Anand Tours ATI and NVIDIA

logicalstack writes "The folks over at AnandTech have written an expose on their visits to both ATI and NVIDIA. Interestingly enough ATI's facility shrouded in secrecy and NVIDIA's is quite open, Including full color pictures of their server farm, and a pic of the NV30 test machine the 'Ikos.' The CEO even showed off the old school NV1 with 1MB of ram!"

Comments

Here's the real link

[GigsVT]

Here

Re:Here's the real link

[Night0wl]

I was wondering where it was my self.
It's like the damn submitter thought we would know where to find it at anand tech, and what's this "the folks" Why is it I imagine a bunch of geeks all wearing heard hats of one color with nvidia or ati's logo on it, Being lead around by an older fellow with a diferent color hardhat.
Right, a tour group, It was probably just one guy who payed the guard 20$ and a bottle of jack to be let in after hours....

I like Hard|OCP's tour of gainward. They manufacture there video cards two to a PCB and cut them down the middle. That would be cool to build two systems which where connected by the unsevered agp card.
Like some freak siamese twin, "And here is Tommy and Timmy, identical twins sharing the same GPU'

Re:Here's the real link

[ReelOddeeo]

Maybe Anand would have a hissy fit over deep linking?

Re:Here's the real link

[GigsVT]

Oh, so now that Slashdot changed the story to include the real link, I'm going to get modded to hell as redundant. Great

And by not providing a link to the story...

[Teancom]

You've garunteed that someone reading this story next week will not be able to find it! *Please* provide an actual link to the story. Surely I'm not the only one that reads slashdot in batches weekly, instead of rabidly refreshing the front page every hour? I'm lucky to have caught this one early....

For posterity

The link

[chrestomanci]

Direct link to the article

No wonder Nvidia is largely considered better!

[Lord Nougat]

It's sort of a good example of the benefits of sharing information:

Interestingly enough ATI's facility shrouded in secrecy and NVIDIA's is quite open...

Re:No wonder Nvidia is largely considered better!

[Pulzar]

Try reading the article:

ATI imposed very strict restrictions on photographs during our visit to their offices in Thornhill, Ontario; we saw a lot of interesting things at ATI's offices (including the foundation for their fountain of fire in the lobby of their main building) but we weren't able to take pictures of most of them. On the other hand, ATI sat us down with one of their chip architects and we were able to get a wealth of information about how their GPUs were made.

NVIDIA wasn't able to set us up with any engineers for an extended period of time (although lunch with Chief Scientist, David Kirk is always informative) but they were much more lax on the picture front so we were able to bring you more of the behind the scenes from NVIDIA.

ATI just didn't want anybody taking pictures, but they were the one sharing the real information.

Re:No wonder Nvidia is largely considered better!

[Profane Motherfucker]

Exactly. I was quite fucking floored after the claim that ATI was 'shrouded in secrecy." They let a bunch of fucking people tour their facility. How the FUCK is this shit fucking shrouded?! Sounds pretty fucking open to me. Sounds like the fucking opposite of shrouded.

The picture thing I can understand. Maybe the intern has some saucy shit up on the screen and didn't read the motherfucking memo close enough to note that some fucking strangers were walking around the place ready to snap a billion digi cam photos.

Fucking christ on a moped: who give a fuck what the nVidia server farm looks like? I don't recall buying a video card based upon the size and configuration of some fucking SERVERS.

Re:No wonder Nvidia is largely considered better!

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of what was actually said in the article however is information that could be picked up elsewhere. There was a complete lack of technical specifications beyond that fact that ATI is using HDL's to do their initial hardware designs. This is hardly sharing information. In fact it is like saying that Windows2000 is written in a high-level programming language. You can learn more about chip development by doing a google search than reading the article.

Re:No wonder Nvidia is largely considered better!

[h0tblack]

I fully agree. Last year I was at GDCE doing research at tying to get info from both ATI and nVidia for articles I was writing. all the people from ATI I met were fantastic, I spoke to a few of the heavy engineers (huge kudos to Alex Vlachos and Jason Mitchell) along with the PR and Product Management people. They all went massively went out of their way to help me and inform me, answering any questions I had, burning me cd's of demos, pics, info, etc and following up further technical questions via e-mails and phone calls after the conference was over. This was the overall attitude of ATI at the conference.
Next we come to nVidia, I repeatedly came up against a brick wall, the case was the same for other developers, with David Kirk doing a fine politician-style non-answering of questions after his presentation. You generally got the impression that there were a select few that may be lucky enough to be given certain information, but it was very much on nVidia's terms.
Fair enough, companies have secrets which they need to keep, but from my experiences with the companies, ATI are far far more open. If anything this article backs that up. Would you prefer a bundle of photos or a chance to talk with a variety of the actual engineers?

Re:No wonder Nvidia is largely considered better!

[Anonymous Coward]

No it wasn't. It was fucking stupid.

Re:No wonder Nvidia is largely considered better!

[PainKilleR-CE]

ns, most of the pictures from the nVidia visit were of things discussed in the ATI visit. Even if they had gotten an equal amount of information from nVidia, it would've been the same thing with minor details changed.

Re:No wonder Nvidia is largely considered better!

[Anonymous Coward]

Friend, perhaps you need to eat a sack of my shit. I will even eat a sack of beer nuts so the poo is laden with little crunchy bits for your bitchass.

Re:No wonder Nvidia is largely considered better!

[SkankhodBeeblebrox]

You've got to remember one VERY significant detail...

ATI's got their next gen product on the market, available for purchase...

...Nvidia is still working on NV30, and as such, has a few better things to do with their engineers than have them sit and talk to AnandTech editors...

Re:No wonder Nvidia is largely considered better!

[Namarrgon]

Experiences differ, I suppose. I've had far more response & help from nVidia than from ATI.

With ATI, they answered my questions accurately but briefly, and made no particular response to the bug reports I posted (which finally seem to be fixed now - mostly - in 02.3, 8 months after I notified them). Their dev support team gave me adequate support, IMHO. Their regular user technical support was not even close to adequate, the once or twice I've used them - I had to track down the fix myself and explain it to them (which they never even acknowledged).

nVidia OTOH went out of their way to explain their extensions, listen to my suggestions, meet with me personally etc etc. "Outstanding support" would be a better description - they told me all I wanted to know (within reason), and I felt like they were listening carefully to the suggestions I had for future hardware. Haven't tried their ordinary tech support, if they actually have any (being a chip maker not a board maker like ATI).

Re:No wonder Nvidia is largely considered better!

[Lord Nougat]

Sorry.
I totally agree; actually, I should have edited my original post to say "No wonder Nvidia is largely percieved as better!"; that's what I really had in mind at the time. All the gamer children friends of mine are always going on about how 'superior' Nvidia is. I was perfectly happy with my Voodoo3!

Re:No wonder Nvidia is largely considered better!

