nVidia: The next Creative?

[Shudder]

Does anyone else see the possibility of it going this way?

I'm not really an nvidia fan, but damn, they just seem to be dominating.

Unlike creative, who had to sue their way to market domination, nvidia just seems to be doing everything right. New products fast enough, great driver support, frequent updates, great features. Compatibility. Innovation.

Maybe ATI can keep up. Who knows, 3dfx didn't. But what if ATI goes away.. I doubt Kyro can do it on its own. Well, I don't expect ATI to go away, I just don't see them being a factor unless they get their act together.

But has all this support, innovation, etc from Nvidia come about because of somewhat having competition? If there were no radeon I'm sure the det 4 drivers wouldn't have been bothered.. But since a Radeon could hang with or beat a GF2, they needed to boost it some. With the 8500 coming, the det4s made the GF3 even more powerful and probably helped give it the lead.

But what in a couple of years.. will they be like creative and just put out drivers every so often, only if enough people complain about a lack of functionality (though that doesn't seem to make creative put out drivers..). Will the next GF card be the last GF card for a while and they'll just milk it for all it's worth like the Live! series?

I'm just speculating.. it's hard to say with nvidia going into the MB chipset market, they'll still have to be competitive there, but I'm wondering where graphics will be headed.

 

[gariig]

If Nvidia starts to slack, then ATI, the new 3dfx company(the old engineers), Kyro could take the spotlight! However, they have been pretty consisten with their new product cycles and major driver updates. Also, with the chipsets, they are going for 12-18 months for a new chipset instead of 6 month cycles for Video cards. Also, ATI has a pretty big hold on the OEM arena and mobile GPUs...I don't see ATi going to the way of the do-do anytime soon. The other area Ati spanks nVidia is in the AIW, that thing is just sweet and nVidia hasn't made a descent AIW competitor yet.

Just my .02 cents. But I do hope competition keeps up for better performance and lower costs to us Hardware Enthusiasts!

Gariig

 

[Finality]

Actually ATI just lost top spot for systems they are now behind Nvidia as for mobile GPUs ATI shouldn't be too cocky. GeForce2Go is the choice for a mobile GPU ATIs Radeon version is apparently as good as its old Rage128 in terms of performance.

 

[Soccerman]

heh, sorry Finality, but I gotta call you on that.. where do you see proof of the mobile Radeon being the same as a Rage128?

 

[Shudder]

From what I remember reading, the mobile radeon smoked the geforce..

But that's for another thread



<< If Nvidia starts to slack, then ATI, the new 3dfx company(the old engineers), Kyro could take the spotlight! >>



Of course they won't NOW, but if they become the only player, that's what I'm worried about.

But if it does happen, so far I haven't seen anything from Nvidia that says they're doing things unethically.

 

[EdipisReks]

Shudder the mobile radeon that smoked the geforce2 go is the 64 MB mobile radeon 7500, which isn't out yet and probably won't be for a while. the current mobility radeon is much slower than the geforce2go, as it doesn't incorporate t&l and has limited bandwidth and fillrate.

--jacob

 

[Sugadaddy]

nVidia can't be the next Creative, they release drivers more than once every 3 years...

 

[AA0]

mobile Radeon 7500 is extremely fast, the best gpu on the mobile front by far, like comparing the MX to a GF3. No notebooks seem to carry it, but they should be out soon, it was previewed a long time ago. The orginal mobile Radeon was quite good, but a little slower than the Go.

ATI as a company won't die, if they run into money problems they'll fall back onto OEMs that made them all the money in the first place, its a cheap way to run, and profitable.

 

[Soccerman]

EdipisReks, again, where does this info come from? I don't even know if Anandtech did anything on these chips.. can you provide a link to back this info up (and provide more data)?

 

[Leokor]

<< Does anyone else see the possibility of it going this way?

I'm not really an nvidia fan, but damn, they just seem to be dominating.
>>


Yes, nVidia is expanding into new areas. But in each of them, it faces strong competition that is bound to keep them on their toes. ATI in the graphics market, Creative in the sound card market, a lot of strong competitors in the chipset market. You need not be afraid.

Leo

 

[RudeBoie]

I think you have to wonder, is Nvidia really that good, or is everyone just THAT bad? Excellence is really all comparative.

While their driver teams seem good, I wonder if they're really that good other from the big release of the Detanator drivers they have everu 6 months. They just have all these driver releases, usually unofficial, that generate differences in benchmarks and games, and I think this can have the effect that they're doing SOMETHING, which is better than ATI and Creative, who can look like their doing nothing. From my experiences with Nvidia cards, I've never heard a great driver experience where something totally improved by gameplay. Usually improvements are in the 3-4 fps range, which I'd rather have than not, of course, but usually while something may be faster, something else will be slower or some other problem results.

With Creative, I'm not always sure that they need to release more driver updates. Most things work pretty well from Creative out of the box, and I kind of think of this like 3DFX. 3DFX rarely had new drivers because their initial driver quality was usually considered high (compare it to ATI and NVIDIA).

 

[Noriaki]

Just a note on ST Microelectronics.

Well...lets let the numbers speak for themselves shall we?
Biz.yahoo.com STM page

See that 28.135B market cap?

nVidia has only 7.175B Market cap.

