Apoppin called it -Nvidia 3D displays at bestbuy

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T2k

Golden Member
Feb 24, 2004
1,665
5
81
it's funny how the anti-3D guys are the pro-AMD (anti-NV) haha lol I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that them AMD don't have 3D??
c'mon tits look better in 3D

Good God... how low this forum will go?
 

T2k

Golden Member
Feb 24, 2004
1,665
5
81
You're welcome to your opinion, but the last time I checked, it seems the industry disagrees with you.

You mean the clueless forum poster industry?



If you can't post anything informative. Stop posting, period.


esquared
Anandtech Forum Director
 
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T2k

Golden Member
Feb 24, 2004
1,665
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By open it means they support anything as long as there exists a 3rd party vendor that choose to implement a solution for them. If such solution is broken for whatever reason, it is the 3rd party vendor's fault, not them.

I am open for people who want to do work for me. I feel no shame of taking its credit either, thank me.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/amd-hd3d/Pages/hd3d.aspx

Wait a minute. Where is the reference to DDD and IZ3D? You know, the name of the 2 3rd party vendors who created the open ecosystem for 3d. Where is it? It must be at the fineprint.

What? Those middlewire works on 4xxx cards. Thank you AMD??? What exactly are you supporting?

Shall I choose the company that proprietarize everything they made, or the company that shamelessly takes credit off 3rd party vendors?

When you are clueless it's safer to ask first - AMD's API is *FREE* to use, as in F-R-E-E vs royalty-based NV crap.




You need to stop insulting members . If you can't post anything informative. Stop posting, period.


esquared
Anandtech Forum Director
 
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T2k

Golden Member
Feb 24, 2004
1,665
5
81
Care to back up that statement?
Just because you say things dosn't mean they are true...at all.

If I have to explain anything that means you have nothing to do with the industry and belong to the first group, sorry.
 

Seero

Golden Member
Nov 4, 2009
1,456
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This whole post is complete, pure, oozing *****. :twisted:
You either have no clue about the subject whatsoever - an impression I get fairly often when I am reading your posts - or you are deliberately trying to fudge Nvidia's clear-cut crippling with this foggy nonsense.
You can say that I am clueless. Whether you are correct is a different story. My post is not direct to you, but it is clear that your post is direct to me, than the post itself.

Nvidia 3D vision is not a non-sense, it is a product you can buy. You can have your opinion about the product itself. So far I see none. Only those who denies the technology keep saying how gimmick it is, in which they are simply denying the entire industry trend. Which is also fine. Then there are people like you who, for no valid reason to bring Nvidia in as if they represents 3d, and start bashing them, again, for no valid reasons.

To summarize your posts in this thread, your post is either trolling others, or bashing Nvidia.
 

Seero

Golden Member
Nov 4, 2009
1,456
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It does WORK!!!! look up nvidia surround in your bible.

Maybe you are confused. Eyefinity doesn't mean multi-display or 3xdisplay. It is a name, made by AMD, referring its new interface support to multi-display. There are lots of things that supports multi-display long before Cypress and/or Eyefinity. Some poster had already mentioned the name, matrox, which is what is known for 3xdisplay and it's good for games like wow. I actually have an old PCI (not PCIe) ATI card that support multi-displays.

What is new about Eyefinity isn't only on the fact that it supports 3+ monitors, but its driver which synchronizes the position of those monitors. This is what triplehead2go lacks. Instead of having multiple disjointed displays, it is one single display with bars in the middle. Not only that, Eyefinity can also align the display in a curve which respect to other displays, making it look even more realistic/seamless. Games like Dirt2 runs extremely well on it. In other words, it is not trying to drive image through multiple displays, but drive multiple displays to form 1 big display. Those who use Eyefinity isn't looking at 3x24" display, but one 180 degree display.

Eyefinity, however, doesn't work on Nvidia because a) the actual unit is embedded into the card, b) it doesn't sync displays that are plugged to Nvidia card, and c) you can't use an Nvidia card as the primary card and use the AMD card has a display hub.