[chef_raekwon]

wow. tension.

anywho, ---> ati would be considered 'shrouded in secrecy' in order to not let anyone know about the 'mickey mouse' operation they are running...

and damnit
i wanna see their servers

Re:No wonder Nvidia is largely considered better!

[Anonymous Coward]

Friend, you are a sack of shit. Your fake rants aren't funny and never were. Please get a life. You can find them just down the road from the trailer park that you live in.

Re:No wonder Nvidia is largely considered better!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, so you're a retarded cocksmoker? Can't handle a little Tourette's Syndrome? What a pussy.

Re:No wonder Nvidia is largely considered better!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I didn't post the thing, so go get fucked, ok?

Re:No wonder Nvidia is largely considered better!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a feeling the above applies to you too anyway.

Re:No wonder Nvidia is largely considered better!

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, I *know* the same applies to you also.

IKOS is a company that makes gate arrays

[Amnesiak]

NVIDIA programs their GPUs into the IKOS boxes and they run what is effectively a very large NV30 at very slow speeds. Very cool and very expensive.

When I was there a few years ago, they would sometimes hijack all the desktops in the company for more power. If I remember correctly, they would boot them into linux at night and make (slashdot cliche imminent!) a beowulf cluster!

-Greg Daly, formerly of riva extreme, aka

NVIDIA open?

[tps12]

If NVIDIA is so open, how come they still have binary-only (and buggy) Linux drivers? I could give two shits about full color pictures of their server farm when X crashes so much that I may as well be using Windows.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[jmu1]

Hear hear! I refuse to use Nvidia based on that fact. I have an ATI Radeon 7200. It may not be as fast, nor may it be quite as good, but at least I'm not putting proprietary software on my machine when there is an alternative.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Nothinman]

They're binary-only because they don't own all the code used in them so it would break other licenses to publish it.

I use those binary-only drivers myself with a GF3 and have had no problems with X crashing.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Anonymous Coward]

but at least I'm not putting proprietary software on my machine ... $20 says you'll use your ATI card to play Unreal Tournament 2003 or [Insert name of *proprietary* game you like here].

Let's hear it for the hypocrits! Hear Hear!

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sick and tired of hearing people say "it works for me". When a binary driver dosen't work for somebody it hurts us ALL.

Even a friend who went to SIGRAPH said that the poeple from nvidia said "oh, those crashes should be gone now". It still dosen't work. This is remaniscent of IS departments that think they are more important than the departments they are supposed to work for. If it isn't working for the customer, it dosen't matter what is going on with your setup.

I work at a place that used to produce binary drivers for linux. We were able after a time to remove the binary driver requirement, and now our device is supported in the Liunux kernel. Why can't nvidia at least do this for its older cards.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except they're not buggy, they don't crash, and you've trolled ATi saying so in previous posts. If you're going to troll, at least keep with the same story and don't play both sides.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Yohahn]

Perhaps he uses it to play Billardgl? Perhaps the free part of Tux Racer.

I know, I bet it was to play Tux Kart

Hrm... Maybe we can't assume he's playing closed games?

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Zathrus]

Well, I suppose we could go over the reasons for the billionth time on /., but there's no reason to believe that you'll listen this time either.

Oh well. Here it goes anyway.

The primary reason is that they cannot. They do not own all of the code that is in the drivers. There are extensive cross-licensing agreements between nVidia and SGI, dating back to the creation of nVidia from a bunch of ex-SGI engineers and the ensuing lawsuits. A good bit of the core code in nVidia drivers is essentially owned by SGI. nVidia cannot release that code. Period. End of story.

The secondary reason is that there is reason to believe that there are trade secrets in the drivers. Why do most people still favor nVidia over ATI? Because of the drivers. They work damn well most of the time, and the drivers you download today still support the original TNT. Additionally look at the GeForce4 and the Radeon 8500. On paper the Radeon 8500 was superior, and yet the GF4 beat it in benchmarks consistently. Why? The drivers. They were more mature, better written, and streamlined.

Don't like the situation? Fine, don't buy an nVidia card. What? Nobody else has 3d acceleration worth a crap? All the other drivers are just as unstable and slower too? Well, gee, maybe there's more proof that nVidia knows what the hell it's doing. Yes, it sucks if you're a *BSD fan or something else such that the binary-only drivers aren't usable, but, again, nobody made you buy nVidia.

Frankly, nVidia has spectacular Linux support. They release the Linux drivers within weeks of the Windows drivers and they're pretty damn stable (frankly, I suspect that if you have continual issues here that it's some other piece of hardware being marginal and pushed over the limit by running the card at full functionality). Oh yeah, and they're fully functional... don't forget that little bit.

It's really sad to see people whining for Linux support, getting pretty damn spectacular support, and then whining that it's not good enough. No wonder most manufacturers don't bother - damned if you do, damned if you don't. So why spend the time and money on a marginal market if you're just going to get roasted anyway?

Re:NVIDIA open?

[jmu1]

Hey, if you could read, you would know what the rest of that sentence said.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[EnVisiCrypt]

If he wants to play good, up-to-date games, he'll be playing closed source games.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[ShavenYak]

$20 says you'll use your ATI card to play Unreal Tournament 2003

On Microsoft Windows, of course. 'Cuz last I heard, the ATI cards won't work for UT2003 on Linux. Mind you, this may have changed, and I speak not from experience as I still have a shitty Rage 128 in my machine (hey, it handles Q3 and RtCW fairly well).

I'm trying to decide between upgrading to a Radeon 8500 or a GF4-Ti4200, and I'm leaning toward the GF4 because I'd rather have a proprietary binary driver that works than an open-source one that doesn't. So if anyone has had a good experience running a Radeon 8500 under Linux (especially with UT2003 demo, either the open-source dri driver or ATI's binary release), please let me know.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds like a hardware problem, nvidia linux drivers seem very stable to me

hehe i didnt know there was source code for them either, this shows - dont believe everything you read (yes even on slashdot ;)

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, if you could read, you would know what the rest of that sentence said.

Oh that's right... "when it's available." So you only stick to your principles when it's convenient to do so. My bad.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Yohahn]

Define up-to-date?
Do you mean, same gameplay, more realistic graphics?

Please, (and I really mean this) Gaming industry, give us some kind of new game. It's just the same crap over and over and over. Like TV Sitcom's the games produced these days are stuck in a rut.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather have a proprietary binary driver that works than an open-source one that doesn't.

According to jmu1, the morally correct thing to do is to use the broken driver... since it's available.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[fault0]

> (and buggy) Linux drivers?

You might want to try switching from nvagp to agpgart, or vice versa, depending on your mobo.

I went from agpgart->nvagp a few months ago, and suddenly most of my stability problems with the drivers were gone.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Anonymous Coward]

Define up-to-date?

It means current, recent, new, not outdated.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Nothinman]

But they work find for the majority of the people that use them. I'm not saying their drivers are perfect, but I'd be willing to bet that the nearly all the people complaining of them crashing are having problems with something else.

