Creative to enter Graphics industry

[EMAN]

Sure are a lot of bitter people in this thread. Creative makes computer hardware, you people act like they kill babies for sport.

These bitter people don't really know how the industry works. They just look at the small picture instead of actually opening their eyes for once.

 

[Sunner]

EMAN, I think you dont quite understand.
OEMs take time before they accept new players, and Creative sure is a new player when it comes to making their own cores.
Enthusiasts dont OTOH, but they dont wanna put up with crappy drivers, a department in which Creative's reputation is less than stellar.

And as to why people are bitter, maybe it has something to do with Creative's past(and present from what I've heard, I havent owned a Creative card since my Live!).
What do you expect?

 

[Instagib]

Well when Creative puts out there new GPU you can tell us how it is EMAN.

 

[EMAN]

EMAN, I think you dont quite understand.
OEMs take time before they accept new players, and Creative sure is a new player when it comes to making their own cores.
Enthusiasts dont OTOH, but they dont wanna put up with crappy drivers, a department in which Creative's reputation is less than stellar.

I already answered this from my previous post.


I'm not saying they'll come out and start competing with Nvidia and ATI off the bat but they will slowly but surely compete with these two in the near future. Look at Nvidia and the days of Riva128. They didn't do so good at first but they had money to compete with 3dfx and destroyed them at the end. If you have money and power you can get engineers to build you anything you want and write drivers for you too.

As for OEM's well Creative is not a new player to OEM market. They have sblaster cards in almost any OEM machine. To influence OEM's trying out their new card would be easy task if their chip performs.


Well when Creative puts out there new GPU you can tell us how it is EMAN.

Damn your really trying to aggitate me aren't you. If you have nothing informative to say then shut your hole please.

 

[jaeger66]

<< Really, than why did other chipsets didn't have any problems? >>



They did, which you'd no doubt know had you ever visited Creative's SBLive newsgroup.

 

[jaeger66]

3Dfx is the Netscape of graphics. Nobody destroyed them, they destroyed themselves.

 

[Instagib]

I don't care if they have the best engineers. I still wouldn't buy. I won't keep my hole shut either.

 

[EMAN]

They did, which you'd no doubt know had you ever visited Creative's SBLive newsgroup.

Oh really why can't you still name any chipsets other than VIA that had problems with sblive. All hardware have their quorks and eeks okay. Why don't you start blaming Nvidia for having infinite loop bug. Geez you guys have big problems with sblive than why do you have their card. Nobody forced you to buy their card.

 

[jaeger66]

<<

Oh really why can't you still name any chipsets other than VIA that had problems with sblive. >>



Intel 810, 815, 820, 840.

 

[EMAN]

Intel 810, 815, 820, 840.

jaeger66, since I'm not familiar with the problems please enlighten me instead of just naming chipset names.

What kind of problems did these chipsets have with sblive?

I don't care if they have the best engineers. I still wouldn't buy.

Okay good for you. I didn't ask you if you wanted to buy. I asked what your thoughts on Creative acquisition of 3dlabs not if your biased on Creative or not.

 

[jaeger66]

Crackling and skipping mostly. I'm not aware of any data corruption, perhaps since Intels's MCH/ICH design removes the PCI bus from the north/south bridge link but that's just a guess. All chipsets work this way now BTW. Creative went 17 months without updating the Live drivers, only the release of WinXP forced new ones out. Unacceptable for a card with so many unresolved issues. Same thing with the Audigy, they're using the squeal of death issue as an excuse to sit on their asses and not release anything. The last drivers came out 10/25(the 1/21 ones are the same release with one fix for Japanese Windows) and there are plenty of issues, many of them trivial but annoying, that need to be fixed. ATI writes bad drivers, but at least they keep them coming and fixes are made.

 

[merlocka]

If you don't have nothing smart to say then don't post.

that should be "if you don't have anything smart to say..."

oh, the irony of it

 

[spanky]

But they do have power in the graphics industry. They have been a 3rd party chip seller for years until they stopped. Before Visiontek and Gainward, Creative sold more 3rd party chips than anybody else. They have brand recognition.


well... to this day, they are still noted for having crappy drivers. brand name recognition? i guess you could say that. and u mentioned earlier that creative knows what gamers want. r u sure about that? if they were so sure, why did they exit the graphics market in the first place?

