NVIDIA to Acquire ULi Electronics, a Leading Developer of Core Logic Technology

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
Oh, I think you are wrong there BFG10K (was wondering when you were going to crawl out from under your bridge).

People like to be somewhat futureproof and they like new features, even if they don't necessarily use them right away. That's a big part of the reason why "Joe Average" was more likely to pick up a nVidia card than an ATi one during the x8xx era. The same situation is playing out with SLi. people may not necessarily need SLi, but they still purchase the SLi motherboard "just in case", so they can be prepared down the track.

Why wouldn't they purchase "video encoding" "just because"? It's not like they know the difference... well say they do...they still aren't getting it either way because of false claims.

I still can't believe you think the false advertising was fine. Video encoding may be important for some people, just like someday Shader Model 3.0 may be (if either isn't already).

 

[Gstanfor]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
Oh, I think you are wrong there BFG10K (was wondering when you were going to crawl out from under your bridge).

People like to be somewhat futureproof and they like new features, even if they don't necessarily use them right away. That's a big part of the reason why "Joe Average" was more likely to pick up a nVidia card than an ATi one during the x8xx era. The same situation is playing out with SLi. people may not necessarily need SLi, but they still purchase the SLi motherboard "just in case", so they can be prepared down the track.

Why wouldn't they purchase "video encoding" "just because"? It's not like they know the difference... well say they do...they still aren't getting it either way because of false claims.

I still can't believe you think the false advertising was fine. Video encoding may be important for some people, just like someday Shader Model 3.0 may be (if either isn't already).

Video encoding can be undertaken by the cpu or another addon card. It isn't essential to have it on the GPU and it isn't the main reason why the video card was purchased anyway. In contrast, SM3.0 is important, because it is already in use and it is the current high end graphic specification (actually SM3.0 itself isn't as important as the features it defines, as SM3.0 is DX specific but the features are present in both DX and OGL).

 

[fierydemise]

Good move by nVidia, Ulis been on a role recently and no reason not to capitalize on it. As for this hurting ATI I'm not sure, I figure Uli will keep supplying south bridges for ATI but it does leave ATI without an insurance measure if something goes wrong with their chipsets.

 

[BFG10K]

People like to be somewhat futureproof and they like new features, even if they don't necessarily use them right away

You mean like PureVideo? Especially since the feature was actively advertised and listed on GPU boxes as well. Even today does it do what it initially advertised?

That's a big part of the reason why "Joe Average" was more likely to pick up a nVidia card than an ATi one during the x8xx era. The same situation is playing out with SLi. people may not necessarily need SLi, but they still purchase the SLi motherboard "just in case", so they can be prepared down the track.

Actually a real Joe Average doesn't even know what SM 3.0 or SLI is but it's amsuing to see you downplaying nVidia's false advertising while slamming ATi in a round-about way for not having SLI or SM 3.0 back in the day.

 

[johnnqq]

Originally posted by: AmdInside

Originally posted by: gunblade
Well, now Ati has to work on their own south bridge instead of enjoying a fallback partner.

I was just going to say that. Its a good thing for Microsoft that they went with SiS chipset and not ULi for Xbox 360 or else they might experience "shortages" all of a sudden.

microsoft would then buy nvidia...HAHAHA

 

[BFG10K]

Video encoding can be undertaken by the cpu

Just like SM 3.0 loop unrolling onto the CPU? Yet when ATi allegedly did it you slammed them for not having a "true hardware solution". But now it's okay for a hardware advertised feature of nVidia's to be done on the CPU?

Also when nVidia released dual-core drivers that offloaded various vertex loading onto the CPU I don't recall you slamming them either. Why the double standard?

My opinions are my own. I have no business affiliation with either AEG or nVidia.

It's a good thing you've got that in your signature, otherwise people might think you're nVidia biased. :roll:

 

[nRollo]

LOL People will never let the PVP thing go. Here it is a year and a half later and some are still posting "Remember when nV screwed us out of some WMV decode?!?!?"

We all need a hobby I guess.

 

[Aonghasan]

I thought this was our hobby.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

People like to be somewhat futureproof and they like new features, even if they don't necessarily use them right away

You mean like PureVideo? Especially since the feature was actively advertised and listed on GPU boxes as well. Even today does it do what it initially advertised?

That's a big part of the reason why "Joe Average" was more likely to pick up a nVidia card than an ATi one during the x8xx era. The same situation is playing out with SLi. people may not necessarily need SLi, but they still purchase the SLi motherboard "just in case", so they can be prepared down the track.

Actually a real Joe Average doesn't even know what SM 3.0 or SLI is but it's amsuing to see you downplaying nVidia's false advertising while slamming ATi in a round-about way for not having SLI or SM 3.0 back in the day.

I can picture you working at BestBuy ( I honestly don't care where you work or what you do) in the PC section, telling everybody, "The PVP is broken on all nvidia cards, and than you will never need SM3.0". That particular BestBuy would probably have dust collecting on any nv based card's boxes sitting on the shelves and any PC that had an nv graphics board in it. But the latter half of your sales pitch would suddenly dissapear with the release of X1x00 series.

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Perhaps nVidia, like 99.999% of the general population who bought 6800 based cards couldn't giuve a rats arse about video encoding on what is primarily a 3D gaming device?

99.999% of the general population doesn't give a rats arse about SLI or SM 3.0 either so what's your point?

Oh, I think you are wrong there BFG10K (was wondering when you were going to crawl out from under your bridge).

People like to be somewhat futureproof and they like new features, even if they don't necessarily use them right away. That's a big part of the reason why "Joe Average" was more likely to pick up a nVidia card than an ATi one during the x8xx era. The same situation is playing out with SLi. people may not necessarily need SLi, but they still purchase the SLi motherboard "just in case", so they can be prepared down the track.

