Intel is preparing to annihiliate NVIDIA: the war is on

[HEXUS]

NVIDIA and Intel: someone has to lose.

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[Lord Midas]

Still, if it wasn't for AMDs superior chips Intel would not have come to the table with the Core2Duo. AMD will strike back, much as Intel did, but give it time.

NVIDIA aren't int he same position as AMD as Nvidias core business are graphics and have had so much more experience in this field. In the graphics arena Intel are the small fry.

I'm glad this is happening though. This competition can only be good for the consumer.

Roll on better, faster products at low, low prices

[Hicks12]

but with intel having ALOT more money too invest it will be pretty close, hopefully they just leave amd along because i really want them too get back ontop soon but i hope it kicks nvidia hard and forces them to bring good new technology at a good price(none of this £300 + crap).

[Queelis]

NVIDIA aren't int he same position as AMD as Nvidias core business are graphics and have had so much more experience in this field. In the graphics arena Intel are the small fry.

Mind you, Intel has the biggest share of the graphics pie. Of course, it only sells IGPs, but since many motherboards and laptops come with theirs, they are anything but a small fry in the graphics arena.

[Rosaline]

From what I've seen of Intel's latest product lines, they don't seem to generally be in the "sudden break-in to new market" type. Atom is starting out simple, aimed at UMPCs and small, low power systems. Establishing a name whilst refining techniques seem to be the name of the game.

I wouldn't be surprised if, on launch, it turns out that Larrabee is a Tesla/Quadro competitor first and foremost, with a low performance derivative eventually becoming their new IGP. They need to get developers on board with their new SDK and build up a customer base to get returns as fast as possible, and I suspect the professional rendering market would be the best area for this (and look at all the talk of raytracing, a professional rendering area more than a gaming thing).

The posturing by nVidia is really for the sake of shareholders, and partially to try and goad Intel into revealing more information. nVidia needs to know what Intel is really doing as soon as possible.

The curious aspect to all of this is the x86 side of speculation. Given the high performance focus of nVidia's chipset and GPU ranges, VIA's low power and low cost x86 offerings don't seem to fit. Intel have the high power x86 cornered (and developing a true competitor would be a lot of work), and AMD seem to have the low power side sorted. So what would be nVidia's initial angle if they did get into that sector?

[vicx]

I think Nvidia finds itself in a situation where it is the winner (in terms of growth, marketshare, and profitability) of an era that is coming to an end. This era, however you define it, really extended visual computing into the mass market via 3D gaming. But I think both Nvidia and ATI only really did well by riding the success that an interdependent relationship with Microsoft can bring ... just before it goes bad

If you look back to 95 there were a surprising number of 3d graphic card companies around. 3Dfx, Rendition, ATI, Matrox, Number Nine, NVIDIA, PowerVR, S3 and 3D Labs for starters. The 3d add-on board market was very new and fragmented with a lot 3D API's including OpenGL and a not very well regarded Direct3D. Next up - 3D API war. SGI gets shafted and Microsoft releases DirectX 7, then Nvidia gets in bed with MS for DX8/Xbox and then it's ATI's turn for DX9/Xbox360 and they all made lots and lots of money.

Until Vista came along.

For gaming Vista has not been good and Microsoft probably isn't that concerned because they have 360s to sell anyway. Of more concern for Nvidia and ATI are changes to hardware support because they are a little too reliant on Microsoft not shifting its API to favour other solutions (like CPU parallelism for physics, sound and video for example - how very Xbox360). Creative's hardware advantage with the X-FI soundcard was basically gutted on Vista and maybe thats the kind of thing could happen to others.

What is interesting is that Nvidia and AMD/ATI are now a little more interested in the advantages of opensource hardware drivers than they used to be. There might be some platform anxiety happening because Microsoft isn't sharing information on what they are doing with Intel. And then Microsoft releases the report blaming Nvidia for Vista crashes ... ouch.

Nvidia opening up a can of whoop ass is probably all that is left to them. What they really need is a decent platform. I say forget DX10 but give John Carmack whatever fancy new API extensions he needs to make the Rage engine and then help Apple launch a gaming Mac. Now that would be whoopen some ass.

BTW this is all heresay.

[looney]

very intersting, i really hope amd/ati make a comeback, then ill switch back to them

[-iceblade^]

i like this... i don't doubt that Intel could do very well with Larrabee... after all, look how they did with C2D... nVidia could be up for some tough competition, and i hope AMD make the comeback they should make given this opportunity...

[greenalien]

Nvidea have another trick up their sleeve though :

TG Daily - Nvidia GPU physics engine up and running, almost

Integrating physics into their graphics software is a shrewd move that's going to keep them ahead of the game for some time to come.

[Michael H]

I suspect the battle isn't over the dicrete GPU market but rather HPC - larabee is unlikely to surplant nvidias discrete cards in the first few generations, but it could prevent CUDA from being used as a HPC solution - why port your software to CUDA when you can run your x86 code on larabee?

[TooNice]

Integrating physics into their graphics software is a shrewd move that's going to keep them ahead of the game for some time to come.

In my view, that move will provide a negligible amount of benefit. Due to the limited gaming support, I see integrated physics more as a tie-breaker than anything else.

In my opinion, Intel will probably come with a competent first generation solution - but not one that will be king from day one. Just like nVidia's first chipset, or Microsoft first entry into the console market. Their 'warchest' probably allows them to give them a couple of attempts to create a financially self-sustaining product. But in the short run, I doubt that they will come up with something amazing unless they managed to obtain key engineers from former ATI and nVidia (and they are not bound to non-compete agreements). In the short term, money is not substitute for experience (though it can buy the time to gain those experience). Something like C2D took them years of experience and attempts to get 'right'. It would be quite something if they can come up with something better than what AMD came up with the purchase of an experienced discrete card maker.

[Ciber]

I can only hope that the increased compettion should lead to incresingly better products and prices for us, the consumers.