Similarly with the GF3 to the GF2.
Not only that, but nVidia continues to maintain their fast update cycles, even though competition is not very sturdy.
Should nVidia be found guilty of foul business practices, I would hope that nothing would be done which would hinder nVidia's great fast update process and superior products.
Also, I think your view that nVidia's success was the reason why other GPU companies failed is rather 19th century (i.e., zero sum game) economics. The stockholdes who invested in nVidia because of "colorful accounting", if they hadn't invested in nVidia, would they have invested in dead-end prospects like 3dfx, which was continually delaying the release of new products?
The truth is, 3dfx died because they made the gamer wait to long for their newest products. Telling consumers, "our latest greatest revolutionary GPU will be delayed another 6 months," again and again is a great way to piss of consumers, and not a good business model.
You read the article. 3dfx made a series of abysmally poor business choices.
The only thing to mourn in 3dfx's passing is that the company acquiring it, nVidia, doesn't see the wisdom in catering to current GeForce-owners and making GeForce drivers so that it works with older Glide-only games.
This is surely a weak-point in nVidia, and may be a key point for competitors. Many gamers are not much impressed by the latest and greatest graphics, but poor gameplay. I haven't bought a new game in over a year precisely because nothing on the market now is more fun to play than the games I already own (which include Janes USAF, the Descent series, the Tomb Raider series, Prince of Persia, Thief, the Descent Freespace series, and Magic Carpet). Most of these games are old, but quite frankly, there's nothing that matches them in gameplay on the market. The only doom-like game I ever liked was Wolfenstein, and everything else has been a clone of that. Sorry, but this whole Quake/Unreal/Halflife thing just doesn't impress me much: lots of blood being spilled and typical macho-voices from fake-looking aliens isn't my idea of a good time.
Games like Prince of Persia and Magic Carpet are still fun, despite vastly inferior (and even -- gasp -- 2D graphics) are still fun. Nothing on the market today comes close to the mystique of the Tomb Raider series (despite many a crack at this series, I think its popular because people like exploring ancient stuff and the scenery, not b/c of LC's "assets"). Tomb Raider is to the gaming world as Indiana Jones is to the moview world. Also, having a woman as the center of focus is a refreshing change from the typical macho-ism in the doom-like games.
Finally, I have yet to encounter a game that's anywhere near Descent 1, 2, or 3 in terms of the freedom it offers you, and the great multiplayer fun. Nor would I likely be receptive to anything (unless it comes from Interplay/Outrage) trying to mimic that. Because Descent was so unique, anything like it seems like a cheap rip off (sorry games like Terracide and Forsaken [which only sold because of the near-naked chick on the cover] come to mind).
I own all of these games, and I think its only fair to ask that graphics companies releasing new GPU's at least ensure their GPU's perform as well on these older games as older GPU's. Its freakin' outrageous that a Voodoo 2 or 3 outperforms a GeForce 2 in Descent 3 and Descent 2.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Gamers are not loyal at all to graphics companies, whether it be nVidia, 3dfx, or ATI.
However, gamers ARE very loyal to games they love. As I said in an earlier post, I'm loyal to some of my beloved games like Descent 1 - 3 and Tombraider 1 - 5. So loyal, in fact, that I won't buy graphicsc cards which don't work well with these games.
Graphics card companies would be wise to recognize that gamers are more than simply graphics-freaks always hopping on the latest eye-candy game. This is partly because you fall in love with games just like with cars, and partly because of gameplay. It seems like most games that come out just plain suck. So diamonds in the rough like Descent or Tomb Raider (or to some people with poor taste, Doom-like games) are highly revered.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
>FYI, nVidia have come out of the SEC probe with better than clean results
Not as far as I can tell; the probe seems to be ongoing even at this point. A Google search presents no articles about any official SEC findings as of yet--moreover, the SEC itself has a nice website at http://www.sec.gov/ which includes news of its business. On that website I can't find any mention of the SEC having closed its investigation or released any findings.
> the re-statements for the last 3 years leads to $1.3 mln INCREASE in net incomes
What you and another poster point to is based entirely on nVidia's own press releases up to this point. If you were a company under investigation for financial misstatements, and the SEC found some minor accounting errors in your favor, wouldn't you too release that information? I think so. It doesn't mean that there aren't other financial issues being investigated by the SEC--ones with negative implications--particularly since I can find no mention anywhere of the SEC having closed the books on the nVidia investigation.