Yes the above is nothing but idiot arguments, but aren't those the same as the PhysX arguments? PhysX runs off CPU by default but nay-sayer likes to claim that it doesn't run with AMD gears. This is equivalent to "Nvidia video card can't run eyefinity because it only has 2 display port" argument, AMD video card can't run PhysX. Those who brought 3 monitors with an AMD card should too realized that they can't use their old AMD card as a hub with a new Nvidia card. I don't see anyone have a problem with that, but I see people have problem not being able to use their old Nvidia card as PPU with their new AMD card. Actually, those who seek for it would have found out how. Games that can support 3D and non-standard display works as long as you have the gears for it. Batman AA is a good example. Eyefinity on Batman is not an issue and AMD did nothing to it and 3D works fine with IZ3D. And yes, there is a big freaking TWIMTBP logo when the game starts.

Back to my question. What is so Open about AMD?
 

busydude

Diamond Member
Feb 5, 2010
8,793
5
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What is so Open about AMD?

Check this out... you are looking at this the wrong way. This might give you some idea about what happened behind the doors.

Preventing Espionage at AMD : How The Eyefinity Project Came to Be

There’s one more thing Carrell Killebrew has done for the world. He’s single handedly responsible for getting Eyefinity included in the Evergreen stack.
It started like this. All GPU vendors go to their customers (OEMs) and ask them for features they’d like to have. The notebook vendors wanted a total of 6 display outputs from the GPU, although they only needed two to be active at the same time. Two paths could be used for LCD panels, two could be used for external outputs (VGA + DVI/HDMI) and two routed to a docking station connector.
Carrell thought it would be a shame to have all of these output pins but not be able to drive all six at the same time. So he came up with a plan to be able to drive at least 3 displays on any Evergreen card. The high end cards would support 6 displays simultaneously.
His desire to do this wasn’t born out of pure lunacy, Carrell does have a goal in mind. Within the next 6 years he wants to have a first generation holodeck operational. A first generation holodeck would be composed of a 180 degree hemispherical display with both positionally and phase accurate sound. We’ll also need the pixel pushing power to make it all seem lifelike. That amounts to at least 100 million pixels (7 million pixels for what’s directly in front of you, and the rest for everything else in the scene), or almost 25 times the number of pixels on a single 30” display.

We’re not quite at 2016, so he had to start somewhere. And that somewhere happened to be with enabling a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 6 displays, per card, for all members of the Evergreen family. Today we know the technology as Eyefinity, but internally Carrell called it SunSpot.
Carrell didn’t want anyone knowing about SunSpot, so he kept it off the Cypress PRS. Through some very clever maneuvering he managed to keep it off of the radar while engineering hammered out the PRS, and even managed to keep it off of the chopping block when the GPU was cut down in size. He knew that if anyone got wind of it, they’d ask him to kill it while the chip was being scaled down. To make matters worse, if anyone outside of a trusted few became aware of it - there was the chance that NVIDIA would have time to copy and implement the feature. It then became Carrell’s goal to keep SunSpot as quiet as possible.
It began with a list. On this list were names of people who needed to know about SunSpot. If your name wasn’t on the list not only did you not know about SunSpot, but no one who knew about the project was allowed to talk about it near you. There was an internal website created that had the names of everyone who needed to know about SunSpot.
Along with the list, came rules.
As I just mentioned, no one on the list could talk about SunSpot in a place where someone not on the list could overhear. And if you wanted to get someone added to the list, it had to be approved - the final say was in the hands of none other than Carrell Killebrew.
The SunSpot engineers went to work on the feature, bringing in others only when absolutely necessary. The team grew one person at a time and eventually plateaued. The software engineers weren’t made aware of SunSpot until the last minute. Carrell only gave them enough time to enable SunSpot, they didn’t get the luxury of advance knowledge.
Carrell went to David Glenn, head of software engineering at ATI and asked him what the latest possible date that they needed to have someone in software working on this stuff. David gave him a date. Carrell asked for a list of names of people who needed to know. David gave him three names. On that date, the SunSpot team called up those three people and said “we need to tell you something”. Needless to say, no one was happy about Carrell’s secrecy. Some of the higher ups at ATI knew Carrell had people working on something, they just had no idea what it was.