I'm not saying they'll come out and start competing with Nvidia and ATI off the bat but they will slowly but surely compete with these two in the near future. Look at Nvidia and the days of Riva128. They didn't do so good at first but they had money to compete with 3dfx and destroyed them at the end. If you have money and power you can get engineers to build you anything you want and write drivers for you too.

this is true, but i see a few problems. if creative were to come out with their own gpu... unless it's priced []ihella[/i] low... the OEM's won't touch it with a twenty foot pole. in the retail sector, i don't really see them having much hope, uless they really have something mind blowing up their sleeves. and even if they did, with their shotty driver support, all they'll ever have is potential instead of performance. you mention how much money creative has, but you do realize that ati and nvidia have pretty big wads themselves right?

 

[Rand]

I don't see that Creative's poor reputation for driver supports has any impact in this matter. I find it extremely unlikely that driver support will be anything other then stellar for Creative's 3DLabs boards.
Creative certainly is not about to write the drivers for those cards, that will be up to 3DLabs driver division.
And as I'm sure we're all well arare that 3DLabs driver support in fantastic. One doesnt become successful in high end 3D rendering market without extremely solid, reliable, high performing, and well features drivers.

Just as Creative didnt do much with the drivers for their nVidia boards, and 3dfx boards... they won't have much to do with the drivers for their 3DLabs boards.

3DLabs is established and extremely highly respected manufacturer, they've been at the top of their field for years on end.

I have serious doubts as to how well 3DLabs technology will scale down to the mainstream and their previous efforts to hit upon the mainstream have met with very little success.
The attributes of a mainstream gamers card is remarkably different from what's needed in the professional market. The traditionally fillrate/bandwidth-demanding 3D gaming market had long been the biggest weakness of 3DLabs. Even the multi-thousand dollar 332Mpixels/s WildCat III 6210 is completely obliterated by the the GF2 MX400 in gaming. Granted those cards are for drastically different uses, and the underlying architecture is quite different... but even it 3DLabs own market segment they've always been weak in that area against the competition that FireGL/Elsa/ and formely E&S and Intergraph offered up. Now they'll be pushed up against competition that absolutely excells in the areas 3DLabs is weakest.

The Permedia and Create3D lines of 3DLabs cards werent able to stand up for long in the mainstream market, and their technology has devloped even further from the typical mainstream development since then.
3DLab's drivers are top notch stable, with superb optimisations for any and all attributes, and many varied and through application specific optimizations, and they've typically yielded performance levels that are amazing even considering the hardware their working on.

But- It is clear that the drivers and the architecture are not made for gaming.
Underlying Windows driver architecture is likely to be outstanding... their clearly years ahead of nVidia/ATi in that respect. They were instrumental in the development of rasterization and triangle setup in hardware. Bandwidth efficiency is fantastic with their automatic texturing system that gained them so much accolades with the Permedia3/OxygenVX1. They were heavily involved in the development of Heidi, and they've long been a huge part of the development of OpenGL, and are the prominent figureheard of the upcoming OpenGL 2.0.
They had tremendously powerful fixed function T&L (see the gamma and gamma2 chips) well before nVidia even thought of playing with T&L, they have also been using high precision pipelines for over 5 years before nVidia and the like even attempted it.

I've not the faintest doubt the have the engineering talent to develop amazing hardware and stellar drivers.
But DirectX even remotely decent DirectX support still evades them (though they are making marked improvements of late) and their hardware while highly developed and outstandingly innovative bares little resemblance to that which is needed in the mainstream.

Oh, FWIW, Creative has developed 3DLabs products before with the original GLint chip which Creative marketed as a hardware 3D accelerator years before edfx started the 3D Gaming revolution. And given that Creative has been investing in the company for the last 3 years they probably already owned near a majority share in it.

As long as Creative leaves 3DLabs alone to do what their best at.... they may just pull out some highly competitive hardware if they can get over their past troubles entering the mainstream. And I sincerely doubt Creative would be so foolish as to think they can do better then 3DLabs in the developmental process. I'm betting Creative handless the marketing and business ends of the matter and leaves 3DLabs to handle the hardware itself.