Furthermore, I watch the financial news and have as recently I believe as last week heard mention of nVidia's SEC probe. I may be mistaken, but I believe I have. However, the analyst did state, to be fair, that he thought nothing important would come of the investigation, and still has a "buy recommendation" on nVidia.
There's no denying that nVidia is a powerful, financially stable company, which is currently *the* 3D powerhouse. The question is, how did that come to pass? Were there any financial impropriteies which played a role in the company's ascension? The SEC investigation should tell us fairly conclusively, when it concludes.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
This is not ment as a flame, but a correction.
They're the most successful for two reasons. First, unlike 3Dfx, they focused on quick turnaround of incrementally faster processors rather than spending a long dev cycle working on very advanced technology that was too complicated to fit into a 6-month product cycle
Actually, it was the exact opposite of this. nVidia never produced a video card that was faster than one of 3dfx's top model while they were still in business. In matter of fact, it was the technology in the early nVidia video cards that were driving their sales. Check out tom's hardware archive and read through the articles of the past and you will see that the benchmarks show 3dfx clearly winning the frame-rate race, but it was nVidia's 3D image quality that was coming on top each time. It was only when 3dfx went for an entire year without ever coming out with a new chipset, did nVidia finally catched up in speed.
The second principle of success which nVidia's strategy illustrates is a financial one, illustrated well by Enron. People invest more money with companies which are already financially successful than with ones who really need the money, so that inflating the bottom line is rewarded immensely--and punishes companies which are honest, by giving fu7nding to their competitors.
If you are talking about the whole SEC thing, that was a recent occurance that began at the start of last year. There was inside trading going on and that was what the investigation was about. However, in the beginning nVdida was a privately funded company. They went public AFTER 3dfx went bankrupt. Shadey handling of money had hardly anything to do with their triumph over 3dfx.
As did 3dfx, but 3dfx bettered nVidia in this respect by releasing a large chunk of code. nVidia has on the other hand been excruciatingly secretive with almost all code.
Quiet the opposite, nvidia has created a site to drive development of 3D software http://developer.nvidia.com/ They encourage open source and try to get the entire community in helping establish and designing standards. Which brings us to the last point...
Glide support work much better in Glide
Glide is the farthest thing you can get from programming standards. I cringe everytime someone spews the statement "Glide is better." Do you honestly have an understanding of what a proprietary API is? Glide works fast on a 3dfx card, because it's the "language" that voodoo "speaks". It's like running a windows application through an emulator on a Mac and whining that the G4 architecture isn't as good as x86 because it doesn't run as fast as on a native machine.
nVidia is a good company. They come this far through the work and sweat of a very talented group of designers and programmers. Don't try to smear that with the shadey business practices of certain individuals that unfortounetly worked at the company.
This guy is an obvious M$ troll please don't feed him.
http://Lenny.com
4 great justice!
>> the re-statements for the last 3 years leads to $1.3 mln INCREASE in net incomes
>What you and another poster point to is based entirely on nVidia's own press releases up to this point. If you were a company under investigation for financial misstatements, and the SEC found some minor accounting errors in your favor, wouldn't you too release that information? I think so.
I think not. As you can see, people find out the truth whether you like it or not. Releasing false information or misleading investors gets you into MORE trouble not LESS. Yeah yeah yeah, accounting is shading but again, that's why so many companies have restated their earnings and reported losses, not gains.
Stop slinging the FUD. Like someone else said, you can't compare them to Enron. Wake up. Also they do develop a superior product, had a good strategy and I'm sure there is a lot of room to read behind the lines but I'm sure you would piss on 3dfx if they were still king as well so your comments don't surprise me.
Call it for what it is.
You are right, nobody screws up 2d graphics. However, the sharpness of the image (as well as brightness, etc., but that's beside the point) differs considerably from one card to the next.
Moving from my Geforce 2MX to my Radeon 7200, I could see the white line of pixels right next to the black line of pixels on a button, at 1280 x 1024 or higher. With the nvidia card, it blurred together. Just slightly, not in any way that I noticed while I was using the NVidia card, but switching to the Radeon did make a difference.
If I just used my computer for games, I'd almost certainly look only at the NVidia cards, at least at the moment. But I also use it for programming and the like and so 2D image quality is also important.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
> Like someone else said, you can't compare them to Enron.
*Everyone* mentions Enron now when there are allegations of corporate financial impropriety, much the same as any political scandal is a {something}gate (like "Travelgate" or such), even if it's minor in comparison. In fact, the second of the Salon articles linked in the story mentions Enron as well.
