NVIDIA Marketing Kicks Into High Gear - Part 4

[Apoptosis]

NVIDIA goes after Intel in Part 4!

Intel puts a new spin on gaming

Intel has updated their web site with some information for the consumer. They talk about the importance of the CPU to the performance of a computer, which is a very old school way of thinking. I watched their flash video and clicked “performance” and “gaming” and I learned the following:

· The CPU controls the performance of “everything you do with your computer”
· Apparently the benchmarks that show little difference in gaming performance between a dual core and quad core CPU are wrong because the CPU impacts gaming performance.
· The CPU gets credit for “immersive 3D gaming”. A CPU has “advanced technologies that allow incredibly immersive 3D gaming experiences”. They also “make graphics come alive”.

Then I went to their extreme gaming section to learn the CPU delivers “like your there, ultra-realistic graphics”.

At best this is confusing to the consumer. Anyone building a PC for gaming will tell you that the most critical component is the GPU. The GPU is responsible for 3D graphics, not the CPU.

Pervasive Parallelism Lab

Last week NVIDIA announced our sponsorship of Stanford University's new Pervasive Parallelism Lab (PPL). The lab is designed to respond to the software industry's current lack of support for multi/many core architectures and help developers to harness the capabilities of these new technologies. Besides Stanford, the backers are Sun Microsystems, Advanced Micro Devices, NVIDIA, I.B.M., Hewlett-Packard and Intel. The New York Times has a nice article on the three labs that are currently work to drive support for multi/many core processors.

“In the computer world’s equivalent of ‘The Amazing Race,’ three rival teams of computer researchers are working on new types of software needed to better use computer chips that can process many tasks at the same time.”

PS3 > Xbox 360 in Europe

PlayStation 3 continues to have great momentum. Despite launching 16 months after Xbox 360, Sony’s NVIDIA-equipped PlayStation 3 has sold more units in Europe. Over five million PS3s are said to be in the wild in Europe.

#17 = NVIDIA

Fortune has a list of the 20 most profitable tech companies. The list includes Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Intel, Dell and NVIDIA.

“The graphics chipmaker rode the videogame boom and demand for 3-D rendering software for a 78% spike in profits to $798 million last year.”

The Wait-ting is O-Ooo--ver!

Intel has finally posted their long awaited DirectX 10 driver. For 2 years Intel has claimed DirectX 10 capability. Now that we have a driver from Intel, and not a leaked driver, let’s see how capable they are. We are going to test only the newest, most powerful chipset that Intel claims DirectX 10 support in.

800 × 600; no AA/no AF;
Call of Juarez 2.5 fps
Crysis 5.6 fps
World in Conflict 7 fps
Bioshock 6.8 fps
Company Of Heroes 8.6 fps

1024 × 768; no AA/no AF
Call of Juarez 2.2 fps
Crysis 5.1 fps
World in Conflict 6 fps
Bioshock 4.5 fps
Company Of Heroes 5.4 fps

Intel’s DirectX 10 claims are only fodder for PowerPoint slides and the misinformation gets repeated in the press and consumers believe it. At 800x 600 with no AA or AF they manage only 8.6 frames per second on their best application. Sub-10 frames per second on any DirectX 10 application is useless. Anyone that wants to use actual DirectX 10 applications needs a PC with a good balance between the GPU and the CPU.

System configuration:

Asus P5E-VM HDI
Intel Core 2 Duo E6550
2048 MB of RAM
Intel G35
Graphics driver 15.8.0.1437

Hybrid SLI News Release


NVIDIA Helps PC Users Go Green with Hybrid SLI

“PC users love the visual realism that high-performance graphics processors give their PCs, but would rather do without the noise and power consumption typical of modern entertainment and gaming PCs. Starting today, however, they can have the best of both worlds, thanks to the new NVIDIA® platforms based on the company’s Hybrid SLI® technology. These new platforms are the foundation for a new breed of PCs that deliver a richer visual experience while reducing energy consumption and costs, fan noise, and even heat. The new technology is available immediately with new NVIDIA nForce 780a SLI and GeForce 8 Series based motherboards.”