When in his own cube Carrell always spoke about SunSpot in code. He called it feature A. Carrell was paranoid, and for good reason. The person who sat on the other side of Carrell’s cube wall left to work for NVIDIA a couple months into the SunSpot project. In all, ATI had three people leave and work for NVIDIA while SunSpot was going on. Carrell was confident that NVIDIA never knew what was coming.
Other than the obvious, there was one real problem with Carrell’s secrecy. In order for Eyefinity to work, it needed support from external companies. If you’ll remember back to the Radeon HD 5800 series launch, Samsung announced thin-bezel displays to be sold in 1, 3 or 6 panel configurations specifically for Eyefinity setups. There was no way to keep SunSpot a secret while still talking to OEMs like Samsung, it’s just too big of a risk. The likelihood of someone within ATI leaking SunSpot to NVIDIA is high enough. But from an employee for an OEM that deals with both companies? That’s pretty much guaranteed.
For a feature like SunSpot to go completely unnoticed during the development of a GPU is unheard of. Carrell even developed a rating system. The gold standard is launch; if SunSpot could remain a secret until the launch, that’s gold. Silver is if they can keep it a secret until they get chips back. And the effort would get a bronze if they could keep it a secret up to tape out, at that point NVIDIA would be at least one full product cycle behind ATI.
Eventually, Rick Bergman, GM of graphics at AMD, committed to keeping SunSpot a secret until bronze, but he told Carrell that when they got to tape out they were going to have a serious talk about this.
Time went on, SunSpot went on, Carrell and crew made it to bronze. The chip had taped out and no one knew about Carrell’s pet project. It got a little past bronze and Rick asked Carrell to have that talk. There were three customers that would really benefit from talking to them about SunSpot, then the killer: it would also help ATI competitively.
Carrell didn’t want to risk tipping off the competition to SunSpot, but he knew that in order to make it successful he needed OEMs on board. The solution was to simply add those at the OEMs who needed to know about SunSpot to the list. The same rules applied to them, and they were given a separate NDA from existing NDAs in place between AMD and the OEM. AMD legal treated SunSpot as proprietary IP, if anyone else within an OEM needed to know about it they needed to first ask for permission to discuss it. To make sure that any leaks would be traceable, Carrell called SunSpot a different name to each of the three OEMs involved.
A few weeks prior to the Cypress launch one of the CEOs at one of the OEMs saw Eyefinity and asked to show it to someone else. Even the CEO’s request needed to be approved before he could share. Surprisingly enough, each of the three OEMs abided by their agreement - to Carrell’s knowledge the tech never leaked.


While NVIDIA demonstrated its own triple-display technology at this year’s CES, it’s purely a software solution; each GPU is still only limited to two display outputs. I asked Carrell what he thought about NVIDIA’s approach, he was honest as always.


ATI considered a software only approach a while ago, but ultimately vetoed it for a couple of reasons. With the software-only solution you need to have a multi-GPU capable system. That means a more expensive motherboard, a more powerful PSU and a little more hassle configuration wise. Then there were the performance concerns.
One scenario is that you have very noticeable asymmetry as you have one card driving one display and the other card driving two displays. This can cause some strange problems. The other scenario is that you have all three displays coming off of a single card, and in alternating frames you send display data from one GPU to the next either via PCIe or a CF/SLI connector. With 6 displays, Carrell was concerned that there wouldn’t be enough bandwidth to do that fast enough.
There were also game compatibility concerns that made ATI not interested in the software approach. Although I was quick to point out that FOV and aspect ratio issues are apparent in many games today with Eyefinity. Carrell agreed, but said that it’s a lot better than they expected - and better than it would have been had they used a software-only solution.
Not to belittle the efforts of ATI’s software engineers here. While Carrell was one of three people originally responsible for SunSpot, they weren’t the ones who made it great. In Carrell’s own words “In the end, I’d say the most key contributions came from our Software engineering team. SunSpot is more a software feature than a hardware one”. ATI’s software team, despite not being clued into the project until it was implemented in hardware, was responsible for taking SunSpot and turning it into Eyefinity.
As for the ridiculous amount of secrecy that surrounded SunSpot? It wasn’t just to keep Carrell entertained. AMD has since incorporated much of Carrell’s brand of information compartmentalization into how it handled other upcoming features. I have to wonder if Carrell somehow managed to derive Apple’s equation for secrecy.
 

