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CEE2003: A One-Vendor Trade Show
Billy Stephens writes "Few people knew about the CEE2003 event put on by Chaintech this year. They flew some of the top media analysts and resellers out to Spain to show off their new K8 motherboards and Nvidia Geforce FX based video cards. Unfortunately there was a lot of bad news to be had as well. AMD pushed back their Athlon 64 CPU until September so there were no motherboards based on it to show off, and Nvidia announced they would only release around 4,000 of their Geforce FX GPUs, primarily for preorders only. It looks like ATI has rattled Nvidia more than what people thought. Monkey Review has a great summary of this event with plenty of pictures. Overall I am impressed with the quality Chaintech has put into their products from an aesthetic point of view, it's a shame that both Nvidia and AMD are having product issues."
Interestingly by looking at the Road Map I noticed that the 760 & 761 chipset will offer a form of integrated graphics, 760 utilizing Utlra256 Graphics and the 761 equipped with Real256E Graphics.
Yeah but, Sis still hasn't made much headway in terms of the 800 MHz FSB which Intel will soon offer, at least not in terms of what we saw from their roadmap although this might change if their able to get the appropriate "go ahead" from Intel, which, from what I hear, hasn't been an easy task.
Is it just me, or does it seem like the whole PC graphics market has gotten well ahead of their consumers and software (i.e. games)? Along with other aspects of PC's, it seems AGP 8X and 128MB video cards are really necessary, at least for the larger customer base that would justify their production. There will always be the bleeding-edge enthusiasts who snap up the latest gear...
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Again, this is driven by market demands - there simply isn't a strong need out there for a 64-bit operating system, so why would Microsoft invest the resources required? For the mass market, hardware capabilities have advanced well ahead of customer needs, hence the steep dropoff in PC sales we've seen for the last year or more.
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Yes, it is perfectly reasonable to claim that they are having issues. Announcing that they would be releasing products at particular times, and then delaying that release, several times in each case, points to serious problems -- either with the production of the products or with their ethics. I'd love to believe that AMD and NVidia are working as hard as they can and just haven't been able to make things work, but at this point you can't rule out the possibility that they've been pre-announcing products to unfairly distort the marketplace.
AMD could release Athlon 64 to the Linux community today and they'd snap it up. That would also guarantee that Microsoft worked hard to make their schedule for releasing 64-bit Windows -- they'd be mortified that they'd be left behind.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
About the portion on "it's a shame that NVidia and AMD are having product issues". It just seems to be that Chaintech is unable to collaborate better with their vendors to make sure they don't release products that cannot be shipped in volume. I think the reason we don't see this from other manufacturers (think ATI/Intel...) because they have ways to collaborate and make sure these kind of snafu's don't happen.
I like the way Apple releases products. You hear NOTHING until every vendor is producing in volume and they are shipping or about to ship assembled units. This whole idea of announcing products 3-12 months before they can ship is just FUD trying to keep customers from buying right now.
OMG not this again. Seriously, just because a video card comes out that sounds like a hoover on steroids doesn't mean a company is going out of business. Please back up a quote with some financials or something tangible. Yes, the product sucks (and blows.. har har har). No I won't be buying it, but nVidia has had nothing but success since the TNT2. Lets not forget their XBox design win. The FX is only one generation people.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
I agree with you but you forgot one word. competitor
The line should read:
is just FUD trying to keep customers buying from a competitor right now.
That is by the way one of the reasons Apple can keep a much better track record on new product releases. They are to a major extend competiting against itself, at least in the short term.
Help fight continental drift.
AAARGH!
They are realeasing thier SERVER version of their product (opteron) in APRIL. They only "delayed" the consumer version (clawhammer) because there is no Microsoft 64 bit system for it yet. So AMD is doing EXACTLY what you suggest and you have not checked the FACTS to KNOW it. I just don't get why there is so much misunderstanding of AMD's release schedule.
I miss the Karma Whores.
During the anti-trust trial Bill was fond of pointing out that the computer business was entirely unlike most others.
As he put it, " Microsoft is just one good idea away from oblivion."
Which is to say that if someone *else* came up with just the right good idea Microsoft products could become worthless virtually overnight.
His awareness of this simple truth may go some way to explaining his absolute ruthlessness in piling up a nest egg. (I said explain. I didn't say excuse)
Some would say that day is now.
Nor is this fact actually unique to the computer business. It's a fact of life in any hot, new developing technology. Just look up the names of automobile companies formed between 1890 and 1910. A few of them, such as Daimler and Peugot are still around, but they're the exceptions.
KFG
Is that nVidia releases a new chip archeticture, then refines it. The GeForce 3 was the last major architectural upgrade before the FX. Subsequent GF3s were faster, or slower, or smaller and so on, but no real different. The GF4 addedd some things, a little more efficient AA engine, a second vertex shader, but kept the same fundimental architecture.
The FX is totally new again and it looks like designed with teh future in mind. It's more programmable than the Radeon and more programmable than DX9 currently calls for. This should mean that the overall archeticture will last for some time and through a number of refinements.
I would predict that the FX as it is now will have rather limited sales, much like the orignal GF3 did (probably even less). However the next incarnation will probably do quite a bit better.
The 'GPU' makers are in a war of brute forcing solutions to problems that haven't arisen yet in order to drive sales. The evidence of this is clear in 3dfx's card requiring an external brick power source and nVidia's offering requiring two cards.
They are simply at the limits of what can be put on a card, but have nowhere else to go yet.
The next logical step in this war is the "home render farm" where we replace the GPU with a graphics computer networked to the desktop.
Sheesh.
In the meantime the unwashed browsing masses and pointy hairs have figured out that Rage 128's work just fine for reading email and the odd round of Tetris.
This will only end when one of the players is willing to drop back a round, punt, and come up some *new ideas* in GPU architecture.
Which, unfortunately, puts them in the position of risking the company if they don't pull it off, which makes the stockholders edgy, which puts pressure on them to just stay the course as they are, which risks the company.
Rinse and repeat.
KFG