NVIDIA, MSI, and Lucid speak about Hydra delay

[NVIDIA_tap]

One thing I was going to ask, perhaps it's not something you can comment on but are we ever likely to see the GTX275/285/295 again, or is that it?
Since My 'ideal' BigBang setup would see the first GPU as an HD5970 (Here's of course hoping that the Hydra system works with two GPUs integrated together - from a logical software standpoint, I don't see why that wouldn't work with X2 cards, can't speak for nvidia's offerings as I think they still have an SLI enable/disable tickbox whereas the ATI cards are somewhat stealthed) in the 16x bandwidth slot, and two smaller cards in the 8x ones, currently thinking maybe 5870 and a GTX260, but should a cheap GTX285 turn up, it would come in handy for those games that really do only run on nvidia hardware.

GTX 260, 275, 285, and 295 are still available in etail. Volumes are limited though as demand has been good and supply is tight.

As I said earlier though I expect that the Lucid solution won't substantially change if PhysX is enabled or disabled.

[sammorris]

The GTX275 and GTX285 disappeared entirely from the UK market almost overnight, and the GTX295 isn't far behind from joining them. It seems odd that all the supply would suddenly have dried up so long after the cards were released.

[NVIDIA_tap]

The GTX275 and GTX285 disappeared entirely from the UK market almost overnight, and the GTX295 isn't far behind from joining them. It seems odd that all the supply would suddenly have dried up so long after the cards were released.

Clearly demand is outstripping supply. As you can imaging getting the right mix of GPUs to market is incredibly complex. Rememebr we need to order our chips around 3 months ahead of when we get them. Do you rememebr what the world looked like back a few months ago? Not quite clear that demand would be exploding like it is now.

And also, the delay of new processes has also played a role in increasing demand on older parts. Did you say that supply of GTX parts was low? How about 58xx? it is all connected.

[sammorris]

Then why are there no shortages of HD5770s and HD5750s? They're popular cards, so there's no lack of demand there, but clearly, even with a 40nm die, ATI managed to get the supply right. The HD5850s and HD5870s were inevitably going to be in short supply since the yield on 40nm silicon is so small. Still based on the older, and perfectly well supplied 55nm process, I see no reason why the GTX275, 285 and 295, which have never had supply problems up until now, should suddenly all disappear. Demand outstripping supply is merely another way of expressing 'unavailable' but I'm trying to find out why. This is the thing that nvidia are the most cagey about. It would seem utterly illogical to discontinue the top three cards in the product lineup with their successor so far away. It's something ATI decided to do with the 4870X2 vs 5870 a little while back, but that only lasted 6 weeks or so, it's been at least that long since the GTX200 cards disappeared with no sign of them coming back in any force. I can understand christmas rush, but early October rush? With ATI's upcoming DX11 hardware back then causing people to wait? Sorry, but I just don't think it's a case of "we can't make enough to sell to all the people that want them" - I haven't spoken to anyone in a long time that would be buying anything but a GTX295 or a budget card from nvidia. From an outsider's perspective, I would think they're quietly pulling the plug as they're not profitable to make.

[Biscuit]

I'm happy with the whole PhysX being disabled thing, as long as nvidia leave it at that, so it can be re-enabled without too much fuss (though to be fair, a hidden away, but official advanced config menu would be preferable). I just have my fears that as more and more drivers come out, nvidia will end up working harder to stop people from unlocking PhysX on other hardware. That's as good a test of nvidia's corporate attitude as any, in my opinion. Leave the enthusiasts alone and it's all good, make life even harder for them though, and it's the past all over again.

Once again, Piracy is a matter for another thread, but in all honesty, I think there's a bigger threat to PC gaming revenue than that.

My sentiments exactly... If something is not supported then do what you can to make it very clear to the consumer this is the case not block it out all together! Nvidia can say they love gamers and are gamers as much as they want but actions speak louder than words and this driver block speaks a lot louder IMO. I think this has a much worse negative effect on Nvidia's business image than it would if a driver 'accidently' broke the features capability.

[shaithis]

I do expect the community to work to re-enable PhysX. And I as a long term engineer myself I know that it is not overly complex to do so. I say go for it! The reason I am pretty open to this kind of thing is easy to explain. If someone is willing to do a hack to turn something on then they pretty much know that it is unsupported.

You mean, just like if a box appeared in windows stating "This is an unsupported configuration"?

Just admit it's a cop-out to sell more gfx cards. The line about being unsupported is marketing BS.

Funny how you have done nothing to compensate the people like myself who bought a nVidia card for Physx solely......it worked for months then you decided to disable my second card and now I have to resort to 3rd party hacks to use the NVIDIA card I purchased, for the purpose that I pirchased it.

Can you tell me where on the box of your gfx cards it states "Not to be used as a dedicated Physx card when an ATI card is present"?

Thanks for that.....makes me really want to purchase nVidia again........

[jim]

You mean, just like if a box appeared in windows stating "This is an unsupported configuration"?