SirPauly

Diamond Member
Apr 28, 2009
5,187
1
0
Maybe you are confused. Eyefinity doesn't mean multi-display or 3xdisplay. It is a name, made by AMD, referring its new interface support to multi-display. There are lots of things that supports multi-display long before Cypress and/or Eyefinity. Some poster had already mentioned the name, matrox, which is what is known for 3xdisplay and it's good for games like wow. I actually have an old PCI (not PCIe) ATI card that support multi-displays.

What is new about Eyefinity isn't only on the fact that it supports 3+ monitors, but its driver which synchronizes the position of those monitors. This is what triplehead2go lacks. Instead of having multiple disjointed displays, it is one single display with bars in the middle. Not only that, Eyefinity can also align the display in a curve which respect to other displays, making it look even more realistic/seamless. Games like Dirt2 runs extremely well on it. In other words, it is not trying to drive image through multiple displays, but drive multiple displays to form 1 big display. Those who use Eyefinity isn't looking at 3x24" display, but one 180 degree display.

Eyefinity, however, doesn't work on Nvidia because a) the actual unit is embedded into the card, b) it doesn't sync displays that are plugged to Nvidia card, and c) you can't use an Nvidia card as the primary card and use the AMD card has a display hub.

Yes the above is nothing but idiot arguments, but aren't those the same as the PhysX arguments? PhysX runs off CPU by default but nay-sayer likes to claim that it doesn't run with AMD gears. This is equivalent to "Nvidia video card can't run eyefinity because it only has 2 display port" argument, AMD video card can't run PhysX. Those who brought 3 monitors with an AMD card should too realized that they can't use their old AMD card as a hub with a new Nvidia card. I don't see anyone have a problem with that, but I see people have problem not being able to use their old Nvidia card as PPU with their new AMD card. Actually, those who seek for it would have found out how. Games that can support 3D and non-standard display works as long as you have the gears for it. Batman AA is a good example. Eyefinity on Batman is not an issue and AMD did nothing to it and 3D works fine with IZ3D. And yes, there is a big freaking TWIMTBP logo when the game starts.

Back to my question. What is so Open about AMD?










I think that many consumers may have problems with artificial software lock-outs that may restrict things unfairly. This is fair game and valid arguments to me.
 

Seero

Golden Member
Nov 4, 2009
1,456
0
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Check this out... you are looking at this the wrong way. This might give you some idea about what happened behind the doors.
Interesting read, but I fail to see the open part of AMD. All I saw was an ambition to a proprietary Eyefinity, which contradicts to "AMD is open" concept. Sunspot started as a proprietary ambition which Carrell doesn't want Nvidia to find out, consist of proprietary hardwares and softwares.

To me, this is perfectly okay. They spend resources on it, proprietarize it, produce it, and then farm from it. It wasn't me who is against proprietarizing stuffs that is rightfully belongs to its creator. Those who doesn't like the idea use the word "lock" to describe it. Coincidentally, these people seems to believe that it isn't AMD's goal to proprietize (lock) stuffs. In their words, they are open, while that read clearly showed the fact that Eyefinity was designed to be a proprietary IP since the first day of the original concept.

So what exactly is open about AMD?
 

