RSSNVidia, Intel no longer appear to be prospective partners
By Michael Hatamoto | Published April 11, 2008, 5:42 PM
During an analyst meeting yesterday, the head of NVidia stated clearly that NVidia is a GPU company and not a semiconductor manufacturer, destroying any flicker of hope that it and Intel may jointly combat AMD and its ATI division.
"We're going to open a can of whoop ass," boasted NVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang during an NVidia Financial Day analyst meeting yesterday, invoking a word that BetaNews' own automatic comments parser system would splash an asterisk in the middle of.
The verbal jousting began last week in Shanghai at the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai, when Intel representatives boldly stated that discrete graphics cards will eventually become "unnecessary" for the regular consumer in the future. According to Intel, multi-core CPUs would be the final blow and end consumer need for multi-GPU technology, with Intel believing multi-core CPUs are powerful enough to render high-end graphics in video games and other graphic-intensive activities.
Most notably from NVidia's perspective, Intel plans to have samples of Larrabee, its 16-core multi-pipeline graphics processor component, available in Q4 this year, with public shipment beginning sometime in 2009.
During the Financial Analyst day yesterday, NVidia provided several slides that indicate current Intel integrated graphics technology will only become competitive with today's sub-$100 discrete cards from both AMD/ATI and NVidia, in two years' time. However, NVidia's technology available today will still be able to outperform Intel's integrated solution as far out as 2010.
"Intel has crossed the line and they're saying false things," Huang said after calling the Larrabee platform "Laughabee."
While NVidia is generally known as a consumer-oriented manufacturer, a growing share of its revenue comes from the high-performance computing (HPC) market. NVidia's push towards HPC means it will likely bump heads against Intel, where increased graphics leads to better compute performance. After Larrabee launches in 2010, analysts expect the platform to first have a strong impact on the HPC market.
After NVidia's Huang slammed Intel for poor performance over the company's claims that its integrated GMA 3100 graphics is Windows Vista Premium compatible -- a claim recently proven incorrect by Microsoft employees -- Intel pointed at NVidia video card drivers as the culprit for a large number of Windows Vista crashes.
"NVidia has to support several new titles every week," Huang countered. "You already have the right machine to run Excel. You bought it four years ago. How much faster can you render the blue screen of death?"
Intel PR manager Dan Snyder would only go so far today as to tell BetaNews, "We are not surprised, based on what NVidia's CEO has been publicly saying for months."
Even though Intel is known as a CPU company, it still has a 43% market share of overall graphics chip shipments in 4Q 2007 -- taking all those integrated chips into account -- with NVidia controlling a 33% share.
I think both companies are pretty heavy duty.. it will be interesting to see who will prevail. There are a bunch of good articles popping up: http://www.snappingyro.c...-vs-intel-graphics-wars/ [snappingyro.com] Good on nVidia's CEO for dropping the PC stance. I wish more companies would just say what they mean. The competition will be great!
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I just know that the NVIDIA graphics card of the PS3 is inferior to the ATI graphics card of the 360 despite the 360 launching in 2005 and PS3 launching in 2006.
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What makes you say that? The Nvidia graphics chip in the PS3 can render higher quality graphics faster than the ATI graphics chip in the Xbox 360.
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Strange. I've seen a Gateway laptop that claims to use Intel's GMA 3100 graphics chip according to Gateway's own specs and the laptop ran Aero Glass just fine. Is the supposed incompatibility due to driver issues?
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AMD could really build a powerful integrated board especially with ATI video technology.
Same could be done with audio. They make a lot more right now selling so many different flavors but I expect they will have to come out with a really good powerful integrated setup, maybe somewhat modulated.
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Kinda funny how AMD isn't even considered a contender anymore. Guess that is what you get when you release crap buggy products...
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Integrated graphics suck from all camps Nvidia,Intel and ATI.
Perhaps what we need is a hardcore battle to improve things so the consumer can buy a PC and be able to play newer games on atleast medium settings and still have a playable frame rates with out having to go out and spend $150+ on a mid range video card.