 

[Demonicon]

Lets just be honest, if Creative releases a card that blows the GeForce Ti4600 out of the water, most will switch to the high performance Creative card. Product loyalty is a tough sell in the computer industry. Performance, however, is easy to sell.

It's all about performance, and if you have the performance and can produce you have the market. It's as simple as that.

 

[Steven the Leech]

The more companies in the graphics field the better IMHO,lots of negative comments but in the end you don`t have to buy Creative products,at least we will have more choices available which`s not a bad thing.




Amen if they have a good product I will sure use it, outside of my mousepad i havent had a product that is trouble free.

 

[EMAN]

Crackling and skipping mostly. I'm not aware of any data corruption, perhaps since Intels's MCH/ICH design removes the PCI bus from the north/south bridge link but that's just a guess. All chipsets work this way now BTW. Creative went 17 months without updating the Live drivers, only the release of WinXP forced new ones out. Unacceptable for a card with so many unresolved issues. Same thing with the Audigy, they're using the squeal of death issue as an excuse to sit on their asses and not release anything. The last drivers came out 10/25(the 1/21 ones are the same release with one fix for Japanese Windows) and there are plenty of issues, many of them trivial but annoying, that need to be fixed. ATI writes bad drivers, but at least they keep them coming and fixes are made.

That is really trivial at most. Maybe it's from the speakers or from interference. Not all 810, 815, 820, 840 do this.



that should be "if you don't have anything smart to say..."

oh, the irony of it

That has nothing to do with the subject.

You know exactly what I meant. Why does grammer matter. It's not my first language. I don't have to explain myself to you and maybe I was high when I was writing it. Gimme a fookin' break dude.




creative knows what gamers want. r u sure about that?

No I'm not sure but they do well for themselves don't they


if they were so sure, why did they exit the graphics market in the first place?

to acquire their own graphics chip maybe.

you mention how much money creative has, but you do realize that ati and nvidia have pretty big wads themselves right?

I'm not saying Creative will own the graphics market. I just agree with what this article said. Creative owns the sound card market. It's been like that for decades while Nvidia's been on top for what few years and now ATI is gaining back some of their lost market from Nvidia. No one will know who will stay on top but if Creative brings new graphics card that is cheaper and better performing than it's good for everybody. Why is that I mention Creative and you guys just attack?

 

[jaeger66]

<<
That is really trivial at most. Maybe it's from the speakers or from interference. Not all 810, 815, 820, 840 do this. >>


Trivial? It isn't trivial to those who had it. Try playing a game with what sounds like Rice Krispies in the background. Speakers or intereference? So on a VIA board it's their fault but on an Intel board it's bad speakers? I'm sorry, but if 3 years of people having these problems didn't discover that solution I'm going to going to go out on a limb and say that wasn't the issue. And not all 686B boards had problems either.

 

[spanky]

<< No I'm not sure but they do well for themselves don't they >>



not all ppl who have a soundcard in their computers are gamers.



<< I'm not saying Creative will own the graphics market. I just agree with what this article said. >>



from your first post, i got the feeling you ("Very nice article about creative labs and the graphics industry and their acquisition on 3dlabs and how they will dominate because of their market power.") thought creative would kick everyone's ass in the graphics market, because they practically own the soundcard market. i'm saying one has nothing to do with the other. but if their driver track record is any indication of the future, creative is gonna be in for a rough ride.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

This is serious trouble for both ATI and Nvidia. ATI could very well lose their top spot in the crappy drivers department, and it's a given that Nvidia would lose it's spot as the No.1 top most uninnovative manufacturer.

 

[merlocka]

Gonad - Thanks for ruining my my perfectly crappy evening with that wonderful sarcasm. First laugh I've had all day.

 

[Rand]

<< ATI could very well lose their top spot in the crappy drivers department, . >>



Right, 3DLabs, the corporation that has led the high end 3D rendering market for years, and has some of the most talented developers in the world. Attains CSV certification with ease while FireGL initially struggled with that in the FireGL8700/8000, and nVidia has been having difficulty with since Elsa dropped out.
They have quite possibly the most fully develkoped underlying Windows driver architecture of any manufacture-graphics or otherwise.
Drivers that contain superb optimisations for any and all attributes-3DNow,SSE SMP etc. and many varied and through application specific optimizations. They've long been a huge part of the development of OpenGL, and are the prominent figureheard of the upcoming OpenGL 2.0... clearly they've no lack of expertise with the second most commonly used graphics API in the mainstream.

