Interview with nvidia's Rob Csongor

[Gstanfor]

Interview with nvidia's Rob Csongor

 

[Gstanfor]

IGN Australia has an interview up with nvidia's Keita Lida.
interview

It covers a good variety of topic - vista drivers, crysis, DX10 & Vista/XP, PS3 & RSX, Ubisoft & lack of AA in recent games.

 

[eplebnista]

Interesting links! :thumbsup:

 

[Acanthus]

LMAO at the comments at the end of the article.

So sad sometimes

 

[tuteja1986]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
IGN Australia has an interview up with nvidia's Keita Lida.
interview

It covers a good variety of topic - vista drivers, crysis, DX10 & Vista/XP, PS3 & RSX, Ubisoft & lack of AA in recent games.

lalal !!

 

[BFG10K]

Largely hollow words until nVidia gets their drivers together.

I'm playing through DE:IW again - image quality is stunning but I don't think it's runing as well as it should be on my 8800 GTS.

 

[tuteja1986]

ohh BFG10K your late to DE:IW :!! Playing it again ?

Also don't take any real notice of what Nvidia australia says... They hire ex Altec wholesaler employee to be product manager. They suck at their job as they don't crap about Nvidia motherboard , Nvidia GPU or ATI. Altec is sort the biggest Computer wholesaler company in Australia so their employees have good links with all the retailers.

 

[josh6079]

IGN AU: Can you comment on what happened with NVIDIA's Vista drivers? You guys have had access to Vista for years to build drivers and at the launch of Vista there were no drivers. The ones that are out now are still basically crippled. Why did this happen?

Keita Iida: On a high level, we had to prioritise. In our case, we have DX9, DX10, multiple APIs, Vista and XP - the driver models are completely different, and the DX9 and 10 drivers are completely different. Then you have single- and multi-card SLI - there are many variables to consider. Given that we were so far ahead with DX10 hardware, we've had to make sure that the drivers, although not necessarily available to a wide degree, or not stable, were good enough from a development standpoint.

If you compare our situation to our competitor's, we have double the variables to consider when we write the drivers; they have much more time to optimise and make sure their drivers work well on their DX10 hardware when it comes out. We've had to balance our priorities between making sure we have proper DX10 feature-supported drivers to facilitate development of DX10 content, but also make sure that the end user will have a good experience on Vista. To some degree, I think that we may have underestimated how many resources were necessary to have a stable Vista driver off the bat. I can assure you and your readers that our first priority right now is not performance, not anything else; it's stability and all the features supported on Vista.

It seems like they are trying to fault ATi for taking the time to "optimize and make sure their drivers work well on their DX10 hardware when it comes out". Basically, they're faulting ATi for making sure they give a quality product instead of half of one that was rushed out the door to reclaim the performance crown.

I didn't know nVidia had access to Vista "for years". They claim that stability is their first priority, but can't even get their own SLi functioning correctly. It's very similar to how ATi was treating their Crossfire this last year before Cat 6.7's and above.

 

[nullpointerus]

Originally posted by: josh6079

IGN AU: Can you comment on what happened with NVIDIA's Vista drivers? You guys have had access to Vista for years to build drivers and at the launch of Vista there were no drivers. The ones that are out now are still basically crippled. Why did this happen?

Keita Iida: On a high level, we had to prioritise. In our case, we have DX9, DX10, multiple APIs, Vista and XP - the driver models are completely different, and the DX9 and 10 drivers are completely different. Then you have single- and multi-card SLI - there are many variables to consider. Given that we were so far ahead with DX10 hardware, we've had to make sure that the drivers, although not necessarily available to a wide degree, or not stable, were good enough from a development standpoint.

If you compare our situation to our competitor's, we have double the variables to consider when we write the drivers; they have much more time to optimise and make sure their drivers work well on their DX10 hardware when it comes out. We've had to balance our priorities between making sure we have proper DX10 feature-supported drivers to facilitate development of DX10 content, but also make sure that the end user will have a good experience on Vista. To some degree, I think that we may have underestimated how many resources were necessary to have a stable Vista driver off the bat. I can assure you and your readers that our first priority right now is not performance, not anything else; it's stability and all the features supported on Vista.

It seems like they are trying to fault ATi for taking the time to "optimize and make sure their drivers work well on their DX10 hardware when it comes out". Basically, they're faulting ATi for making sure they give a quality product instead of half of one that was rushed out the door to reclaim the performance crown.

I didn't know nVidia had access to Vista "for years". They claim that stability is their first priority, but can't even get their own SLi functioning correctly. It's very similar to how ATi was treating their Crossfire this last year before Cat 6.7's and above.

I'm not sure where you're getting the "they are trying to fault ATi" part. ATI's difficulties (or the lack thereof) in dealing with DX10 hardware + Vista launch do not actually make a difference one way or the other in terms of nVidia's progress on the same front. nVidia is just saying that ATI looks better right now because they simply have less things to juggle.