Creig

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
5,170
13
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Interesting read, but I fail to see the open part of AMD. All I saw was an ambition to a proprietary Eyefinity, which contradicts to "AMD is open" concept. Sunspot started as a proprietary ambition which Carrell doesn't want Nvidia to find out, consist of proprietary hardwares and softwares.

To me, this is perfectly okay. They spend resources on it, proprietarize it, produce it, and then farm from it. It wasn't me who is against proprietarizing stuffs that is rightfully belongs to its creator. Those who doesn't like the idea use the word "lock" to describe it. Coincidentally, these people seems to believe that it isn't AMD's goal to proprietize (lock) stuffs. In their words, they are open, while that read clearly showed the fact that Eyefinity was designed to be a proprietary IP since the first day of the original concept.

So what exactly is open about AMD?
Seero, you're entirely missing the point. EyeFinity requires specific hardware contained within the GPU in order to function. It cannot work on Nvidia cards. There is nothing "open" or "closed" about it. The items we've mentioned (hardware PhysX, anti-aliasing in Batman:AA, possibly 3D Vision as well) are artificially limited through their software.

PhysX - Normally only works in an all-Nvidia system. No AMD card can be present or GPU PhysX fails, even if you have a PhysX compatible Nvidia card installed. Locked by Nvidia. How do we know this? Because it will work properly when the driver is hacked to remove the "all Nvidia" restriction. Also, Nvidia mistaken released a pre-WHQL driver that did not have the "all Nvidia" lockout in place (ForceWare v257.15) and GPU PhysX was found to function perfectly even with an AMD card as the primary renderer.

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/3344/ati_radeon_hd_5870_5970_with_nvidia_physx/index.html

If you haven't heard already, the 257.15 Beta ForceWare driver set from NVIDIA accidently had the ability for ATI users to again use an NVIDIA card as a second to do PhysX. The whole ordeal created a bit of drama around the web; as soon as it was discovered by NVIDIA they yanked the driver and put another one up that disabled the ability.
After a bit of uproar, they put it back up but said that it wouldn't be included in future drivers; they kind of dribbled on about how it's expensive to maintain it for ATI cards. It sounds like a load of crap to be honest, because it's been disabled for ages. We're sure in the last few months they've done nothing and all of a sudden it was slipped in and working fine on ATI cards. I don't know what NVIDIA have against making money, but the whole thing sounds stupid.
GPU PhysX is capable of working with an AMD video card as the primary renderer, but Nvidia has voluntarily chosen to not allow it. That's called an artificial "lock". Plain and simple.


The whole Batman:AA in-game anti-aliasing lockout has once again shown that Nvidia prefers to "lock" everything to their own hardware. When people changed the vendor ID to an Nvidia card, wonder of wonders! The in-game AA menu popped up and it worked perfectly on AMD cards.

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/11/4/batmangate-amd-vs-nvidia-vs-eidos-fight-analyzed.aspx

That's another Nvidia "lock".

As far as AMD being "open", AMD beat Nvidia to market with DX11 cards by about six months. In fact, AMD had working DX11 hardware even longer than that because they had to provide working samples to developers wishing to employ DX11 effects in their upcoming titles. So while Fermi was still being held together with wood screws, AMD cards and engineers were busy helping code the games both Nvidia and AMD users are enjoying today.

If AMD had followed in Nvidia's footsteps, they could have easily stipulated that developers must include a vendor ID lockout (ala Batman:AA) so that any DX11 effects being developed on AMD cards could only be displayed on AMD cards. Nvidia owners would have to fall back to a DX10 path, even if they were DX11 capable. But AMD didn't do that, did they? They let the games go out so that anybody with a DX11 capable card could enjoy the full effects. That's called "open".