To be honest they could even just make a really rubbish registry hack that they "don't know about" and get really angry every time it's mentioned in public - i.e. physxdisable 1, and then in-the-know users can switch it to 0 and make it work. Then nobody's irritated, and Rollo and typical clueless users (i.e. the ones that nVidia are trying to worm money out of here) will still buy their GTX 285s and 295s.

I'm still absolutely convinced that the only reason they've done it is because physx is the only advantage that the GTX 2** range holds over the 4*** and 5*** cards - on price and performance they're lacking right now, so the idea of somebody spending a fortune on ATI cards for performance and £30 on nVidia for physx probably doesn't feel like a lot of fun for nVidia.

[Rollo]

To be honest they could even just make a really rubbish registry hack that they "don't know about" and get really angry every time it's mentioned in public - i.e. physxdisable 1, and then in-the-know users can switch it to 0 and make it work. Then nobody's irritated, and Rollo and typical clueless users (i.e. the ones that nVidia are trying to worm money out of here) will still buy their GTX 285s and 295s.

I'm still absolutely convinced that the only reason they've done it is because physx is the only advantage that the GTX 2** range holds over the 4*** and 5*** cards - on price and performance they're lacking right now, so the idea of somebody spending a fortune on ATI cards for performance and £30 on nVidia for physx probably doesn't feel like a lot of fun for nVidia.

NVIDIA owes their stockholders decisions that don't result in PR black eyes, and whether you like it or not, allowing use of configurations that are unsupported could become a PR debacle for them. If problems do occur, it will be NVIDIA and PhysX that are criticized, not ATi. Actually I could see the ATi team saying "This is why we don't approve of proprietary standards".

If you want PhysX, why don't you put pressure on ATi to license the technology or develop their own? Whose fault is it ATi has been too cheap to bring this to market? They were promising GPU accelerated physics way back in X1900 days, yet they stood by while Intel purchased Havok and NVIDIA purchased PhysX. They didn't develop their own tech, they didn't purchase it while their competitors were doing so, and now you blame their competitors? I see.

To me this looks like the Batman AA situation all over again- the guys at ATi sit back and say "We're not going to spend any money or doing any work, but we'll go online and tell the world we've been discriminated against in hopes we can use other company's IP! Our customers will be on board with that as we've left them high and dry!"

I personally like gaming with 3d Vision more than anything in computer gaming now, by far. (yes, including PhysX) What does ATi's "price and performance" offer me? The ability to use some dual pane monitors that haven't been reviewed well.

As far as performance goes, last I checked my GTX295 still slaps a HD5870 around, even though it's an older part. What reason would I have to downgrade? I'd lose my 3d Vision, I'd lose performance, I'd lose PhysX, my Badaboom wouldn't work......great deal there, I'll run right out and buy the inferior product so I can run the 2 DX11 games I don't even own a little faster.

[Biscuit]

ATI havent gone out and told the world of the injustice the gamers using the hardware have!

This isnt about what ATI have or havent done this is about what Nvidia have done. As far as the gamers are concerned by buying a lower-end Nvidia GPU to use for physx what they have basically done is pay for that license and it has been taken away from them, we want a reasonable reason why or an admission that its just to sell more higher end GPUs.

A 5870 does not get 'spanked' by a 295 at all, the performance per watt and per £/$ is far far far superiour and the actual in game performance is not that far apart from each other.

Maybe people wouldnt insult your intelligence if you actually used it to formulate balanced and unbiased discussion instead of spewing pretty much the same crap with every post... You havent even really addressed the ongoing discussion at all you have just skipped back to the beginning and completely missed the point.

go away Rollo we have heard everything you have to say already and know about every piece of technology you have and we are not impressed.

[shaithis]

NVIDIA owes their stockholders decisions that don't result in PR black eyes, and whether you like it or not

Like disabling their cards when they find a competitors in the same system?

allowing use of configurations that are unsupported could become a PR debacle for them. If problems do occur, it will be NVIDIA and PhysX that are criticized, not ATi. Actually I could see the ATi team saying "This is why we don't approve of proprietary standards".

Lets keep playing the "What if" game...even though we are in a situation where you have a load of irrate nvidia card owners already......so to avoid the potential issue of someones nvidia not working in this configuration, nvidia disabled EVERYONES.

Wow, what an excellent way to handle PR! It reminds me of the management that I work for, they would rather you do nothing and report no issues, then do something that makes most peoples experiences better, even though you may have a couple of people effected by it and some issues to smooth out later.

It's all in the name of progress though

If you want PhysX, why don't you put pressure on ATi to license the technology

Because I BOUGHT a nvidia card to do it. No one (nvidia) said anything at the time about it not working or being unsupported.....and guess what? It worked...out of the box.

or develop their own? Whose fault is it ATi has been too cheap to bring this to market? They were promising GPU accelerated physics way back in X1900 days, yet they stood by while Intel purchased Havok and NVIDIA purchased PhysX. They didn't develop their own tech, they didn't purchase it while their competitors were doing so, and now you blame their competitors? I see.

Stop your bloody nvidia fanboyism FFS. You are really starting to annoy me with your crap.

