Slashdot Mirror
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...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Just another case of a submission ruined by the submitter inserting an uninformed opinion at the end of the article.
"Overall I am impressed with the quality Chaintech has put into their products from an aesthetic point of view"
That should be great for people who leave their boxes open and stare at them like its a TV.
oh yeah, this is slashdot. my bad.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Half of me wants to say that AMD and Nvidia must be insane for not keeping their timetables in better order, and the other half of me is glad that they are not releasing (or are releasing only on a minor scale) incomplete or inferior products. All of me is frustrated at the irony of these situations. I recall reading a tour of Nvidia's headquarters, which included a ton of expensive Sun hardware going to work at the design phase of the Nvidia's GPUs. The guys giving the tour said that they couldn't wait until AMD released their new 64 bit chips so they could replace those farms with Linux-powered machines on AMD hardware. Now with AMD pushing back the Athlon 64 to September, that delays Nvidia's ability to make and design chips on the hardware and software they really want to use.
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.
With an MSDN subscription you can get copies of 64 bit XP. Their download page even lists 64 bit patches and service packs, what are you talking about? Intel already sells I2 servers and desktops. Its totally AMD's issue.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
As much as I don't want to beleive it, I am now thinking that we could be seeing the end of nVidia, just like we saw the end of 3DFX a few years back now. The GeForceFX is just so huge and noisy comapred to ATI's offering, it is not even funny.
:P
I guess there are not as many companies (especially computer/IT/internet companies) that can survive long these days - we are seeing more and more "infallible" companies failing nowadays.
As soon as ATI makes better drivers for Windows/Linux and other OSes, then they will sell even more than they do now.
I wonder if this will apply to companies such as Google and Microsoft....
Arc
I Think Nvidia are on the way out. Whenever the market starts talking about raw frame rates and speed as the defining benchmark the winds of change are blowing. Concentrating on speed killed 3dfx. I see a great similarity now with Nvidia Vs Radeon. Raw speed is never the key. when 3dfx concentrated on raw speed issues like pass-thru cables and enforced full screen acceleration became glaring errors. With Nvidia you have Cards taking up a pci slot and fans that sound like lawnmowers. When a company starts to lose its advantage over the market they look for something they can put in a press release and say "we are better". and thats what benchmarks are for but by concentrating on that ina vain attempt to say "we are better" just means your not innovating enough and someone will come up with a better product
Check out the Tech Report's for more text, and a better picture of the video card that may never be.
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.
Microsoft HAS a 64-bit operating system. They have a 64-bit version of Windows XP. Runs only on the Itanium at present. That was actually one of the reasons Intel pushed out the Itainum 1. I mean face it, the chip was pretty worthless for a production environment what with the expense. Basically it was only good for R&D.
Well, that gave companies, like MS, time to recompile their stuff for it. Now the Itainum 2 actually ahs software and platforms it can run.
Despite the fact that you can mess with a chip simlator, you really can't code and test until you have actual silicon. If MS is going to make a version fo 64-bit Windows for AMD chips, it won't happen till the processor happens. They may do some work on it with simulators and get it ready, but they aren't going to ship it till they've tested it on the real deal.
I think it's silly that some people expect software makers to support a chip before it comes out.
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
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.html?i=1711
"NVIDIA would love to move away from these costly Sun boxes altogether and transition to a much more affordable x86-linux platform, but the problem is finding a 64-bit x86 solution. NVIDIA is currently evaluating Intel's Itanium for use in their farm but as far as their needs go, AMD's Opteron would be a gift from God. NVIDIA is eagerly awaiting the launch of Opteron so that their dreams may be fulfilled with an affordable x86 solution that offers 64-bit memory addressability; until then, they'll have to stick with these million-dollar sun systems."