I did nothing in making my comments that financial analysts everywhere haven't already done. *Every* time I hear nVidia mentioned on the financial news, I hear phrases like "allegations of Enron-like financial misstatements" or "the SEC probe into possible problems brings up shades of the Enron scandal and recent financial readjustments by Big Blue," etc. No one ever claimed that nVidia's *alleged* wrongdoing was near the same magnitude as that of Enron--however, Enron always gets mentioned because they're the extreme case of what the SEC is trying to determine about nVidia--and several other companies, to be fair.
Rereading my original post, there should probably be a few more "allegedly's" and "if true's" even though there are a few in there, but other than that it reads exactly as it should. If financial analysts are going to use the term Enron regarding the SEC probe of nVidia, then I see no problem with my using it. Go do a quick Google search for "nvidia" "enron" "sec" and you'll find a lot of articles which do the *same* thing.
Now, as I said, to be fair the analysts are predicting that the SEC investigation will end with no major sanctions, and many analysts still have a "buy recommendation" on nVidia. But there are questions, there is an investigation, and there is plenty of room to ask whether part of nVidia's success may have been due to the "Enron-like financial statements" which I hear business news commentators say the allegations involve. I hear them use such terms, so I will too.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
I used to work demoing Creative hardware, and one thing still sticks in my mind. 3dfx decided to stop "just" making chips and started making their own boards (starting with voodoo3). I think this was utter lunacy, as they had no existing retail infrastructure.
Creative and Diamond both had (and have) very large distribution networks etc, and when they were told they were getting no more 3dfx chips they both turned to Nvidia in a big hurry. And the rest is history...
I'd never heard of nvidia until that all happened!
Second, there is no real NVidia "high end"; the Quadro and GEForce lines are the same silicon. GEForce boards are crippled by a jumper on the board, which is read by the driver and turns off some features.
Third, the NForce isn't a spinoff of the XBox. The NForce is a GeForce 2 plus an Ethernet controller, sound generator, etc. The XBox GPU is comparable to the GEForce 3, with the pixel shaders and such that the GEForce 2 doesn't have.
I'm still up in the air about which provides the better picture. But my question to you: do you always play games at max resoultion and with all eye candy turned on? I turn on as much of that stuff as i can as long as it doesn't slow down my game that much. There is no point in playing a game if it just turns into a beautiful slide show.
Only dead fish swim with the stream...
In my experience, if you don't need very good 3d, you can't beat Matrox. Their 2d is absolutely stunning. They're far from really competing in the 3d realm, but their 2d simply can not be matched by either NVidia or ATI. Clean as a whistle.
If 3d is not important, and you stare at the monitor a lot, like at work, investing in a Matrox card is very worthwhile.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
go to this site:
http://nvidia.netexplorer.org
They are working on nvidia drivers, and there is also a petition there that goes to Nvidia, to get them to hurry up and help with the project!
FreeBSD is getting there......
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
Microsoft started it's OS division with a lie.
Bill Gates told IBM that he had an OS ready for the 8088 processor, when he really didn't. He then spent 50 Gs of his mothers cash to buy an OS off a company who actually HAD an OS ready.
I'd say that Bill would still be bitching about how people were reverse-engineering his crappy basic compiler if he hadn't told that little lie.
It's been a long time.
NVIDIA Dose compatibility in the graphics hardware. This means that the driver software for you TNT Will allso run your TNT2 and many (If not all) of the newer chips.
What this transelates to is much lower overhead for them. I.e. Other chip vendors must write whole new drivers for each chipset/OS combination and for OSs that havn't got vendor support (hardware vendors) the OS vendor must do all that work.
This means that NVIDIA spends less money to achive adequet performance on all the diferent OS/chip combinations.
I.e. All the Linux drivers for NVIDIA are on a single page at the NVidia site.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Not sure why the author used the adjective "full-time" because it doesn't mean aything. Maybe he meant single-pass to distinguish from multi-pass techniques.
You can read more about multitexturing here at http://www.web3d.org/TaskGroups/x3d/quadramix/mul
Its not that nVidia is doing anything special -- They're simply doing what a good company SHOULD do. Support their products, make them accessable to developers and end-users alike, and dont insult the intelligence of your buyers by charging an arm and a leg for what basically amounts to gingerbread.
Anyone who buys an ATI card these days is insane. Youre giving money to a company that has systematically ignored the Linux community, even to the point of threatening their own employees should they choose to cooperate with open-source developers in their free time.