I tend to agree with your assessment of nVidia, otherwise.

 

[Nightmare225]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Largely hollow words until nVidia gets their drivers together.

I'm playing through DE:IW again - image quality is stunning but I don't think it's runing as well as it should be on my 8800 GTS.

DE:IW?

 

[josh6079]

I'm not sure where you're getting the "they are trying to fault ATi" part. ATI's difficulties (or the lack thereof) in dealing with DX10 hardware + Vista launch do not actually make a difference one way or the other in terms of nVidia's progress on the same front. nVidia is just saying that ATI looks better right now because they simply have less things to juggle.

Yeah. To me it seemed as if they were being asked a hot question and started pointing at ATi saying, "We've got more on our plates than them, okay? Give us a break!" While that's true, IGN didn't ask them how much more they have to juggle than ATi, they asked them, why aren't they juggling? What's the hold up? You know your own resources, it's your job to support them, what's the deal?

To me it just read like Keita dodged the question only to give a PR about how much more they have going than the competition, when the question didn't ask about the competition at all.

It's nice that they are claiming to be stability-focused in their drivers, but their current actions speak louder than any one of the Rep's. words.

 

[Gstanfor]

nvidia (like they have done basically since DX6) shoulders a large part of the burden of getting developers familiar with DX10 (ATI's efforts in this area have been/are virtually non-existant by comparison). At a high level, with vista nvidia believes the needs of the developer community overrides the needs of the consumer community so far as drivers are concerned.

When ATI/AMD contributes as much to the development community as nvidia has over the years, then there fans might be able to start criticising, but not before.

 

[BFG10K]

ohh BFG10K your late to DE:IW :!! Playing it again ?

Late? Nah, I'm playing it through for the fourth time. :thumbsup:

DE:IW?

Deus Ex Invisible War.

 

[josh6079]

At a high level, with vista nvidia believes the needs of the developer community overrides the needs of the consumer community so far as drivers are concerned.

True, they can support who they want as well as they want.

So why can't gamers criticize their lack-luster support? Regardless as to what standing ATi is in?

The crappy support is due to nVidia caring about one user-base more than another. It has nothing to do with ATi.

 

[redbox]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
nvidia (like they have done basically since DX6) shoulders a large part of the burden of getting developers familiar with DX10 (ATI's efforts in this area have been/are virtually non-existant by comparison). At a high level, with vista nvidia believes the needs of the developer community overrides the needs of the consumer community so far as drivers are concerned.

When ATI/AMD contributes as much to the development community as nvidia has over the years, then there fans might be able to start criticising, but not before.

No, how about a consumer can criticize when a company has taken on too much for their resources and failed. While it's nice to hear that Nvidia pushes forward with develpment for DX10 content, it's a bit disappointing to hear that they leave their customers hanging. Ford pushes forward with racecar design, but you don't hear them blaiming that burden for faulty production.

Honestly, either release a stable working product or keep it off the shelfs untill one can be released.

The only thing ATI has to do with the equation is they are a company that has done that -- kept a product off the shelfs. Now, wiether or not it will be a stable, working product when it arives has yet to be seen. Given the delay i certainly hope so.

 

[Gstanfor]

Without developer support there won't be Dx10 games, without Dx10 games there is no need for consumer support.

 

[redbox]

I'm not saying Nvidia shouldn't support Developers. I'm saying Nvidia SHOULD support it's consumers. There is a difference, and if done right there shouldn't be a need to compromise one for the other. Sounds like Nvidia just plain bit off more than it could chew.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

ohh BFG10K your late to DE:IW :!! Playing it again ?

Late? Nah, I'm playing it through for the fourth time. :thumbsup:

DE:IW?

Deus Ex Invisible War.

Was this as good as the first Deus Ex?? I've never played this one. IIRC the first one got better reviews.

 

[Gstanfor]

Its a good game, but nothing like the original, which caused a lot of people to have hissy fits over it (just like Origin fans didn't like U9: Ascension because it was so different from their beloved U7: Blackgate).

 

[BFG10K]

Was this as good as the first Deus Ex?? I've never played this one. IIRC the first one got better reviews.

I actually preferred it to the original but I seem to be a minority.

 

[Gstanfor]

Most people enjoyed the depth, complexity and flexibility of the original. IW is barely more complex than say Hexen II by way of comparison.

 

[nullpointerus]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
Without developer support there won't be Dx10 games, without Dx10 games there is no need for consumer support.

Then why push DX10 when they did? G80 smoked the competition in DX9; there was no great need to go to DX10 to sell large numbers of the product.

 

[Gstanfor]

Because they could? I don't know that its exactly been "pushed" either except that nvidia have basically said "by the way G80 is DX10 compliant".