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EA and NVIDIA in Alliance
Deepak Jois writes "Arstechnica is reporting that EA and NVIDIA have entered into a pact to promote each other. Among other things it also means EA will support games on all PC platforms featuring NVIDIA hardware. Also check this link to the press release."
Battlefield 1942 and C&C Generals are exceptions to the EA rule. EA loves to crank out sports titles with little more to offer than the previous years release, besides updated stats.
Also, the customer support at EA just plain sucks. I can't think of a game since Anarchy Online where the support sucked as bad as it does for C&C Generals. Don't get me wrong, though. I think Generals is an excellent game, and I have been playing it quite a bit... now that I actually have it working. However, there are a lot of people who can't install the game, or it crashes to the desktop consistently, or it freezes up all the time. The only information that is returned from the game itself is that a "Serious Error" has occured.
There is absolutely no useful input from EA to help people out with this problem. They give you links to benchmarking, and system stability testing software. If all of these utilities prove your system is indeed stable, EA basically ignores you, and the problem.
Anyhow, I could care less about this union. I doubt EA will stop supporting ATI cards, so Nvidias major competitor will still keep going strong. I personally think that Nvidia is just trying to raise the perceived value of their gfx cards, since the actual performance of the cards is lower than the latest ATI cards.
-Nitar
Cg ("Their own graphics language") is a programming language.
Glide was an API.
Cg compiles to OpenGL or Direct3D, and it could very well be used on ATi cards with slight modifications. The two are nothing alike.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
13(?) micrometer technology
It is actually 0.13.
nVidia is not ahead of ATi at all. nVidia and ATi both manufacture their chips at TSMC. The supposed reason that it took nVidia so long with the FX was that TSMC was having trouble with the 0.13 micron process. Not that they ironed out all the problems, there is no reason they can't manufacture ATi's chips using the same process.
In fact, considering that nVidia's 0.13 micron card runs hotter and slower than nVidia's previous generation 0.18 micron card (I'm not even talking about the 9800 here) really shows that nVidia is really behind this round.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
True, at the moment ATI is in the lead, but keep in mind that nVidia has now changed over to 13(?) micrometer technology.
Radeon 9600 is also made using 0.13u process. The whole "switch to 0.13" has been overplayed, since neither nVidia nor ATI actually develop the process itself, as they don't produce any of their chips.
The only thing that they have to do is start using new libraries when creating their chips, and altough that's not a simple thing, it's also not something revolutionary -- both companies do it almost once every year.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Cg is not an API, it is a programming language. It compiles to Direct3D and OpenGl. As for proprietary GL extensions, ATi has EXT_VERTEX_SHADER and ATI_FRAGMENT_SHADER.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
The only information that is returned from the game itself is that a "Serious Error" has occured.
This is EA's first mistake. How are they supposed to do tech support, when the customers can say only that a "serious error" occurred. Internet Explorer is just as bad when pages don't load. How are end-users supposed to learn anything when the programmers give up on reporting useful error information?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
First off, let's look at some parts of the press statement. Graphics microchip maker Nvidia Corp. NVDA.O and video game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. ERTS.O said on Thursday they would collaborate to market and develop new games. No biggie here. ATI does the same thing. Actually, in truth the way this works is EA will say to one of their development houses under contract, "Hey, we've got this Nvidia guy we'd like you to talk to, to help you implement some new features."
Under the terms of the deal, Nvidia hardware will become the "preferred" graphics platform for Electronic Arts's video game studios, and video games developed by Electronic Arts may offer features designed to work on Nvidia hardware. Note the quotes around "preferred" and the added emphasis (mine) on may. Note that this is all fuzzy and hazy on exactly what is going to be done. The terms "exclusive" isn't used. Fact is, the developers who actually make the games aren't going to cut off their nose to despite their face. Neither is the publisher.
Nvidia also said it will have exclusive rights to bundle Electronic Arts's games for personal computers with its products. Ah ha! This is what this whole thing is about. The best way to sell a game is to bundle it. The publisher makes a guarenteed sale and lowers his cost of production (no boxes to make, no instructions to print) as well. Best of all, a bundle is usually a guarenteed sale. Nvidia has already bought the game if they sell the video card or not and EA counts it in their books. The only thing that ATI users won't get is a EA game when they buy a new card. No big deal since ATI can lower the price of their card because they don't include a software bundle, or they could go to some other publisher.
Finally, for all those bitching and whining about this you've already been suckered into this for years and years. Bundling agreements have been around and we all have bought products that have them. You buy joysticks and dohickeys because they have video game support and drivers built in. They come with bundles as well. I've bought plenty of video cards with bundles. Most computers come with bundles. All of them involve agreements like Nvidia and EA and press releases.
What is this really? In exchange for technical expertise, the developer gets a free resource to implement some advanced features (which we probably won't use anyway) in return for some games in a video card box. Big whoop. There's just been too much FUD about this. It's not like DoomNukem IX only going to work on a Nvidia card. There's no conspiracy. There's no little green men trying to take away your ATI card. There's no men in black trying to limit your free choice.
It's a bundling agreement. That's it. Now go back to your homes. There's nothing to see here.
And they differ from MS how?
They seem to be buying all the smaller studios and then either cancelling or crippling the games in development. Did they or did they not just buy the company working on the RTCW expansion and cancel it among others?
Support...please.
This collaboration will either:
A) Suck
B) Go nowhere
C) Backfire
Yea yea, they 'own' sports titles and have made a few decent driving games, but they also churn out a lot of buggy crap. BF1942 is not all that, C&C Gen is shallow as all hell. Etc etc.
We'll see.