I'm glad you could publish your drivers under the GPL, but not everyone is and I'd rather have closed drivers that work well for me than no drivers at all.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[fault0]

> Why can't nvidia at least do this for its older cards.

Because NVIDIA has a unified driver architecture. ATI is trying to do this too now. Actually, they started doing it with the 8500, but they rewrote the drivers for the R200, and broke 8500 compatability, which means unified drivers for anything past the R200.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactally the same line as always.

It works for me, so the support must be spectactular.

Never opening the drivers for even the oldest cards they have. Propreitary problems are their own.
Do you really think something they have in their software drivers is so ingenious? I doubt it.

Isn't the latest ATI card beating the NVIDIA cards?

The drivers for ATI may suck in windows, but work perfectly well in X11. Ask anybody if they have the crashing problems with the X11 ATI drivers and compare the number of problems with the NVidia responces. This is what open drivers do for you.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Anonymous Coward]

Define it in the context of this discussion you dolt!

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Anonymous Coward]

They work damn well most of the time, and the drivers you download today still support the original TNT.

The Detenators now only support down to TNT2. You have use older versions for TNT - not that it matters. :)

Re:NVIDIA open?

[dinivin]

Once again, FUD... I've posted this before, and I'll post it again:

SGI has stated, on a number of occaisions, that they are not responsible for the closed nature of nVidia's driver and that they have, in fact, tried to push nVidia into opening the drivers...

Please learn all the facts before posting that crap again.

Dinivin

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Define it in the context of this discussion you dolt!"

hahaha you got burned!

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Tuzanor]

Linux is for those who love UNIX. BSD is for those who hate Linux.

I believe the statment really goes:
Linux is for those who hate Microsoft, BSD is for those who love UNIX.

Considering that BSD origonates from the origional UNIX, that makes more sense...but then again you are probably a linux zealot who thinks RMS is some sort of man god...

Re:NVIDIA open?

[dinivin]

Actually, I really dislike the GPL and everything it stands for. What I dislike more, though, is the arrogance of many BSD users I see on here with the sig:

Linux is for those who hate Microsoft, BSD is for those who love UNIX.

Dinivin

Re:NVIDIA open?

[AlgUSF]

I have no problems with my GF4 card either. Linux (kernel et. al.) would lock up if I had APM enabled, but I after I disabled APM sweet perfection.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to post any links about this? Where can I find any info on nvagp?

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Anonymous Coward]

I could give two shits about ...

Could you really??? You'd better get on that toilet, then.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to provide links with SGI stating it's not their fault?

Re:NVIDIA open?

[captaineo]

I don't think SGI's old IP is the reason NVIDIA won't release source code. The real reason is that the drivers deliberately cripple certain advanced features on NVIDIA's low-end cards, to force "professional" users to buy their high-end cards.

Remember how the $600 Quadro2 hardware was exactly the same as a $200 GeForce2, except for a tiny little resistor? I'm sure there are a few places in the NVIDIA driver like:

if(user_paid_for_quadro()) {
make_antialiasing_fast();
enable_overlay_planes();
} else {
make_antialiasing_slow();
disable_overlay_planes();
}

So naturally a few days after they release the driver souce, somebody would provide a "magic" version of the driver that makes all of NVIDIA's low-end cards perform just like their high-end cards. Then they wouldn't be able to charge $600 for "pro" video cards anymore...

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Zathrus]

This is certainly true for older hardware (pre GF4), and is again an artifact of the SGI cross-licensing with nVidia.

The GF4 chip is separate from the GF4 Quadro chip though - at least as far as pinouts go (it may be that the actual core is the same still, but fat lot of good that does if there aren't leads for the "professional" bits). The GF2/Q2 chips and cores were identical excepting a resistor, as you note.

There are also (allegedly, I certainly have not confirmed this) SGI-only features in the core. I can't imagine that these functions would be exposed at all in public drivers though, so I can't see that being an issue.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[geekoid]

the trade secret angle is, of course, completly off.
How can it be a trade secret when it will only work with there card? It's not like ATI is making the same chipset. If ATI wanted to know how there drivers work, they would know. Hell, I'd be surprised if the don't have a de-compiled version on there systems now.
That said, I am pleased with nVidia support. I even wrote them some letters when they first started doing it, to show my support.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[I_redwolf]

ATI Radeon 7200; how's your driver support? You don't have to answer, you're not getting the most out of that card. Thats the way all ATI cards are; the specs say they can do something they actually can but because of piss poor drivers; they can't really do them. As for Nvidia it's hard to release OPEN specs when you don't own some of the stuff on your card; for whatever reason, be it that you've found someone elses design better and cheaper to implement without having to do it yourself or you just want the option of making things modular etc etc. Unless you hire someone to pump all the performance out of your ATI card your best bet is nvidia, which provides excellent driver support and hardware for many platforms when was the last time you heard of a video chipset manufacturer making drivers for freebsd and the like?

It's like buying a porsche that is capable of 180mph but you can only get maybe 100mph if you're lucky. Why not just buy the bmw that goes at 150mph and actually go 150mph?

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Atzanteol]

Hear hear! And why walk with *two* legs when we clearly only need one!

I don't get it. I'm all for Open Source, but I'm even *more* for a company taking an active interest in supporting their hardware under Linux. I've got a GEForce2 on my system and the drivers are *sweet*. Full support of *all* the hardwares features. How often do you get that under Linux? Not to mention the fact that the drivers compare nicely with their Windows counterparts.

Why spend the same amount of money for hardware that has less support and will effectively run slower because of it? I just don't get it...

If every hardware company were like NVidia we would have far less trouble buying a new printer/modem/videocard/etc.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Anonymous Coward]

sigh, it's because it's their code and there choice to do so....suck it up.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Anonymous Coward]

URL please.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[fault0]

Gentoo has a good page filled with information about NvAGP vs. AGPGart here.

The page isn't Gentoo specific (I use debian personally)

Re:NVIDIA open?

[mcelrath]

More unsubstantiated FUD. Please provide links to the relevant information or I don't believe a word any of you say.

-- Bob

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the fact that the drivers compare nicely with their Windows counterparts.

That is because more than 90% of it is the same code. The beauty of the only unified driver in this segment. Something ATI is desperately trying to get to.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[mczak]

Additionally look at the GeForce4 and the Radeon 8500. On paper the Radeon 8500 was superior, and yet the GF4 beat it in benchmarks consistently. Why? The drivers. They were more mature, better written, and streamlined

Now this is simply not true. First, the Radeon 8500 is not superior to the GF4 on paper, on paper it is almost the same. And the reason it is slower in practice is almost certainly not the drivers, rather design flaws of the chip. It's true initial drivers were slower, but the same is true for the GF4. Compare the R9000 to the R8500 (which use the same driver set, though of course it's not exactly the same binary) and the R9000 has not the slightest chance on paper - but in practice their performance is quite comparable. This strongly indicates the R8500 has some other problems beyond drivers.
What you said about trade secrets could be true however, even ATI doesn't want all their features exposed in an open-source driver (which is why the opernsource dri driver for the Radeon 8500 lacks hyper-z, support for pixel/vertex shaders).
mczak

Re:NVIDIA open?