Richard Huddy was quoted as saying:

"We haven't locked a single line of code to AMD hardware. No fragments of code anywhere that I am aware of, is locked to any AMD hardware. That is a really big difference in style. Blocking functions that are absolutely standard DX code to nVidia hardware is just putting a games developer, Rocksteady and games publisher, EIDOS - into the middle of kinda marketing battle between two GPU manufacturers is doing disservice to gamers. That's my position, obviously."
So tell us, Seero. Which company do you think "locks" things to their hardware only and which one is "open"?
 

Nebor

Lifer
Jun 24, 2003
29,582
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I don't think any developers would get on board with any "ATI locked" solutions.

I don't know why you're hatin' on NVIDIA. They're just tryin' to make a dollar.
 

SirPauly

Diamond Member
Apr 28, 2009
5,187
1
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So tell us, Seero. Which company do you think "locks" things to their hardware only and which one is "open"?

If I may, it may be deemed admirable your strong convictions and can understand why these things are upsetting to some. But at what cost? Waiting? To be idealistic for all? When I see nVidia, I don't see an idealistic, perfect company that has done every thing correct but what I do see is a hard working company that is willing to risk and innovate and try. They may step on some toes, hurt some feelings but they do risk and try -- may be a protectorate, and personally would like to see GPU PhysX be ported to OpenCL.

You may have to accept what makes them great, is also what pisses some off, too. There are negatives, sure, but there are immense positives, too.
 

Creig

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
5,170
13
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If I may, it may be deemed admirable your strong convictions and can understand why these things are upsetting to some. But at what cost? Waiting? To be idealistic for all? When I see nVidia, I don't see an idealistic, perfect company that has done every thing correct but what I do see is a hard working company that is willing to risk and innovate and try. They may step on some toes, hurt some feelings but they do risk and try -- may be a protectorate, and personally would like to see GPU PhysX be ported to OpenCL.

You may have to accept what makes them great, is also what pisses some off, too. There are negatives, sure, but there are immense positives, too.
So it's all right with you that Nvidia tries to lock everything to their own hardware, even if it could be 100% functional alongside hardware from another manufacturer? ie - AMD? Simply because they have positives to offset the negatives? Seems a rather short-sighted opinion to have. Personally, I would rather see both companies be as open as possible so that I could switch vendors at will with the least amount of hassle. But that's just me.

You're certainly entitled to your own opinion. But perhaps you could answer this:

How would you feel if AMD and Intel suddenly decided that they will no longer allow Nvidia video cards to work on their motherboard chipsets? And just like Nvidia locking out AMD based systems from utilizing GPU PhysX, they would have every right. It's their hardware, after all. I'll bet you wouldn't be saying, "You may have to accept what makes them great, is also what pisses some off, too. There are negatives, sure, but there are immense positives, too".

Nebor - I never thought that any developers would get on board with an "Nvidia locked" solution, either. But RockSteady did it with the in-game anti-aliasing in Batman:AA.
 

SirPauly

Diamond Member
Apr 28, 2009
5,187
1
0
To lock everything? A few exceptions with grey territory turns into locking everything.
 

Teizo

Golden Member
Oct 28, 2010
1,271
31
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The DRM is actually worse then the above, if you have an AMD graphics chipset then physX on GPU is also disabled, so a system with a phenom x6 with an IGP AND a GTX580, where logically the GTX580 will handle all DX calls in a game AND physX on GPU, well the physX on GPU is disabled because an AMD GPU was detected (the IGP)
Why would you have the AMD CCC installed when using a 580 to begin with? Anyway, I have an AMD IGP HD 4200 mobo and my GTX 460 reads in GPUZ as having PhysX enabled just fine. Granted I just have the chipset drivers installed, and not the video driver which would be completely pointless, though.
 
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golem

Senior member
Oct 6, 2000
838
3
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You're certainly entitled to your own opinion. But perhaps you could answer this:

How would you feel if AMD and Intel suddenly decided that they will no longer allow Nvidia video cards to work on their motherboard chipsets? And just like Nvidia locking out AMD based systems from utilizing GPU PhysX, they would have every right. It's their hardware, after all. I'll bet you wouldn't be saying, "You may have to accept what makes them great, is also what pisses some off, too. There are negatives, sure, but there are immense positives, too".

