Video Card News.....

[GT98]

As we wait for news on our beloved G800 to come out comdex, I was over on Voodooextreme.com and noticed that 3Dfx Shitcanned its plans for the Voodoo 5 6000 and licenced the techongly to Quantum3D. I don't know about you but seems like everyone thats competing with Nvdiva can't keep up with them. I see 3dfx going out of business with in a year or so if they don't have a next gen chip out by the spring time, that can keep up with the so called NV20 or what ever. I'm getting tired of the Deafing silence coming from Matrox over the past couple months. Shit I remember hearing something about the G400 in January 1999, in a news article compairing ATI and them and how Ati was the number 1 seller of video cards at that point in time. I guess I'm just getting fustrated that theres no news on anything on the horizion that someone will come out with something better/faster then what Nviada has to offer....

Scott


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Abit BH6 with a Celeron 2-566@877mhz,256mb RAM,G400 MAX,SB Live!, Optiquest V95 19in montor, Asus 40x CD-ROM, Aopen 5x DVD-ROM,HP9110i 8x4x32 CD-RW,SupraMax 56k modem,WinME on Western Digital 30GB drive

[isochar]

The only news about something on the horizon better/faster than what Nvidia has to offer right now is something from Nvidia themselves

The only way anyone will be able to catch up/overcome Nvidia is if, and only if, Nvidia screws up. They've become a huge powerhouse, with money for the best hardware and software engineers. Their R&D gets healthy funding. Together with their consistency, they're in a position to dictate the market. (Which is why ATI/Matrox/3dfx are seeing market loss in their specific markets.)

[DosFreak]

Yep, and the ATI monopoly on laptop's is about to end with the Geforce Go. YEEEEEEPPPEEE!!!!!

[Heiney]

Some guy looked into the 7.x Detonator drivers and found a little switch for NV20Emulation. After setting that to true, he looked at Q3's driver info, it said "BoomBoom/emulated"


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ABIT BF6, Pentium III Katmai 450->663MHz, GW VOS32 Cooler, 256MB SDRAM, Toshiba 6X DVD, Quantum Fireball Plus LM, Matrox Millenium G400 DH @ 160/200, Creative SBLive, Enlight 7237 Case, 300watt PCPC TurboCool PS, and some fun with a Dremel!

[superfly]

I don't really expect that nvidia will be able to keep up the this pace for much longer,in fact they're alredy streching themselves pretty thin as it is.

Think about it,they have anounced an/or released in the last few months alone:

Geforce 2.
Geforce mx.
Geforce ultra(granted just a higher clocked version,but still...)

Anounced the mobile version of the Geforce for notebooks(ummmm...Q3 on a notebook anyone, ).

They're actively working on motherboard chipsets that will be relased in a few months.

Then there's the nv20(due out 3 to 6 months from now)

And finally have the x-box to worry about,again due out in less than 1 years time,wich is especially hard considering were talking about making a graphics chipset that's two generations ahead of what's available now

Talk about a busy scedule... .




[This message has been edited by superfly (edited 15 November 2000).]

[isochar]

The whole GF2 line isn't THAT much of a drain on resources. The first one was, but to get the MX, Go, Ultra, it just required a bit of tinkering. The whole reason they did this is to enter the sacrosanct markets of mobile and business customers. Matrox and ATI will start feeling a lot more pressure from nVidia in the coming year(s). 3dfx is already showing signs of what a tough competitor Nvidia is...

All the money that they have in R&D is gonna pay off. That's why they're the X-Box video card provider. With all that money, I will be surprised if Nvidia ISN'T able to follow through on a 6 month schedule.

Not to mention they have money to spare, so that's why they are going into different markets. (motherboard chipsets)

[This message has been edited by isochar (edited 15 November 2000).]

[dZeus]

I don't believe there is much difference between the TNT-1 chipset and the GeForce2-Ultra. Just added TnL, more pipelines and a more optimized architecture.

I think the Voodoo-1 chip and the VSA-100 chip if further apart from eachother than the TNT-1 and the Geforce-2.

The G400 also is based on the G200 architecture, and I wouldn't be surprised if the G800 also is, with added pipelines, TnL and a different memory architecture (FCRAM).

Why change something that works fine?

I don't think many graphic manufacturers will be developing a completely new architecture that is not tile-based. And tile-based architectures from manufacturers other than NEC/Videologic will take some time to appear (somewhere next year). Until then, my guess is that all the new chips will be built upon older, already existing, architectures

[This message has been edited by dZeus (edited 15 November 2000).]

[alessandro]

One of the problems IMO is that the X-box will use a Nvidia NV25 chipset and thats means that all future PC/X-box games will be HEAVILY Nvidia optimised
And this will mean that Nvidia will have a BIG part of the Graphic cards market.

G800 were are YOUUU!!!!

[giskard]

Don't know if this is old news...
http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2000/11/14/technology/3dfx/
"3dfx goes chip only"

Perhaps they'll get their old market back. Perhaps not.

Then add this to the mix and stir...
http://yahoo.cnet.com/news/0-1006-20...cat_fin.txt.ne
"In the third quarter, Nvidia chips were in 48 percent of all desktop computers, more than doubling its market share from a year- earlier 20 percent, Mercury said. ATI slipped to 34 percent from 39 percent."

If things stay as they are for much longer, it's going to take something pretty significant to dislodge them.

Giskard

[This message has been edited by giskard (edited 15 November 2000).]

[Paulr]

Another reason NVidia are so ahead is that each of the other big graphics manufacturers have shot themselves in the foot at some stage.
3DFX - They were the kind of graphics, when the original VooDoo card hit the market it was amazing, 4MB of pure graphics hardware.
It was followed up with VooDoo 2, WOW, 12MB, nothing can touch this thing.
Then the mistake came, 3DFX had a massive customer base, 3DFX customers could buy a card made by Diamond, Orchid, generic but 3DFX got greedy.
They bought out STB and before you knew it the only way to buy a new VooDoo card was to buy a 3DFX one, no more licensing of chipsets.
Matrox - Well we all respect them (why else would we be here) but they have constantly let people down by not being able to deliver what we want/need.
They seem to be moving to a 12 month+ shelf life on a product in a market too competitive.
The G400/450 might have excellent 2D quality, but it's the 3D market where a lot of the money is.
ATI - In my opinion, the only one of the 'big 3' not to have shot themselves in the foot, missed by inches.
They have what could be a competitive product, but again you have to buy an ATI card to get the chipset and ATI have never been well known for their drivers.
I think NVidia are going to rule the roost for quite a while longer, hell I'll be taking a serious look at the NV20 chipset early next year, because I really can't see the G800 being here any time soon.