This is not in any way an ATI problem. THIS IS ABOUT NVIDIA TURNING OFF A FEATURE THAT HAS WORKED FOR MONTHS....funny how they took our money, stated nothing about unsupported features, nothing on the box about "not in conjuction with an ATI card" etc etc....just decided at a later date to disable our purchases.

To me this looks like the Batman AA situation all over again- the guys at ATi sit back and say "We're not going to spend any money or doing any work, but we'll go online and tell the world we've been discriminated against in hopes we can use other company's IP! Our customers will be on board with that as we've left them high and dry!"

It's nothing like the Batman AA situation, other then that smelt fishy also. Was nvidia IP in Batman AA or not? One minute nvidia are saying no, then yes.

I guess it all depends on what memo PR are sending out today.......

[sammorris]

I wish 3D Vision wasn't brought into discussion when comparing merits of ATI and nvidia hardware. You Rollo are the sole person I've spoken to that would use 3D vision as anything more than "for the lulz". If 3D natively worked on my nice monitor, rather than a basic 22" Samsung that I have to pay twice as much for in order to get 3D, and I didn't have to spend a motherboard's worth on the glasses, then it would be worth a go, but it'd never see much use, 3D gaming almost makes things too immersive, amazing for a short single player stint, but for long laughable multiplayer games (which is where myself, and I'm willing to bet most PC gamers spend most of their time) it's exhausting and doesn't really add anything.
I like Tap because he's an honest nvidia employee, and is very well spoken and thoughtful about what he posts. I'll be honest, I don't see you at all the same Rollo. You show more of a liking for nvidia than even the company themselves. As you well know, I am more of an ATI man, but I don't praise everything they have ever come out with as the best thing ever. I regularly criticise ATI if I find something to criticise, and I can and I do. Constructively criticising a company for their mistakes can often help get them noticed and fixed. Blindly believing they can't put a foot wrong is what in my mind has as much as any other factor led to some of nvidia's mistakes in the past.
The PR Exec of ATI is on fire right now, hurling accusations at team green left right and centre. For what it's worth, I don't agree with it either, but I do think it's high time people realised that this is a mere reflection of how nvidia have operated for years. They don't just make themselves look good, they make the opposition look bad.

Also, how come this thread turned into an ATI vs nvidia fanboyism war? It was doing fine until you posted...
Also, how come every one of your posts is identical?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

[sammorris]

Nice work on the graphs, shame they're all Crysis, which we know ATI have caught up with now, and suffers less than perfect dual GPU scaling
The red bar in the tom's hardware benchmark though perfectly illustrates why I loathe the GTX295 as a product. So promising, but just when it gets good, it's useless...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Nice work on the graphs, shame they're all Crysis, which we know ATI have caught up with now, and suffers less than perfect dual GPU scaling
The red bar in the tom's hardware benchmark though perfectly illustrates why I loathe the GTX295 as a product. So promising, but just when it gets good, it's useless...

Crysis is a twimtbp game. The HD4870X2 seems to be doing OK according to those graphs too!!

It is seems that Tesla for the HPC market will be released in Q2 2010 according to this press release:

http://www.techpowerup.com/108389/Ne...tor_Of_10.html

[sammorris]

Certainly is TWIMTBP, but look how long it's been out, AMD have had what, 25 driver releases since it came out, maybe more?
I also read about Q2 2010 for Tesla, it raises some eyebrows about the desktop version of Fermi's availability any time before that. I also do wonder exactly how optimised the card will be for games as opposed to stuff like CUDA and Tesla-oriented stuff, even as a desktop product.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Certainly is TWIMTBP, but look how long it's been out, AMD have had what, 25 driver releases since it came out, maybe more?
I also read about Q2 2010 for Tesla, it raises some eyebrows about the desktop version of Fermi's availability any time before that. I also do wonder exactly how optimised the card will be for games as opposed to stuff like CUDA and Tesla-oriented stuff, even as a desktop product.

Nvidia also have had a few driver releases out haven't they?? Of course they also had a better chance to optimise things for their GPU too before release of the game. The same goes for Crysis Warhead which came out late last year.

Also the GTX295 cannot run Crysis and Crysis Warhead very well at 2560X1600 despite both being twimtbp games. What company puts less than 1GB of RAM per GPU on their highest end card for instance??

This GTX295 kicks ATI's butt nonsense is pointless when neither companies single card solutions are capable of running a two year game at 2560X1600 comfortably.

Perhaps GTX300 or whatever it is called will be able to do so but over two years seems a tad silly and by that time probably Crysis 2 will be released and we will be all back to square one again.

With the resolution of even cheap sub £300 monitors increasing, 2560X1600 or intermediate resolutions between 1920X1080 and 2560X1600 are not going to become that big a deal TBH. I wish ATI and Nvidia would stop adding all this value added BS to their cards and put maximum effort into the amount of DirectX compliant processing power in their GPUs especially the ones under £200 within an acceptable TDP.The value added BS only applies to a tiny percentage of all gamers and is more of a smoke screen IMHO.