Nebor - I never thought that any developers would get on board with an "Nvidia locked" solution, either. But RockSteady did it with the in-game anti-aliasing in Batman:AA.

How can AMD lock out Nvidia from anything (hardware or software wise) when they don't spend the funds to come up with something that isn't a standard from someone else, that they could control?

For example, they can't lock out Nvidia from their motherboards because they use the PCI-E standard from Intel. Unless they came up with a unique slot, that only they could use, how exactly could they alone (without Intels help) lock out Nvidia?

You're giving AMD credit for not doing something they don't have the ability to do anyway.
 
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railven

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2010
6,604
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How can AMD lock out Nvidia from anything (hardware or software wise) when they don't spend the funds to come up with something that isn't a standard from someone else, that they could control?

For example, they can't lock out Nvidia from their motherboards because they use the PCI-E standard from Intel. Unless they came up with a unique slot, that only they could use, how exactly could they alone (without Intels help) lock out Nvidia?

You're giving AMD credit for not doing something they don't have the ability to do anyway.

My fictional scenario:

AMD announces a new HyperTransport for theri APU line of processors. However, because of how it is designed and made to work it bottlenecks/throttles when ever a none AMD GPU is found in the system and the reason:

"Do to the design of the new Hypertransport, AMD can not test other vendors hardware and implement a fully working system so we'll disable/throttle the connection to ensure best compatability."

That's my scenario of how they can do it if they really wanted to do it. And if they ever did that I'd drop my ATI flag in a heart beat and give up PC gaming forever.

"Two wrongs don't make a right."
 

golem

Senior member
Oct 6, 2000
838
3
76
My fictional scenario:

AMD announces a new HyperTransport for theri APU line of processors. However, because of how it is designed and made to work it bottlenecks/throttles when ever a none AMD GPU is found in the system and the reason:

"Do to the design of the new Hypertransport, AMD can not test other vendors hardware and implement a fully working system so we'll disable/throttle the connection to ensure best compatability."

That's my scenario of how they can do it if they really wanted to do it. And if they ever did that I'd drop my ATI flag in a heart beat and give up PC gaming forever.

"Two wrongs don't make a right."


I'm not sure, but isn't hypertransport something about internal communication and not communication with external cards?

Even if that's not the case, wouldn't it affect all PCI-E cards? For instance would it throttle when any non ATI card is plugged into a PCI-E slot? Say a sound card or a RAID card? Or does it specifically target Nvidia only vendor IDs?

Also I thought for it to be an APU it had to have a graphics component already? Why would you send the extra on an APU when you plan to get discrete graphics anyway?
 
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railven

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2010
6,604
561
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I'm not sure, but isn't hypertransport something about internal communication and not communication with external cards?

Even if that's not the case, wouldn't it affect all PCI-E cards? For instance would it throttle when any non ATI card is plugged into a PCI-E slot? Say a sound card or a RAID card? Or does it specifically target Nvidia only vendor IDs?

Also I thought for it to be an APU it had to have a graphics component already? Why would you send the extra on an APU when you plan to get discrete graphics anyway?

EDIT: And from my reading/understanding HT is an alternative to FBS and works in similar fashion. So throttling the HT B/W would have adverse results on your whole PC. So, in a sense slowing down the whole thing which no one would want.

The APU is the main reason why. Not everyone will use the IGP on the APU, they'll want discrete. But that would be the leverage AMD in my fictious scenario would use to throttle a non AMD GPU dedected to "ensure compatibility."

It was a play on the reasoning nVidia gave for disabling PhysX when a non NVIDIA GPU is dedected as the main output.

It was just a scenario where I thought AMD could use their own technologies to try to muscle such an action (and note because I thought of it does in no way mean I'd support it.)
 

golem

Senior member
Oct 6, 2000
838
3
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The APU is the main reason why. Not everyone will use the IGP on the APU, they'll want discrete. But that would be the leverage AMD in my fictious scenario would use to throttle a non AMD GPU dedected to "ensure compatibility."

