Who's waiting for Nvidia Fermi

[DanceswithUnix]

At least the G92 is still a useful lump of silicon for basing things around, I really can't blame Nvidia for milking it for all its worth. I am still managing to get along with mine, and come to think of it, I only personally know one person who owns anything better (I think he has a 4890).

Remember the Geforce4 440MX? A dressed up DX7 part with the same series number as the up to date DX8 shader parts. Now that was a very smelly item to curl into the mid market.

[scaryjim]

Remember the Geforce4 440MX?

Remember it? I owned one

From memory it wasn't a bad card in its own right, either - although i never had the chance to compare it to a "proper" GeForce 4. Then a year or so later I picked up an nforce 2 matx mobo with a GeForce4 MX igp. Used to handle Neverwinter Nights @ 1024x768 under Linux a treat

But I digress I'm only jealous because I'm still stuck with a G80...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Remember it? I owned one

From memory it wasn't a bad card in its own right, either - although i never had the chance to compare it to a "proper" GeForce 4. Then a year or so later I picked up an nforce 2 matx mobo with a GeForce4 MX igp. Used to handle Neverwinter Nights @ 1024x768 under Linux a treat

But I digress I'm only jealous because I'm still stuck with a G80...

My first computer was a P4 2.53GHZ notebook with a Geforce 440 Go graphics card which was the second fastest notebook graphics card available at the time behind the ATI Mobility Radeon 9000.

[Pob255]

Yes the GeForce4MX was a great little card, I "upgraded" to a fx5200 so I could (barely) play Halo, only then did I realise that while my fx5200 had twice the memory (128mb) it was no better performing at all.

Although I could overclock the pants off of the fx5200 and then it was a little faster.

The thing is, we need some high priced cards at launch to pay for R&D and dev relations.

I'm not saying we shouldn't, however as the majority of money to be made is not the small number of high end cards that are sold but the large quanity of mid ranged cards that is where the proftis really come from.
So unless nvidia can come up with a card to really dominate the mid range (like they did with the g92 gpu) they'll lose out on a lot of money.

All the recent tweek the card, rebrand and relaunch in a lower postion has not really helped nvidia's image atm.

I'll also admit that the underlying market price of components has gone up which has probably pushed the price to make the cards up slightly.

Then again from the consumer side, it's far harder for me at least to justify a large spend on a new graphics card that I don't really need atm.
heck I'm still slowly collecting bit to do an upgrade to an i5 system.

[Rollo]

That's harsh but I agree with the sentiment. It puzzles me why it took you 263 posts to work that out!

But consider this... If I don't want 3D vision, why should I pay nVidia for the feature when I buy one of their cards? The price of their cards will include a component for the R&D they spent on that feature [I'm not inviting a discussion here regarding the merits and pitfalls of licensing].

I'm not speaking for Hexus here; I for one have different values when considering a graphics card purchase, and power / noise are features of all graphics cards that I highly prize. If you don't give a toss about those features, then good for you!

I didn't mean it to be harsh, only observational.

As for the rest:

I don't think anyone should pay for something they don't want. If you watch the videos on youtube and don't think PhysX is for you, and you know you'll never buy 3d monitors, you probably should save a few bucks and grab an ATi card. There's nothing wrong with them beyond the lack of extra features, they offer good bang for buck.

[Bugbait]

I didn't mean it to be harsh, only observational.

Well, hardware costs more in nominal terms in Europe compared to the US so things like value for money matter to a lot of people here.

I don't think anyone should pay for something they don't want. If you watch the videos on youtube and don't think PhysX is for you, and you know you'll never buy 3d monitors, you probably should save a few bucks and grab an ATi card. There's nothing wrong with them beyond the lack of extra features, they offer good bang for buck.

Extra features are only valued by those that want them, for actual use or bragging rights. The fact is 3D is in its infancy at the consumer level at the moment. Sure, 3D will very likely have mainstream appeal in the future but it's simply not there yet. Why pay for early generation, "2.5D" now unless you really covet it? More of my friends own Nvidia hardware than ATI yet none of them use the additional features. Sure, I've tried WoW in 3D/stereoscope or whatever you wish to call it and it's horrible. Every single one of my WoW friends agrees. None of them use it.

It would be interesting to have a poll on who actually games in 3D around here...

[dangel]

Problem really is that nVidia are making things like physx obscure - by limiting it to their own hardware they've opened the door for someone like microsoft to simple step in and implement a generic physics engine in directx which replaces it. And in all honesty that would be far better for everyone (bar nVidia) as we can then potentially choose which hardware does the work - cpu, gpu, physx discrete card etc. Worse, it forces 'bolt on' mentality for the developers - rather than basing games entirely round physx it's tacked on to the game when nvidia fronts the money (no doubt).