Clearly it's completely logical to assume they will have terrible driver support.

<< and it's a given that Nvidia would lose it's spot as the No.1 top most uninnovative manufacturer. >>



Oh, this one is lovely.
I'm not even going to comment on this one, 3DLabs has made a habit of integrating 3D features in their products years before nVidia and ATi touch such ideas.

Naturally we will all assume they are completely uninnovative


Creative has been successful because they have a histroy of making extremely inteligent marketing and business decisions. They single-handedly control the mainstream audio market. Besides companies like VisionTek, their Retail presence in the 3D graphics market has always been among the highest prior to their dropping out and then recently re-entering.

I sincerely doubt, that Creative is going to be so blatantly stupid as to forget all of 3DLabs past efforts with driver development and decide they themslves should produce the drivers instead of 3DLabs. They always stuck to reference nVidia and 3dfx drivers, why should they change that trend now?

I have my own complaints about Creative's products, but like them or not... business wise they've always made intelligent decisions and their success speaks volumes for that.
It would be incredibly uncharacteristic of Creative to be so incedibly foolish as to not let 3DLabs do what their best at---developing excellent and innovative hardware with top notch driver support.
Creative will stick to what they know-marketing/PR, and the business side of the graphics.


I have extreme doubts as to how well 3DLabs hardware will scale to the mainstream, and I'm somewhat iffy about initial DirectX support. I also think their weakest parts are the areas that are most influential to success in the mainstream.
You can see my earlier post in which I lay out numerous aspects in which I'm wary of their chances.
I certainly am not at all convinced they are a serious threat to nVidia and ATi.

But it's sheer insanity to think for a split second they have 'no' chance.
A corporation like 3DLabs should NEVER be counted out.

Continue to mock 3DLabs innovation and driver development.... but one look at the high end shows that their supposed lack of innovation and poor driver support has made them one of the most influential companies in the world in graphics.

 

[Sunner]

3DLabs is an extremely potent company no doubt, but what Im worried about is Creative ruining it.
It wouldn't be the first time, look at Compaq and DEC, DEC's EV6 family was the highes performing CPU's out there for a long long time, and they're still ahead of most others.
Compaq management clearly ruined what DEC had, and these days, Alpha is at the end of the line.

Poor management can ruin everything no matter how talanted the technicans are.

 

[BFG10K]

Very nice article about creative labs and the graphics industry and their acquisition on 3dlabs and how they will dominate because of their market power.

I don't think they'll dominate anything unless they can beat nVidia at their own game, namely execution, the quality and speed of hardware, and driver support. And I just don't see that happening.

Regarding drivers, I can't really comment on the Live!/Audigy cards but the SB128 PCI drivers are absolutely superb. If Creative writes drivers like that for their video cards then at least one of the three bases will be covered by them.

That is really trivial at most.

How is that trivial? You've got a product that doesn't work and you call it trivial? If you bought a car and the motor didn't work would you call that trivial? Of course not.

A sound card is supposed to play sound cleanly and not cause any system problems If my sound card crackled or caused reboots it would go straight back to the store, "trivial" or not.

It's stupid Via's fault. They just can't write drivers. Once they wrote the drivers it was fine after that.

While it's clear that VIA's chipsets have hardware bugs it's also clear that the Live! has a strange tendency to cause problems that other sound cards don't cause. That is, the problems sometimes vanish when the Live! is replaced with another board.

And all you folks who love those loop/freeze/kick back to desktop/blackscreen and reboot vidcards will all abandon nvidia like rats leaving a sinking ship, having instantly forgotten your past fickle loyalty.

What on earth are you talking about? If you want me to abandon nVidia you're going to have to give me something better than listing a heap of fictional problems or problems that are not even caused by nVidia.

 

[skace]

I don't get it... if CL owns the audio market, how come everyone and their mom recommends a Santa Cruz?

As far as CL entering the graphics industry, thats all fine and dandy, I won't pass judgement on something that hasn't come out yet. But I will laugh at the idea of them entering and "owning" or "dominating" nVidia, Matrox, ATi, etc instantly.