[EnVisiCrypt]

I mean up-to-date in terms of gameplay, graphics, and depth. While tuxracer is a decent distraction, we're not talking about something I would drop money on a new card for, or even something that would have been a marketable, high dollar ($50, instead of say, $10) game 4 years ago.

The unfortunate fact of the matter is that even if the gaming industry rehashes gaming concepts, they have a level of polish that can't be found in open source games. Take, for instance, Deus Ex. Was it revolutionary? No, it was a first person shooter. Was it highly interactive, engaging, and immersive? I think so. Were the production values high? Yes. And that is what is missing from the current line-up of open source games.

Open Source development cannot hope to keep pace with commercial game development. The time frames are too short, production costs too high, and talent at too much of a premium to create games that would require a high end graphics card. Which is what we are talking about, right?

Some types of games are very successful in Open Source (See: mahjongg, which I play every day). But the games that use a high level ATI or Nvidia card are not developed by the Open Source community. Engines, maybe (see Id), but the game content, no way. Maybe someday, but not today.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[dinivin]

But you'll believe the guy who said that the problem is SGI IP without providing any links? Says a lot about you.

Dinivin

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Yohahn]

None of what you've mentioned has been advancing gaming far. I'll give you, the increase in immersive feeling has done some for gaming, but we are reaching a limit. Increasing the look and feel only goes so far. Can you tell me that you've felt the gaming pull as hard as you used to?

I think that Free games will eventually max hardware out, but you have to remember that growth in Free Software works slower. The difference is that it is steady, and eventually passes propreitary software, which has usually moved on and is looking for profit somewhere else (look at mozilla).

My original point is that a person who is dedicated to using a 3D card in Linux in a non-propreitary manner can still get games to play that are decent.
The original poster implied this wasn't true.

I think the next revolution needs to be in free content creation. This is he only way that things will move forward.

I think people need to be more creative.
I think part of the reason that the DMCA dosen't get people's ire up anymore is that most people don't create content. That needs to change. We used to be a more creative world. This will help the free gaming cause.

I can see your points.

As an aside: You may want to checkout billardgl, a good use of graphics (and uses a decent amount of the graphic card).

Re:NVIDIA open?

[mcelrath]

I never said I believed him...

:P

-- Bob

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Anonymous Coward]

1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.

Problem.

1=-1, add one to both sides...
2=0 not 1=0 :)

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Zathrus]

Funny, you've been asked twice now and declined to provide links.

Here's mine:

FreeBSD Driver Initative
Announcement of collaboration between NVIDIA, SGI, and VA Linux
NVIDIA press release
And another release
Tom's Hardware discussion

Oh, and SGI isn't the only proprietary code either. There's also a cross licensing agreement with S3 for the S3TC (S3 Texture Compression) algorithms that NVIDIA doesn't have the right to disclose.

NVIDIA and SGI drop lawsuits

Re:NVIDIA open?

[dinivin]

Of all those links, only two talk about how SGI's IP is preventing nVidia from open sourcing the drivers. Neither of those two (Tom's Hardware and the FreeBSD nVidia driver initiative) can even remotely be considered official statements by either nVidia or SGI.

Care to try again?

Hey, I'll gladly admit that I have no proof that my statement is true. I have simply based it on what an SGI employee has told me.

How about you admitting you have no proof to back up your statement about SGI's IP.

Oh, and your final link should read "NVIDIA and S3 drop lawsuits" not "NVIDIA and SGI..."

Dinivin

Re:NVIDIA open?

[be-fan]

Because
A) There is licensed stuff in the GL implementation that they can't release.
B) ATI's major weak point is drivers. Since OpenGL drivers implement the *entire* OpenGL API, rather than just bang hardware like other drivers, opening the code would hand over a *lot* of optimizations to ATI. Helping your competitor out with their one weak aspect is asking a bit too much of a company.

And NVIDIA's drivers a rock-solid for me an many others. I've used them on a Riva TNT1, GeForce2 MX, and GeForce 4 Go 440. They've worked *perfectly* on every single one. I haven't ever had an X crash. Now, if you're having problems, that's just your setup.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[be-fan]

The problem is that this isn't your 3Com driver. An OpenGL driver has an incredible amount of high level code in it. In fact, from the moment you call a user-level API function, like glBegin() or glVertex() you're in NVIDIA's code. It's NVIDIA's libGL, NVIDIA's GLX module, and NVIDIA's kernel-driver. As a result, a lot of the optimizations that the drivers do could very easily be applicable to any OpenGL hardware. ATI could easily take NVIDIA's driver, and just replace the low-level code, while gaining the optimizations and OpenGL-completeness of the higher-level code.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Anonymous Coward]

STFU LINUX FANBOY

Re:NVIDIA open?

[DeathPenguin]

He might also need to tinker with AGP strength, like going from 4x to 2x. The Gentoo page linked to earlier has some suggestions on improving stability.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[DeathPenguin]

How would you know? I thought their drivers were closed source.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[captaineo]

I base my theory on two facts:

1) The GeForce2 hardware is identical to Quadro2 hardware, except for a single resistor. (which you can solder to "morph" your card into the other type - there are instructions for this on several websites)

2) The Quadro2 performs an order of magnitude faster than the GeForce2 on certain specific benchmarks, such as antialiased line drawing. These specific features are used in many CAD applications but not in any games.

Therefore, the driver must be crippling certain features when it thinks it's running on a GeForce 2. So NVIDIA can charge CAD users $600 for essentially the same hardware that a gamer buys for $200... (these prices were when the GeForce2 was first released, of course)

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Jebediah21]

Trust No One. I went with an ATI All-In-Wonder 7500 when I bought my card even though most the features didn't work at the time. Why? I don't trust any company with my computer. Currently all my hardware works (including the remote that came with the 7500) and more bugs are being fixed all the time. How do I know what NVidia is doing codewise with thier drivers? Should I trust them?

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Atzanteol]

Did you write the drivers for your ATI card? Did you inspect them? Or did you trust someone else to do it? Why use an operating system written by other people? Why not write your own?

"Trust No One" is one of the stupidest reasons I've heard for supporting Open Source.

If NVidia wants to keep their source private, fine. Just so long as they accept the responsibility of supporting different systems. It would be nice if they did both, but writing closed source drivers is certainly better than *nothing*.

I bet you trusted someone else to write your sound card drivers too...

Re:NVIDIA open?

[Jebediah21]

I trust no one corporation. Howsabout that?

Re:NVIDIA open?