Its not what nVidia is doing right..its what everyone else is doing wrong. Alienating their customer base, failing to provide comprehensive support for end-users and developers alike, and artificially inflating prices on useless, infrequently used features. Every single card manufacturer is guilty of at LEAST one of those things.....except nVidia.
Bowie J. Poag
Well, I guess it's time to come clean and admit a few things. I've stripped Windows off the box and run Linux only. So I don't play *that* many games (I did buythe Xbox though to satisfy that DirectX need). But when I do play Tribes or whatever, I do run in max resolution (1600x1200). I have a Radeon 64MB VIVO and honestly it seems pretty fast. I've never played it on an Nvidia board, so perhaps the faster rendering makes a difference?
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
> Btw, quick question ... are you an ATI employee ?
Heehee, no. I'm just disappointed that the graphics card industry seems to have stagnated a bit in the wake of "The Age of nVidia." When I look back at all the choices and competing architectures there used to be, and then I look at what exists at the moment, I have to say--hmmm, what might have been?
I mean, remember the days when the Rage 128, Voodoo 3, TNT2, and G400MAX, were all vying for the right compromises between speed and visual quality, and together with a few smaller players like the original Kyro, were providing a broad spectrum of choices? Wow, those were the days.
Today, however, the only real choices are which GeForce or which Radeon to buy. Sure, there are still small fish like Kyro II, but let's be realistic--there are only 2 primary choices right now if you want high-performance 3D graphics, half as many as there once were. I used to read the card reviews excitedly--today, why bother? Just buy the latest GeForce or the latest Rdeon and you're set. How *boring*.
I guess I lament the days when heated debates went on about whether Matrox's visual quality and EMBM were worth a framerate hit, or whether Voodoo's blazing speed was worth running in 16-bit ("24-bit postfiltered"), or whether ATI's great 32-bit quality was worth their buggy drivers, or whether nVidia's "jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none approach really gave the best of everything. People could be passionate about their choices, and deliberate carefully before investing in a new card. Today, well, I don't see that same passion on the hardware sites.
Me, I miss that raucous world of a few years back. I really think the pace of innovation in the business has slowed because of 3dfx's death and Matrox's pullback from performance 3D. I also deeply dislike some of nVidia's tactics following the 3dfx buyout, such as not only immediately dropping all support for 3dfx cards, but not releasing any more of 3dfx's driver code so that the community could support their own cards, and especially for refusing Microsoft's offer to write WindowsXP drivers for 3dfx cards since tyhere was a huge installed base of Voodoo 3, 4, and 5. That shows a real lack of respect for customers, who would have said "Wow, nVidia is so great, when my 3dfx card becomes obsolete I'll buy nVidia all the way!" if nV had taken any of those 3 courses. Instead, nVidia said, "not only are we not supporting legacy 3dfx products [which is understandable], we're also not letting any more of the 3dfx driver code go public, nor will we let Microsoft use it to let 3dfx card owners have XP-certified drivers." Bah. What a shitty corporate attitude. So, there are a lot of unhappy 3dfx card owners out there who feel nVidia was very unsportsmanlike and deliberately shafted them by not even letting 3rd parties who'd write drivers for free have any more 3dfx code.
Now, just so no one gets the wrong idea, I went from a crappy Diamond SiS-based video card to ATI cards, and never owned a new 3dfx card at all, so I was never a 3dfx partisan. Earlier this year I bought a used Quantum3D Obsidian2 X-24 dual Voodoo 2 (on a single card) card, strictly to be able to play older Glide games. That's my first and only 3Dfx card, and I bought it already knowing about nVidia's stupid choices. So, I'm in no way biased toward 3dfx.
I just hope Matrox's Parhelia really turns out to be competitive with offerings out at the time by nVidia and ATI, to bring some of that real competition back to an industry which seems to be lagging. And whether lagging or not, it's definitely boring compared to what it used to be in the good-old-days of 4-way competition.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
I would say who gives a about 2D, because graphics cards are mostly for 3D rendering and gaming. But, since I do have a DVD player, is it a cards 2D quality that affects how well the card displays DVD videos?
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
It's one thing to sell a product retail, and it's quite another to lie to IBM, telling them that your company has developed an OS for the 8088 processor. What MS did is fraud. MS had no OS at the time, and to be honest, if Bill Gates wasn't a spoiled rich brat from the beginning, we never again would have heard of 'Microsoft', except as a short excerpt in the history books about a company who lied about what it could deliver.
It's been a long time.