I'm not a hardcore gamer but the first thing i look at when buying a PC is the graphics card anything with integrated graphics i quit looking at it.
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Yeah, then you can increase the motherboard price by $150. Majority of PC users aren't gamers, and don't need the performance. So why waste a decent GPU on those users?
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Your wrong prices will only slighty go up since integrated video cards use the systems ram not it's own plus no packaging manuals disks and so on not to mention integrated video sells in larger bulk so you can afford a smaller profit margin.
It's all about improving what they already have just look at the improvement from the p4 to the core duo chips a great improvement and prices where hardly affected.
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Nvidia's GeForce 6150 integrated graphics can comfortably run almost any game you throw at it as long as you don't turn all of the detail settings on. It's just Intel and AMD integrated graphics (especially Intel) that have poor performance.
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AMD's are getting much better...but comparitively speeking Intel's suck...
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I have that on my system and found that even with the quality set to low and shadows and such turned off that many games had parts that the frame rates would drop too much to be playable.
I don't need graphics if i like a game and still got a few games from the 90s kicking around and play them once and a while.
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I'm not a hardcore gamer but the first thing i look at when buying a PC is the graphics card anything with integrated graphics i quit looking at it.
Buying a PC? Good luck finding anything decently priced that *isn't* integrated. Best bet there would be a BYO. Even then, it's not a bad idea.
I built a new PC for myself last year (in anticipation of Vista) and bought one with the 6150LE specifically for that chip. I figured I could live with the integrated, which wasn't all that bad, really, and then upgrade later since it had a X16 PCI slot.
The integrated worked fine for WoW, FarCry (on the absolute lowest settings), but not much more. But still...got me by until I purchased my ATi 2900 HD XT (open-box, $200).
For a non-hardcore gamer, that situation ain't bad. Hell, the integrated played Flatout 1 and 2 quite well, most of the NFS series decently. Sure, the discrete cards kicks it's ass, but the integrated from NVIDIA was a good middleweight. Now with the 7000 series, it's even better.
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Depends on what you view as a decent price 600-700 dollars is what i consider decent.
BYO would actually cost me more just because i'm weird and have to have a product in my hand before buying and the only parts store here is way over priced due to no competition.
Buying a new computer this month and just got to decide between the two i've narrowed it down too one has an AMD quad core and the other only has an AMD dual core but comes with a Blu-Ray player just can't decide.(both come with a Nvidia 8500GT)
Thanks for mentioning the NFS series now i'm itching to reinstall NFS most wanted an oldie but a good game.
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Do little research on the new AMD 780G chipset and find out that you have no idea what you are talking about. Full 1080p output from an intergrated solution. And to top it off the price is beyond great.
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After reading the reviews i'm not impressed it still has trouble on some newer games but does overclock nicely and for video all they did as add a decoder Nvidia and intel can match that in a heartbeat.
Watched the video on youtube and will admit it does look good but since the main video for it was made by AMD so it was done under ideal conditions other videos showed it not doing so well like 24fps on half life 2.(not exactly a newer game)
The main selling point for the 780G seems to be adding another ATI card and it will run crossfire.
Conclusion still not quite there yet(but close) and reviewers need to include idle/stressed temperatures.
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Why would anyone hope for that? Besides, AMD is doing find sinking the company on their own.
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I never understood how Intel could have such crap graphics. Sure there are tons of $$$ in the cheapo integrated stuff that can't out do the Atari 2600 in 3D. But you would think a company like Intel would care more about their image as a leader in all things which plug into the motherboard.
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Bring it on!! The tech world has quite been the same since Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs mellowed and Scott Mcneally got canned. The prospect of new feuds like this and Microhoo bodes well for the IT gossip rags...
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Steve Jobs? LOL.... Mr 3.8% of the world market share on computers? Only thing keeping them alive is a digital "walkman".
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You guys should check out reviews on the new AMD 780G chipset. Read the reviews or check it out on youtube.
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Nah it still won't run Crysis in decent fps ;)
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