It was a play on the reasoning nVidia gave for disabling PhysX when a non NVIDIA GPU is dedected as the main output.

It was just a scenario where I thought AMD could use their own technologies to try to muscle such an action (and note because I thought of it does in no way mean I'd support it.)

I understand what you are saying, but what I am saying is that AMD doesn't really seem to have any technologies that they could lock others out with (without doing harm to themselves in the process). Everything they use seems to be either a standard they don't control, or something that only benefits them anyway.

So when people put AMD on a pedestal for not locking competitors out, I'm saying it might not be because they can and they don't, it could just be because they can't.

Just like with their pricing, they have a reputation as the value leader. But when they could, they keep prices high. For instance, when AMD dual cores were the best game in town, they were priced pretty high, when the 5xxx series was the leader, it went up in price.
 

railven

Diamond Member
Mar 25, 2010
6,604
561
126
I understand what you are saying, but what I am saying is that AMD doesn't really seem to have any technologies that they could lock others out with (without doing harm to themselves in the process). Everything they use seems to be either a standard they don't control, or something that only benefits them anyway.

So when people put AMD on a pedestal for not locking competitors out, I'm saying it might not be because they can and they don't, it could just be because they can't.

Just like with their pricing, they have a reputation as the value leader. But when they could, they keep prices high. For instance, when AMD dual cores were the best game in town, they were priced pretty high, when the 5xxx series was the leader, it went up in price.

But that's what I'm saying - they may not control the patents, but they have a whole platform they can tinker with. And, yes I acknowledge that any tinkering they do is ultimately shooting themselves in the foot, but that is where they can make a similar move.

Imagine - OEM vendors sell people computers with AMD boards with AMD implemented limitations when non AMD products are found on them. A family buys the computer, and the son wants to add a discrete graphics option but due to the handicaps they are locked into an AMD video card regardless of the price/performance an alternative vendor may offer.

This is just me thinking like a greedy business man, and sure it will hurt sales to those in the know, but to those not in the know, the ideology that "A Sony TV works best with a Sony DVD player" will secure a few sales.

Like they say "a sucker is born every minute."

EDIT: And I know we can argue legality of such a move, but it could be turned around the artificial limitation of disabling PhysX on nVidia cards when a non nVidia card is found as the primary display. Maybe something like this should happen so all members know lock outs, or limitations based on vendor IDs are a no-no.
 

golem

Senior member
Oct 6, 2000
838
3
76
But that's what I'm saying - they may not control the patents, but they have a whole platform they can tinker with. And, yes I acknowledge that any tinkering they do is ultimately shooting themselves in the foot, but that is where they can make a similar move.

Imagine - OEM vendors sell people computers with AMD boards with AMD implemented limitations when non AMD products are found on them. A family buys the computer, and the son wants to add a discrete graphics option but due to the handicaps they are locked into an AMD video card regardless of the price/performance an alternative vendor may offer.

This is just me thinking like a greedy business man, and sure it will hurt sales to those in the know, but to those not in the know, the ideology that "A Sony TV works best with a Sony DVD player" will secure a few sales.

Like they say "a sucker is born every minute."

EDIT: And I know we can argue legality of such a move, but it could be turned around the artificial limitation of disabling PhysX on nVidia cards when a non nVidia card is found as the primary display. Maybe something like this should happen so all members know lock outs, or limitations based on vendor IDs are a no-no.

But it's not the same thing. Physx is something extra that the competitors don't have. Nvidia takes it away if you don't follow their rules (I do think taking it away if Nvidia is not the primary card is wrong though). What extra is AMD providing with their platform that you couldn't get from Intel that they could take away? Everything they have is either intrinsic to the platform or would cripple it if you took it away.

Nvidia treats physx the way they do because they think it makes them more money. Do you really think that AMD wouldn't act exactly the same way if they could? I just don't think they have the leverage to do so.