[DeathPenguin]

Holy crap, I wasn't really serious. And yes, I knew about the Quadro switch for some time. Guess what? Chipmakers like AMD and Intel sometimes market their products as something else than what they really are. Such examples include the Celeron 300A and C333 which were famous for being overclockable to 450MHz and 500MHz. Why? Because they were just underclocked versions of faster CPUs. Neither Intel nor nVidia count on their customers being smart enough to figure out the tricks to unleash the full potential of their products, and for the most part they're right. Or perhaps they simply know OEMs like HP and Dell aren't going to overclock their products. It's just cheaper for them to castrate a fast product rather than produce two signifficantly different products.

So tell me, what is your response to the legal issues that other posters are talking about? You're so smart that you can simplify the whole issue in an if-else statement, so you must be smart enough to decipher the legal jargon.

Re:NVIDIA open?

[dinivin]

I guess you're too stubborn (or is that stupid?) to admit when you're wrong.

Dinivin

Re:NVIDIA open?

[MrResistor]

I used to blame nVidia drivers for my X crashes, too. Then I switched from KDE to WindowMaker (which I actually prefer) and no more X crashes.

Hmmm... I wonder whose code was buggy there...

evidence

[dolo666]

ATI's facility shrouded in secrecy and NVIDIA's is quite open

This is evidence of NVIDIA's greatness. 3dfx might still be around if it weren't for better business systems analysis. NVIDIA is like a breath of fresh air when it comes to corp policy... etc.

Re:evidence

[SirSlud]

ATI was the company that provided the in depth talk with a chip engineer. With NVIDIA, Andtech had to settle to having lunch with their lead architect. NVIDIA was okay with pictures, but ATI was the one that provided real information.

Re:evidence

[Wyatt Earp]

BS.

This isn't evidence of NVIDIA's greatness, it's just a difference in business practices.

3dfx might still be around because they won a lawsuit against NVIDIA, but NVIDIA bought out 3dfx and killed support for people that had recent 3dfx hardware.

At least when Apple bought out Power Computing they threw up a webpage with some manuals and downloads.

NVIDIA screwed over those that bought 3dfx pure and simple.

NIVIDIA corporate policy isn't any better than anyone elses and in some aspect worse.

Re:evidence

[dolo666]

NIVIDIA corporate policy isn't any better than anyone elses and in some aspect worse.

Got any actual evidence? Linkage? etc.

Hey I feel for you. 3dfx was a sad company to see go, but if it was because of NVIDIA, it would be because NVIDIA makes way better products than 3dfx could. 3dfx was out competed.

Re:evidence

[7-Vodka]

actually, they said they had lunch with the CEO. Who I might add, works in a cubicle like the other employees. Wanna compare/contrast with ATI's CEO?

Re:evidence

[pcb]

Was it not with NV's Chef Scientist?

Re:evidence

[pcb]

Err..that's chief, not chef!!

Re:evidence

[PainKilleR-CE]

3dfx might still be around because they won a lawsuit against NVIDIA, but NVIDIA bought out 3dfx and killed support for people that had recent 3dfx hardware.

nVidia didn't buy 3dfx, they just bought most of their IP and remaining chip inventory. The company (3dfx Interactive) itself shut down their manufacturing and cut off their users from downloading existing drivers.

Re:evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but you have to like, read and comprehend and stuff. I'd rather just look at the pictures =)

Re:evidence

[Pulzar]

Everybody (up to the CEO) at ATI works in cubicles, as well. It's actually quite common in most techie companies.

Re:evidence

[Qrlx]

NVIDIA is like a breath of fresh air when it comes to corp policy

That explains their stock price...$8.95 down from a 52-week high of $72.66. Of course, part of that is that Microsoft changed the Xbox chips, leaving NVidia holding the bag (or goodwill as they say in the industry). I don't quite see how yet another company getting screwed by Microsoft qualifies as a breath of fresh air, but what the hell.

Not that ATI stock is anything to write home about -- down about 50% on the past 5 years. I attribute that to some of the worst drivers knows to man. ATI up until about six months ago reminds me of Apple in the Amelio era.

For the record my computer has a nforce chipset and a radeon video card. And it runs windows just fine!

Re:evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

There was no depth in the talk with chief engineer. Only basic chip design stuff which is no news. The real depth was hidden under 'using their skills the engineers...' blah blah blah.

That's what matters, the skills of scientists who invent algorithms and engineers who implement them. And no company in its right mind would share the dertails.

As far as the datacenter goes, nothing spectacular neither. It's not supposed to be, they are in a different business.

Re:evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if they could only come out with some working drivers..

Of course they allowed talks with the chip engineer. He's also the janitor, and the valet attendant.

Re:evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was some sort of Iron Chef reference. Ah well.

Re:evidence

[be-fan]

I generally agree with this. Even back in the Riva 128 days, NVIDIA was a whole lot friendlier than any other chip company. Though, I really have to credit 3DFx. They are the only tech company on the planet whose manual writers actually have skills. Do yourself a favor and read the Voodoo3 spec. Its written like an actual document meant for people to read. Its got introductions that lay out the high-level scope of the section, supporting paragraphs that give details, examples for complication concepts, diagrams that are well referenced in the text, and concluding paragraphs that summerize the section. Absolutely wonderful! Compare this to an Intel doc, which consists of lists of registers and their semantics.

Re:evidence

[askii64]

Actually nVidia owned the 3dfx.com website after they bought 3dfx's stuff and they shut it down AFAIK. (you can still get most any 3dfx driver from http://www.falconfly.de though)

Low Bandwidth Version

[Evro]

Printable/Low bandwidth version

Though this has no banner ads, so Anand doesn't get any money if you view this one, but take your pick.

sorry

[logicalstack]

i didnt realize, illl make sure i do it right next time.

Binary only my ass

[fatwreckfan]

Do you look before you post?

Nvidia's driver page clearly has source tarballs for the GLX and kernel drivers.

Re:Binary only my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you also read the license agreement? Part of that driver is a precompiled object file. Do you look before you post?

Re:Binary only my ass

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

Inside that 'kernel source' tarball, there's a 1.1 MB binary module without source code....that's the real meat of the driver (and the thing everyone wants source to). The only source code is the OS-specific stuff.

Nevermind, I'm the idiot

[fatwreckfan]

:P

Could be circumstances

[Anonymous Coward]

ATI can give out tons of info on the 9700.

NVIDIA's NV30 hasn't been released yet so there's not as much info to give out (yet).

it hurts us ALL

[Anonymous Coward]

Go buy a Mac, whiner.

Agree, agree, agree!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't tell you the number of hours I have WASTED trying to get DRI-GLX working with my various video cards (G400, Voodoo3 and Radeon). And even when it did "work", it did not work very WELL...usually resulting in a complete system hang.

But then along comes NVIDIA...I bought a GeForce4 Ti and was shocked and pleased to find FULLY FUNCTIONAL DRIVERS that actually WORKED, right off the NVIDIA site. Being a Woody user I was even more surprised to find that the NVIDIA Linux drivers worked with the ancient version of XFree shipped with Woody. No mucking with CVS snapshots, no rebuilding the XF86 source...just install and go.