Now Market cap isn't the only stat of importance, I'm just using it to point out that STM is a rather huge company. They aren't trying very hard in the graphics arena, and they have much much more to do, but STM is not going to dissappear anytime soon

Here's ATi for interest's sake. They aren't nearly as big as STM cap wise, and quite a bit smaller than nVidia...

ATi could concievably be run mostly into the dirt by nVidia....but I doubt STM could. Though who knows what STM would do...probably not compete with nVidia in the high end.

Anyhow, I'm not sure what would happen if nVidia was the only player in the game, I'm just pointing out that it will be a fair bit of time before such would actually happen.


Edit:
You know...it might not be so bad to have nVidia slow down a bit...it might be nice to be able to buy a GeForce4 and have it current for 18 months or two years. Save me a bunch of money on upgrades, and it would give games a chance to catch up to the hardware.

Although becoming the next creative wouldn't be so hot...

 

[Soccerman]

RudeBoie

While their driver teams seem good, I wonder if they're really that good other from the big release of the Detanator drivers they have everu 6 months. They just have all these driver releases, usually unofficial, that generate differences in benchmarks and games, and I think this can have the effect that they're doing SOMETHING, which is better than ATI and Creative, who can look like their doing nothing. From my experiences with Nvidia cards, I've never heard a great driver experience where something totally improved by gameplay. Usually improvements are in the 3-4 fps range, which I'd rather have than not, of course, but usually while something may be faster, something else will be slower or some other problem results.

so you're saying that beyond the release of the Detonators, they don't increase performance much at all with the little things? I guess that's pretty true, but I DO think they have some bug fixes (though I can't think of what kind of bug would justify all these billions of leaked drivers), but at least they ARE squeezing the performance out of their cards.. ATI's Radeon line never got too much more performance (then again, there wasn't that many reviews comparing the Radeon to a GTS recently on the same OS, CPU, and game that an old review had, so we can't be sure) after it got launched. it was beating the GTS which had similar memory limitations, but it didn't continue to do so, with the release of the next detonators soon after the Radeons launch..

sometimes you the leaked drivers cause a problem, but I think newer releases fix these for the most part. I don't think nVidia's drivers are perfect, I just think that they're actually making some headway in performance and compatability.

 

[flexy]

<< ... With Creative, I'm not always sure that they need to release more driver updates. Most things work pretty well from Creative out of the box ... >>



() When i got my first creatiev SB live 2 or 3 years ago...the drivers were a NIGHTMARE ! Uninstalling the liveware and re-installing a newer version was one of the worst things i did since i own computers..WHEN [finally] the stuff was installed right then it was running fine for a long time [until the next driver update came out]. They make ok soundcards....but for sure they are not famous for their drivers !

() the creative webcam III i got from creative (AND the drivers for it)....were almost a even bigger NIGHTMARE ! The webcam almost was unusable because of the drivers, bugs etc.....one of my worst peripheral purchases i ever did if you compare it to eg. Kodak/Intel/3Com webcams....

Still...i'd ALWAYS get a creative soundcard....dont ask me why...maybe 'because everyone else has one, too'...... and if everything works out of the box you're off fine. If not (eg webcam III ) and/or you want to update drivers then prepare for some major headaches...

 

[flexy]

and as far as for nvidia....i think its not always about 'squeezing out a bit more performance' and then releasing new drivers.....i think that many drivers are released because of implementation of new features with each new release of DirectX for example....

Anyway i dont have anything against 'nvida as new Creative'...since i have very GOOD experiences with them ever since i got my first Riva128 card....never had any BIG issues with their official detonators (betas excluded ....and their products are usually innovative and reliable.

If they are as successfull with their nforce chipset, on-board sound solution etc. then they could truly become new monopolists...but a company first has to earn such a position...and that's usually done by the right blend of quality, pricing, support etc....

 

[Leon]

I am sure you guys realize that Intel owns 40% of graphics market?

 

[Karaethon1]

As long as nVidia keeps releasing plenty of driver updates and keeps up with the 6 month product cycle, they won't become creative.

 

[Shudder]

I'm kinda with noriaki on the timeline issue.. They could slow down a little bit just so games can stick witha certain hardware for a little bit. I'm hoping the Xbox does some of that, keeping games within a certain range so you don't need to keep upgrading all the time.

 

[aka1nas]

Actually, I think it would be better if they released cards faster than slower. When newer cards come out, the older cards get cheaper, which means that they will get into OEM systems sooner. That means that game developers will start using the features of those cards sooner because they always try to program for the lowest common denominator. If Nvidia moved to a 12-18 month video card cycle, then it would prob take about a year for their cards to get substancially cheaper because their won't be anythin better out there. Which means that entire families of cards may NEVER get cheap enough to make it into the OEM boxes that the majority of people buy. This is all assuming that Nvidia had no competition anymore, which would prob be why they would move to a 12-month cycle.

 

[Demonicon]

You anti ATI guys must like spending money. When and I emphasize WHEN ATI goes above and beyond Nvidia, all video cards will go down in price, the reason video cards are the only expensive computer parts still is because Nvidia has no competition, now that ATI has risen from the dead, prices are gonna plummet