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SLI On Life Support For the AMD Platform
JoshMST writes "For years AMD and Nvidia were like peas and carrots, and their SNAP partnership proved to be quite successful for both companies. Things changed dramatically when AMD bought up ATI, and now it seems like Nvidia is pulling the plug on SLI support for the AMD platform. While the chipset division at AMD may be a bitter rival to Nvidia, the CPU guys there have had a long and prosperous relationship with the Green Machine. While declining chipset margins on the AMD side was attributed to AMD's lackluster processor offerings for the past several years, the Phenom II chips have reawakened interest in the platform and they have found a place in enthusiasts' hearts again. Unfortunately for Nvidia, they are seemingly missing out on a significant revenue stream by not offering new chipsets to go with these processors. They have also curtailed SLI adoption on the AMD platform as well, which couldn't be happening at a worse time."
This is pure conjecture, but to me it seemed as if when AMD and ATI became one team and Nvidia and Intel became the other, that it would make sense for each one to offer incentives (read: threats) so that their partner would not bend over for the competition. So its not like its completely up to Nvidia to start improving their standing with AMD because of pressure from Intel. If that made any sense, then I'll drink a couple more beers before posting next time. Out
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
Looks like no more NVIDIA for me, time to research what ATI has available. I like my AMD chips.
NVIDIA tries to jinx AMD, but ends up jinxing themselves. This has been tried throughout the ages and often ends up at the same result./>
Move on, nothing to see here.
Hydraulic pizza oven!! Guided missile! Herring sandwich! Styrofoam! Jayne Mansfield! Aluminum siding! Borax!
Dual GPU solutions are so pointless, a waste of money for little performance gain, that doesn't even work in some games.
Good lord. The end of AMD started about 3 years ago. Where have you been? This has got to be at least the middle of the end.
I heard that about three years ago, and I've been right here, using an AMD Athlon XP that worked well for many years after it was built, and still serves nicely as a server, while using my aging Athlon T-Bird as a fileserver, again with no issues other than one power supply replacement a couple years ago. I'm posting this on the AMD Phenom-based system I built about a month ago, and I couldn't be happier with it. Especially since the price I paid vs. the performance I got is absolutely amazing. I've built many AMD systems for others, and not had a single complaint about it yet. I will of course build you an Intel-based system if that's what you want, but it's going to cost you more, because the parts cost me more.
I've always personally used AMD systems, and have never found them lacking. Your mileage may vary, of course, but if nothing else it's a good thing there are two competitive forces in this market. It forces them both to innovate at a much faster rate than either one would if they were the only game in town.
Of course, I've always been happy with Nvidia as well, but if they decide not to support what I use, I'll just have to head across the street and check out their competitor who does. That tends to happen when you choose to engage in turf wars rather than providing your customers what they want.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Until, that is, millions of their mobile GPU chips keel over from heat death due to improper package bump and underfill construction.
And their single GPU chips are so big that they're impossible to manufacture cost effectively.
And that they need expensive PCB's because 512-bit wide memory is necessary when DDR3 has go up against ATI's more advanced DDR5 boards with half the required memory bus width for near equivalent memory performance.
And when two small, cheap, easy to manufacture chips beat out the biggest chip every time.
And when you're trying to get DirectX 11 running for the first time while making a radical architecture shift all while going to a new chip making process against a rival who is already shipping 40nm chips and has essentially had DX11 running in their past three generations of chips.
Yeah, I'm not sure Nvidia has nearly all the goods right at this moment.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Here's a Forbes Magazine interview with the CEO of Nvidia: Nvidia's Plan For Beating Moore's Law: Chief Jen-Hsun Huang on how GPUs could get ahead of CPUs. But read the comments. Readers are not impressed.
There is a general impression now, apparently correct, that Nvidia is not honest and cannot be trusted. HP bought Nvidia graphics chips, and when they were found defective, neither company was completely honest about fixing the defects, articles say.
An Inquirer article, Nvidia cuts out reviewers for the GTS250, says "IT IS ALWAYS funny when an unethical company turns on its own supporters as Nvidia did with the latest 'all new' GT250 cards. This time however, their PR stunts cross the line from unethical to purposely false, and hilarity ensues."
Another quote from the Inquirer story: "This time however, they crossed the line from plausible deniability to flat out deception. In the middle of last week we heard what Nvidia was up to this time around, but just couldn't believe they would be THAT sleazy."
Now that Intel is integrating faster GPUs into its chipsets, there is a perception that eventually there will be little room for Nvidia.
Larrabee doesn't change a damned thing. A beowulf cluster of shitty Intel GPUs doesn't magically remove the stench of failure. It's just a whole lotta more suckage on one die.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
As I understand it, you don't really double your performance by putting two cards in. How many people seriously drop the coin to do this? Everything I've read says you'll get better bang for the buck by buying one good card, saving the money you would have spent on the second and then buying an equivalent card in three year's time that will kick the arse of the first card.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
AMD = Value.
SLI = Not Value.
AMD has consistently shown that they want to put a computer at every set of hands on the planet. Geode, PIC, OLPC. Now it would be nice if those computers had fast 3D graphics or GPU parralel processing, but that really seems like an easy way to waste the real power of computers.
I have loved many Nvidia products in the past, but stepping away from AMD seems like a poor choice on Nvidia's part.
Impressively, ATI's drivers still suck. You'd think they'd've learned by now. I don't game. I just want a damn graphics controller - a slow and steady, efficient and cool graphics controller - that has drivers that work properly. Easy to get with nVidia. Not so easy to get with ATI. And if you happen to get stuck with a laptop with an ATI graphics chip? Well, all I can say is GOOD LUCK. Bad enough that if you don't have .NET Framework installed when you install the driver, you end up with 5 more hours of diagnosing and repairing a broken installation of ATI CCC that it was ignorant enough to install anyway. Add in the fact that ATI doesn't even support anything older than ~1 year old (they don't support my laptop with a Radeon X1200 even though it's still under MFG warranty). Now that's a company I want to buy products from.
I hope ATI goes bankrupt from their ignorance.
As I think about it, one thing occurs to me.
ATI wasn't just a graphics company. They make chipsets too. "Well duh!" you may say to me but I think it's not coincidental. I believe AMD wanted to bring one of the two chipset manufacturers in house so they could have better coupling between their processors and their chipsets.
With a chipset business in-house, AMD now has greater control over coordinating the release of processors and compatible chipsets. I really think AMD believes they have no use for NVIDIA chipsets at all.
What does this mean for NVIDIA? I have to believe that making chipsets for AMD processors is becoming more trouble for them than it's worth. They're competing with AMD who is leveraging their combined process to come out with tightly integrated products. That's a tough business model to fight against. And abandoning SLI is just the first step in walking away from making AMD chipsets. Consider also that NVIDIA is at least trying to make their own CPU and I have to wonder if they're not siphoning resources off their chipset unit with the eventual goal of closing down all chipset work for AMD processors.
Yeah, it's 32 cores of x86 overhead.
Why not use a small RISC core alongside the new 512-bit vector unit? No more x86 decoder overhead (non-trivial on a Pentium-level core replicated 32 times), remove the cruft, tighten up the ISA, etc.
Right now it looks like 2x the die area to achieve the same in 2010 as NVIDIA achieved in 2008, and rumoured power consumption figures that make a GT200 look lean and athletic.
However it is a major improvement for Intel, and Larrabee 2 or Larrabee 3 will get it right. Also there are lots of Intel fans who will buy it regardless. My major worry for Intel would be the drivers, these are already rumoured to be why Larrabee is 2010 instead of late 2009 now.