It has been a long, long time since I've had working OpenGL on my system. I've NEVER had STABLE OpenGL on a Linux box until now. NVIDIA's drivers kick ass. Commercial support? HELL YAH! I could care LESS if they are binary-only drivers. In fact, having modprobe whine and tell me I'll be "tainting" my kernel by loading the Nvidia driver is downright INSULTING.

UT2k3 runs like a dream! I can use the GL modes of Xscreensaver! I can play Egoboo, BZFLAG, GLTron and crack-attack again! (Actually, Egoboo clocks in at over 200fps so it is too FAST to play :).

Re:NVIDIA open? (open the spec, not the code)

[CaptnMArk]

I can understand why they can't/won't release the code.

But there can be NO reason for not opening the full interface specifications for their cards.

Then the people complaining about binary drivers can write "better" open source drivers.

Re:NVIDIA open? - radeon 8500

[bercab]

Take a look at this article in BULMA (Balearic Islands LUG):
http://bulmalug.net/body.phtml?nIdNoticia=1488
The article is in Spanish ;)

UT2003 and Linux

[PhilMills]

NVIDIA is definitely the way to go for that game, but only if you've got something better than a TNT2 Pro. I had the joy of encountering the first game ever that outright refused to run on my hardware last night. What really irritates me is that the Windows version of the UT2003 demo accepts and loves that TNT2Pro card (well, likes it anyway - it runs).

Re:UT2003 and Linux

[askii64]

If you mean you have an ATI card in your box and it refuses to run UT2003.. maybe you should try different drivers. I know many people with Radeon 8500's that run it currently. :)

The IKOS box

[BESTouff]

I got to work on such a box (an IKOS Voyager) a few years ago. They're impressive. Either you can use the supplied tools which compile VHDL or Verilog "into" the box, or you can even program it directly ! Basically it's like a (very big) bunch of 4-inputs gates you can connect as you want. You can choose the behavior of each gate from a library of predefined behaviors, or even redefine yours.

My project was to map efficiently a big processor on the IKOS box. As compiling it from the VHDL design resulted in something too big to fit the box, I had to extract the logical function of the design (generate a binary decision diagram from the transistors netlist) and generate the good gates to map that on the box. I won't bore you with the details, but I really enjoyed that job !

Hiding IP Violations?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another aspect of "going open" that may not appeal to NVidia, is perhaps they have a few IP violations in the closet, that the world "doesn't" need to know about? These violations need not be in the source code, but could be in the chip, and be exposed by exposing the programming interface to the chip.

Of course, there is a lot of cross-licensing in the graphics world, but still...

Links?

[Wyatt Earp]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/12/15/224425 6&mode=nested&tid=137

his just came out, from Yahoo, 3dfx has announced that they will be sold to NVidia as soon as the deal is approved by its shareholders. From the release, "After aggressively pursuing a wide range of options that take into consideration the interests of our creditors, our shareholders, our employees and our customers," said Alex Leupp, president and CEO, 3dfx Interactive Inc., "we strongly believe that to reduce expenses, sell our assets and dissolve the company provides the highest return to our creditors, shareholders, and employees." I think we all saw this one coming. For more details, go to the press release

Re:Links?

[dolo666]

I always figured this was because 3dfx was making inferior products. They had nothing at the time that could compare with Geforce. Are you saying that NVIDIA did something crooked? I mean... where it says "I think we all saw this one coming": for me that was because 3dfx was so far behind NVIDIA. Everyone was. I was surprised NVIDIA would want to buy them.

Granted, but

[Anonymous Coward]

How does this stop them from releasing their code? Unless some of the things it does are implemented in software, rather than hadrware?

It make no sense. That's why we don't seem to have listened

Re:NVIDIA open? (open the spec, not the code)

[OverCode@work]

It's not nearly that simple.
NVIDIA cards are unlike anything you've ever seen on the inside. It's not a simple matter of register banging like most hardware. And yes, there is quite a bit of proprietary/trade secret stuff in there, such that publishing the driver source or opening the hardware interface would be detrimental to NVIDIA.

As much as we all hate it, the tech industry is largely driven by trade secrets, patents, and lawsuits. I don't think anyone at NVIDIA really likes that, but it's the only way to survive given the broken state of IP laws in the world.

-John (having contributed to the driver)

Make CPUs/GPUs in your own home

[dev!null!4d]

HOWTO "Now we've got semiconductor grade rods, 99.9999999999% pure. Smell them, touch them, caress them. Now, SMASH THE CRAP OUT OF THEM! Yes, you heard me. We need to refine those suckers some more! Melt that crushed up shit in the oven again. Remember, use small amounts. Introduce a single monocrystal grain of sugar into the melted silicon. This is your monocrystal seed that will found your new silicon nation. This will take a few days. You are permitted to take a few drugs at this point in time. There's still a long way to go but it's worthwhile. "

war huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

what is it good for? absolutely nothing!

Re:NVIDIA open?-patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Well some people think:"Graphics-card manufacturers, in particular, routinely swipe patented techniques from their competitors and bury them in binaries. (This is generally believed to be the reason nVidia's drivers aren't open.)"
--
Eric Raymond

[Nvidia licenses SGI's patent porfolio]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/ar chive/5677. html
[SGI's 3D patent porfolio transfers to MS]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/23708 .html
So basically Nvidia's licensing their patents from MS.

Maybe that's why they can't open source their drivers.

Cubicles

[luugi]

To to tell you the truth I'm dissapointed with the article. It's too bad we couldn't see the cubicles of some of the guys that work there. Not just the CEO but also the average programmer there. I didn't really care for seeing a bunch of servers. I wanted to see how the people where seated, how the cafeteria looked, how the bathroom looked. It might sound weird but I'm sure a lot of people would agree with me.

OT? What's the best cheap video card for Jaguar?

[babbage]

Sorry if this is offtopic, but I've just upgraded my 2+ year old Mac G4 to OSX 10.2, and I really haven't seen any big performance gain by doing so. From what I've read, if your hardware can do Quartz Extreme, you should be able to get much better performance, but it seems like my graphics card is too old for it, and so Jaguar hasn't been able to perform significantly better than 10.1.

So, any suggestions about what the best, cheap upgrade car for a two year old Mac would be? It's not worth it to me to shell out $200 or more for the top of the line hardware -- I don't play video games or anything like that -- but if a video card in the say $50 to $75 range would give a noticeable boost then it might be worthwhile.

Does anyone know what the minimum video hardware is to get QE running and how much it would cost to get that hardware costs these days? On the same lines, given similar hardware, have people seen better gains by upgrading graphics hardware or adding more ram? For the money I'm willing to spend right now, I could throw in half a gig of ram, but I've heard that upgrading the video card could be almost as much of a performance boost. It would be nice to get a few more opinions on which upgrade path makes more sense...