We need to realistic - people buy discrete graphic cards based on the big visual stuff - how fast does the game run/good does it look - and narrow market features are completely off radar for a lot of midrange card buyers because they either can't afford exotic 3d monitors (or more likely they already have a monitor) or can't afford to throw away fps to physx (which does eat into my 280 @ 2052x1158 in batman for example). Then we have people like valve/crytek who show us we can have physics in games just on cpu..

I certainly wouldn't shun ATI for my next high end card because it lacks either physx or 3d monitor support..

[Rollo]

Problem really is that nVidia are making things like physx obscure - by limiting it to their own hardware they've opened the door for someone like microsoft to simple step in and implement a generic physics engine in directx which replaces it. And in all honesty that would be far better for everyone (bar nVidia) as we can then potentially choose which hardware does the work - cpu, gpu, physx discrete card etc. Worse, it forces 'bolt on' mentality for the developers - rather than basing games entirely round physx it's tacked on to the game when nvidia fronts the money (no doubt).

We need to realistic - people buy discrete graphic cards based on the big visual stuff - how fast does the game run/good does it look - and narrow market features are completely off radar for a lot of midrange card buyers because they either can't afford exotic 3d monitors (or more likely they already have a monitor) or can't afford to throw away fps to physx (which does eat into my 280 @ 2052x1158 in batman for example). Then we have people like valve/crytek who show us we can have physics in games just on cpu..

I certainly wouldn't shun ATI for my next high end card because it lacks either physx or 3d monitor support..

What's the difference if MS steps in a makes a universal standard someday?

NVIDIA users will get that, plus all the PhysX games out currently and in development. They still get the most games with physics, either way.

PhysX and 3d do eat into framerate, everything that makes games look better does. One of my monitors is 25X16, that eats into framerate a lot. Doesn't mean games don't look freaking awesome at 25X16.

[MadduckUK]

What's the difference if MS steps in a makes a universal standard someday?

then it can start to be integral to games and not "flappy cloth"

[Terbinator]

then it can start to be integral to games and not "flappy cloth"

Theres non-flappy cloth ?

[DanceswithUnix]

Yes the GeForce4MX was a great little card, I "upgraded" to a fx5200 so I could (barely) play Halo, only then did I realise that while my fx5200 had twice the memory (128mb) it was no better performing at all.

Although I could overclock the pants off of the fx5200 and then it was a little faster.

I'm not saying we shouldn't, however as the majority of money to be made is not the small number of high end cards that are sold but the large quanity of mid ranged cards that is where the proftis really come from.
So unless nvidia can come up with a card to really dominate the mid range (like they did with the g92 gpu) they'll lose out on a lot of money.

All the recent tweek the card, rebrand and relaunch in a lower postion has not really helped nvidia's image atm.

I'll also admit that the underlying market price of components has gone up which has probably pushed the price to make the cards up slightly.

Then again from the consumer side, it's far harder for me at least to justify a large spend on a new graphics card that I don't really need atm.
heck I'm still slowly collecting bit to do an upgrade to an i5 system.

But Geforce4 MX was a re-branded Geforce2.
They shrank the die, tweaked the memory controller, grafted on a more up to date mpeg decoder but at its heart it was utterly out of date. However, it did push a lot of pixels per second for the money and was very popular despite its total inability to render pixels like a Geforce4 Ti.
Some of the recent re-branding has involved less effort on Nvidia's part, but that doesn't avoid the fact that re-branding isn't new or for that matter quite popular with the punters.

[MadduckUK]

Theres non-flappy cloth ?

sticky cloth and stretchy cloth

[Biscuit]

sticky cloth and stretchy cloth

Are we still talking about graphics cards here

[MadduckUK]

yup!

[dangel]

What's the difference if MS steps in a makes a universal standard someday?

NVIDIA users will get that, plus all the PhysX games out currently and in development. They still get the most games with physics, either way.

Read my post again - you missed the point(s) - i'm not saying nVidia users wouldn't benefit too, think about it.

PhsyX might as well be called 'Glide' if you know your history.. ironic given what happened to 3dfx.


And hey, let's not forget the cobwebs - it's not just about flappy cloth kids.

[Rollo]

Read my post again - you missed the point(s) - i'm not saying nVidia users wouldn't benefit too, think about it.

PhsyX might as well be called 'Glide' if you know your history.. ironic given what happened to 3dfx.


And hey, let's not forget the cobwebs - it's not just about flappy cloth kids.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGCZtXg5LyA

Dark Void is the latest PhysX games I'm playing. As the video shows, it's pretty obvious that PhysX enhances the gaming experience significantly.

You can discount PhysX all you like, but the cloth, cobwebs, destructable environments, smoke, particles, debris, weather, etc. all make for a more immersive environment and move gaming beyond the daysof yore where shooting a rocket into a box at best left a dark stain on the box, and cobwebs were rigid pictures of cobwebs with the clipping on the picture turned off. (so you walk through them like a ghost passing through walls)