Thanks!

Check this out! Its hilarious

[siliconeyes]

Ok, I am shamelessly ripping this of Anandtech's two pictures (on page 10 of the article). They are of posters that are apparently up in the CEO's cabin. Interesting to know that the CEO works in a cubicle just like everyone else, btw.

Top 10 reasons why investors love nvidia

10. Jensen's calm, diplomatic and balanced assessment of the competitive landscape.

9. A little something called XBox.

8. Jensen's refusal to bring more than one suit on roadshows inspires investor confidence in management decision-making.

7. Ability to execute is matched only by ability to generate lawsuits.

6. Entrepreneurial spirit of nvidia employees demonstrated by options purchases before public XBox announcement.

5. Vertical integration really was a no brainer.

4. No other roadshow team brings along a complete computer for investors to play with.

3. There's nobody else left in graphics.

2. Still on track to be the fastest company to $1 billion in revenue.

1. nvidia rocks!

Top Ten Reasons To Invest In NVIDIA

10. 3D graphics is hot!

9. The cool demo was a blowout in Europe.

8. More lawsuits than profitable quarters.

7. With a year long process, plenty of time for investors to review S-1.

6. Stable and dependable customers like STB and Diamond.

5. "Q2 only made us stronger"

4. Endorsement of credible shareholders like 3Dfx.

(Can't make out number 3. There is a chair arm in front of it)

2. H&Q's four different analysts talked me into it.

1. After making a killing in Trident, S3, Cirrus, 3D Labs, and 3Dfx, this is a no brainer.

Heh heh.. this is bloody hilarious. Jensen Huang, just by the way, is the CEO and President of NVIDIA.

Re:Check this out! Its hilarious

[edwdig]

> 9. A little something called XBox.

Wouldn't "A big something" be more accurate?

Re:Check this out! Its hilarious

[siliconeyes]

Uh guys.. I hope you all realise that my post above was supposed to be funny. Both the posters are funny.

That is why they call XBox a 'little something'. Its funny; Laugh.

"Old school"?

[Herger]

The CEO even showed off the old school NV1 with 1MB of ram!

1 MB RAM is "old school" now? Gosh, I'm old... when I started working, we still supported CGA and EGA cards.

I bet some of you out there remember before then. :)

Re:"Old school"?

[cgori]

I remember when "Hercules graphics" aka HGA was a specially supported monochrome graphics card. And having two monitors -- one MDA and one CGA (oooh!)

Re:"Old school"?

[AlgUSF]

I remember using a computer with a VGA adapter, when VGA first came out..... I fell in love! Now look at the resolutions we get 1.6k*1.2k.... Gotta love it... :-)

Imagine...

[csnydermvpsoft]

...all of those systems in one big Beowolf cluster.

Re:Imagine...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually this is possible on Sun Fire 15k's using a Sun Fire Link 2.8gb Boards instead of the default system board.

Re:Imagine...

[cgori]

Even if that is an obligatory standard comment for every hardware-related-story, there is a grain of truth to it.

Most chip-design clusters use either Platform Computing's LSF or Sun's Grid Computing Engine to basically make them look like one big entity. Chip design doesn't require cool low-latency inter-process communication, or much shared data (except for disk storage, easily enough handled with NFS), so Beowulf'ing them doesn't really help. But from a user's perspective they don't really need to know that node0025395 has load of 0.0, so quick get your job over there -- they just submit their job to a cluster scheduler and it finds the low-loaded nodes.

Re:OT? What's the best cheap video card for Jaguar

[frankie]

best, cheap upgrade car for a two year old Mac would be?

Here's what you can get for $50-80. Minimum to use QE is 16MB 2xAGP, either Radeon or GeForce, preferred is 32+MB 4xAGP. Note: QE isn't exactly a speed boost, but it lets you turn on all the lickable stuff (animated backgrounds, drop shadows and transparency on everything, etc) without slowing down.

To bring this back towards the topic, the main reason why Mac video cards are later and/or more expensive than the PC equivalent is endianness. You have to write different ROMs for x86 vs anyone else. To put it another way: if Intel hadn't made such a screwy kludge back in the 8086 days, their competitors would be better off today.

They're both better than diamond was

[willpost]

In the early 1990s Diamond Multimedia threatened to sue anyone to whom they released the programming specs who would subsequently release the information to others. Obviously you cannot have a source-code release of Linux and Xfree that would not violate this. Although there were workarounds, many did not want any official accommodation of Diamond's policy to become part of of Linux.

In 1999, S3 acquired Diamond Multimedia and moved into Internet appliances, broadband communications, home networking and audio solutions. In late 2000, the Company changed its name to SONICblue, transferred its chip assets to a joint venture with VIA, closed its graphics board business and re-positioned itself to be a leader in the emerging growth market of digital media appliances and services.

Threatening customers is bad mojo.

Re:They're both better than diamond was

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, unlike all the other graphics card manufacturers who didn't go out of business.

Re:NVIDIA open?-TV out & DVDs

[Anonymous Coward]

" I've got a GEForce2 on my system and the drivers are *sweet*. Full support of *all* the hardwares features. "

Well I have a GF3 with TV out. Can't get the TV-out to work under linux. An speaking of binary drivers. The TV-port when running W2K is disabled when one tries to watch certain DVD's (usually disney's). I hear it use to be enabled in earlier versions. So once again let's hear it for binary drivers, and who controls the hardware you bought.

Re:NVIDIA open?-OpenGL programming.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Let's hear it for the hypocrits! Hear Hear! "

No! Let's hear it for the person who didn't think.

You can also use a 3D card for OpenGL programming. Lot's of people on a budget do that because they can't afford a $600+ card. Games is only one of the things one can do.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[unsung]

I can assure you that the company's were not approached to do these interviews in the faith that they'd be competing against one another for openness. As someone wrote before, "Damned if you do, damned if you don't." The articles were supposed to be COMPLIMENTARY... not competing!

Furthermore, yes, the articles were interesting to me... as a layman. ATI engineer interview was not so revealing that perhaps any experienced ASIC engineer could have given them.

Re:OT? What's the best cheap video card for Jaguar

[be-fan]

LSB isn't a screwy kludge. Lots of other people did it as well. Its not exactly as if one is right and the other is wrong. Besides, PPC can be programmed into either big or little endian mode. Its Apple's fault for not being industry standard.
See the Endian FAQ

Re:NVIDIA open?-BSD MIA.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's like buying a porsche that is capable of 180mph but you can only get maybe 100mph if you're lucky. Why not just buy the bmw that goes at 150mph and actually go 150mph?"

Well unless you want to be on "Wildest police chases" I don't think it matters which one you buy.

Besides Nvidia could very well release a BSD driver. Remember there are Nvidia cards & drivers for Mac OS X. Now what kernel does the Mac OS X use? The only significent difference is that the hardware is different. The reason they haven't released for BSD is simply they're not considered the "up and coming" thing. It's all about getting on the ground floor of a virgin market.

Re:NVIDIA open? (open the spec, not the code)

[be-fan]

To add on to this. NVIDIA's cards are really strange. According to some documentation at RivaTV (on sourceforge) the hardware has this object-oriented programming interface. Most other cards are much simpler, allowing you to set the properties of triangles in certain registers, with the card drawing the triangle when you've hit the last register.

Re:NVIDIA open?-Box canyon ahead.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm glad you could publish your drivers under the GPL, but not everyone is and I'd rather have closed drivers that work well for me than no drivers at all. "

And if either the drivers stopped working "well" for you, or Nvidia decided to stop making Linux drivers. Would you still prefer the binary driver over a GPL one? If not, then why should anyone else put themselves in that kind of situation? We already escaped one (MS), do we need to escape another?

Re:NVIDIA open?/smp aware drivers?

[random coward]

Are the drivers SMP Aware? Looking at upgraded my 3dfx card, but I don't know if the nvidia will work with my dual cpu system..

I had an IKOS box in my PC and didn't know it!!

[JohnnyBigodes]

Fabulous discovery! All the recent games run at ~0.2fps on my PC so I guess I have an IKOS box inside it. I wonder if I could trade with nVidia for a few GF4's :)

Re:NVIDIA open?-BSD MIA.

[I_redwolf]

Nvidia has already released a driver for freebsd, where exactly have you been?

Re:NVIDIA open?-TV out & DVDs

[DeathPenguin]

TV-out worked beautifully on my Asus V8200 Deluxe (GF3) as well as my Leadtek A250 ultra TD. You just have to edit your X config file correctly.

In monitors:
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "TV"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "Unknown"

HorizSync 30-50
VertRefresh 60

EndSection

in driver options:
Option "TVOutFormat" "COMPOSITE"
# Option "Connectedmonitor" "TV"

(Remove the hash if you want X output to the TV)

and finally, screen:
Section "Screen"
Identifier "screen2"
Device "NVIDIA GeForce4 (generic)"
Monitor "TV"
DefaultColorDepth 24
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubSection
EndSection

You can view my entire working XF86Config-4 file here.

Hope that helps. Otherwise you can try the official support forum here.

Re:NVIDIA open?/smp aware drivers?

[DeathPenguin]

I used a GeForce 3 on a dual-AMD system on a Tyan Thunder K7 without problems. I was able to run SPEC benchmarks as well as Q3 (/r_smp 1) without problems. I hope that helps.

Re:NVIDIA open? - radeon 8500

[ShavenYak]

As best I can tell, not speaking Spanish, it's just a how-to to install the proprietary ATI drivers. I didn't see any comments about any particular games; of course, if I had I wouldn't have known whether they were good, bad, or indifferent.

Re:OT? What's the best cheap video card for Jaguar

[Anonymous Coward]

GeForce 2MX

A little lopsided...

[puppetman]

ATI didn't want pictures taken (maybe ATI does more hardware dev at Thornhill than NVidia does in Santa Clara?).

But giving access to the chip architects (more than a lunch meeting anyway) is cooler than a bunch of fuzzy pictures with Anand's thumb in front.

That "Mickey Mouse" operation...

[CreamsicleSeventeen]

makes the fastest GPU on the market.

Re:That "Mickey Mouse" operation...

[chef_raekwon]

maybe you should try and work there...then you'd might offer differing info...

Unified drivers: bad idea for old hardware

[Luyseyal]

The problem with a unified driver that's proprietary is that despite what they say, older hardware does not get the same level of support as open source drivers for cards of the same age. Worse, since your architecture is unified, you can't open source the drivers for older cards without jeopardizing IP on new cards!

So, while I'm glad the unified driver works for you and your newish card, I had to ditch my TNT1 for an older Radeon because the unified drivers never supported my TNT1 on K6-III/VIA chipset very well (i.e., it crashed too much).

Cheers,
-l

who got a 64MB Radeon VE dirt cheap for his new flat panel. and yes, next year I hope to upgrade the mb/cpu. :)

Re:Unified drivers: bad idea for old hardware

[Nothinman]

Before I blamed nVidia for that I'd try the card in a different machine, it's much more likely a problem with the VIA chipset =)

Re:Unified drivers: bad idea for old hardware

[Luyseyal]

The lock-up only occured in 3D stuff, e.g., armagetron. I detuned AGP and everything and it still happened. If Nvidia is gonna release a kernel module for VIA they damn well better have workarounds for any and all such bugs and have an effective way to report new ones. I'm using a very common board (not in front of me, can't give you the model) recommended by Tom's Hardware at the time. I can't think of any reason but lack of testing or interest as to why it breaks.

Besides, the Radeon works fine.

-l

p.s., I have 1 computer and I don't know anyone near me who runs the same set-up, so the point's prolly moot anyway.

Re:Unified drivers: bad idea for old hardware

[Nothinman]

I'm not saying the breakage is acceptable, I just mean that nVidia has a much better reputation than VIA for stable hardware and drivers.

You are right about them lacking an easy way to report bugs, it would be nice if they had a web form or even email address available. I couldn't find anything on their site.

Re:Unified drivers: bad idea for old hardware

[Luyseyal]

Oh, I understood what you meant, I just didn't think it was a valid excuse seeing how Linux seems to work with crappy broken hardware. :)

sorry if I seemed a little brusque.

-l

Re:NVIDIA open? (open the spec, not the code)

[CaptnMArk]

I think you just convinced me not to buy NVIDIA stuff ever again if I can help it.

Too bad, I am pretty happy with my current ti4200, especially since I found the solution to rare lockups I had during UT.

I guess somebody will have to do some reverse engineering (too bad I don't have the time).

Re:NVIDIA open?-BSD MIA.

[MrResistor]

Besides Nvidia could very well release a BSD driver.

They have.

Now what kernel does the Mac OS X use?

The Mach kernel, which is NOT THE BSD KERNEL!

FreeBSD was the first OS the Mach kernel would run, which is why Apple based OS X on FreeBSD, but FreeBSD does not use the Mach kernel.

Last Post!

[alpg]

[From the operation manual for the CI-300 Dot Matrix Line Printer, made
in Japan]:

The excellent output machine of MODEL CI-300 as extraordinary DOT MATRIX
LINE PRINTER, built in two MICRO-PROCESSORs as well as EAROM, is featured by
permitting wonderful co-existence such as; "high quality against low cost,"
"diversified functions with compact design," "flexibility in accessibleness
and durability of approx. 2000,000,00 Dot/Head," "being sophisticated in
mechanism but possibly agile operating under noises being extremely
suppressed" etc.

And as a matter of course, the final goal is just simply to help achieve
"super shuttle diplomacy" between cool data, perhaps earned by HOST
COMPUTER, and warm heart of human being.

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...