Actually, Joe average was more likely to pick up a 512mb gf6200 than a 128mb 6600gt, because Joe average doesnt know any better. Moreover, SM3 on the 6800 cards didnt help them much, since in SM3 games like Farcry and Chaos Theory x800 cards are still faster running SM2 than the 6800's running SM3 with the same visual features enabled. This "just in case" mentality is also catching up to the peeps who bought sli boards and a 6800gt, and now are ditching the 6800gt for a 7800 card because adding a second 6800gt is not a good choice no matter how you look at it from a cost, performance and features perspective - Poll. Does Joe average know about the shimmering issue on Nv cards? Does he know that the promised PVP encoding is broken? Does he know that since a few months ago the x800 cards can now do transparency AA, while the 6800's cant even do gamma-corrected MSAA? Of course not, all he knows is that some "well-respected member of a furum" told him to buy Nv cards because they have SM3 and it will be useful in future games. Then a future game like FEAR comes out and he's now figuring out which IQ features he can turn down to get playable fps - so much for the SM3 hype. :roll:

 

[Gstanfor]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Video encoding can be undertaken by the cpu

Just like SM 3.0 loop unrolling onto the CPU? Yet when ATi allegedly did it you slammed them for not having a "true hardware solution". But now it's okay for a hardware advertised feature of nVidia's to be done on the CPU?

Also when nVidia released dual-core drivers that offloaded various vertex loading onto the CPU I don't recall you slamming them either. Why the double standard?

My opinions are my own. I have no business affiliation with either AEG or nVidia.

It's a good thing you've got that in your signature, otherwise people might think you're nVidia biased. :roll:

Actually it was SM2.0 loop unrolling, not SM3.0, though I'd be fascinated to know if ATi were still doing this.

As for nVidia's dual core drivers and vertex processing, the CPU was working in conjunction with the GPU, nVidia never shut down the vertex processors on GPU and used only the CPU to do vertex processing.

 

[Gstanfor]

Originally posted by: munky

... Does he know that since a few months ago the x800 cards can now do transparency AA, while the 6800's cant even do gamma-corrected MSAA? ...

You are dead wrong, Munky - all NV4x cards are capable of gamma corrected MSAA, you can activate the feature through nHancer.

 

[fierydemise]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor

Originally posted by: munky

... Does he know that since a few months ago the x800 cards can now do transparency AA, while the 6800's cant even do gamma-corrected MSAA? ...

You are dead wrong, Munky - all NV4x cards are capable of gamma corrected MSAA, you can activate the feature through nHancer.

Munky is talking about Joe average, someone likely to be using official nVidia drivers not someone likely to use nHancer.

 

[Gstanfor]

Originally posted by: fierydemise

Originally posted by: Gstanfor

Originally posted by: munky

... Does he know that since a few months ago the x800 cards can now do transparency AA, while the 6800's cant even do gamma-corrected MSAA? ...

You are dead wrong, Munky - all NV4x cards are capable of gamma corrected MSAA, you can activate the feature through nHancer.

Munky is talking about Joe average, someone likely to be using official nVidia drivers not someone likely to use nHancer.

The feature is present in all recent (release 75.xx and onwards, perhaps earlier) drivers, official or not. nHancer does not create the capability, it merely exposes the capability built into the driver.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by: fierydemise

Originally posted by: Gstanfor

Originally posted by: munky

... Does he know that since a few months ago the x800 cards can now do transparency AA, while the 6800's cant even do gamma-corrected MSAA? ...

You are dead wrong, Munky - all NV4x cards are capable of gamma corrected MSAA, you can activate the feature through nHancer.

Munky is talking about Joe average, someone likely to be using official nVidia drivers not someone likely to use nHancer.

Hasnt that been updated with a driver release?
And transparcey AA is different to Adpative AA.

 

[Creig]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
Your dodging and weaving won't get you anywhere, Creig, like the fanATic in [blah, blah, blah]

Well, obviously you've now run out of valid arguments and are just falling back on meaningless rhetoric. I've shown you some facts proving your claims false and given my opinion on others.

Let me know when you want to start talking actual facts again and save the rants for somebody else.

 

[dug777]

As has been said, less competition is always bad

Was looking forward to seeing ULi step up to fill the gap SiS and Via have left....

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster

Originally posted by: fierydemise

Originally posted by: Gstanfor

Originally posted by: munky

... Does he know that since a few months ago the x800 cards can now do transparency AA, while the 6800's cant even do gamma-corrected MSAA? ...

You are dead wrong, Munky - all NV4x cards are capable of gamma corrected MSAA, you can activate the feature through nHancer.

Munky is talking about Joe average, someone likely to be using official nVidia drivers not someone likely to use nHancer.

Hasnt that been updated with a driver release?
And transparcey AA is different to Adpative AA.

AAA acomplishes the same thing as TRAA - it applies antialiasing to transparent textures.

 

[BFG10K]

I can picture you working at BestBuy ( I honestly don't care where you work or what you do) in the PC section, telling everybody, "The PVP is broken on all nvidia cards, and than you will never need SM3.0".

If I worked at BestBuy I wouldn't even mention PVP unless asked. I don't actually care about it that much, I just bring it up because of the rampant double standards with regards to paper features. I mean nV trolls were slamming ATi's HDR + AA and even screenshots didn't count because the new Far Cry patch isn't availble yet. But when PVP isn't available for months that somehow doesn't count.

As for nVidia's dual core drivers and vertex processing, the CPU was working in conjunction with the GPU,

Same as ATi.

nVidia never shut down the vertex processors on GPU and used only the CPU to do vertex processing.

Neither did ATi. What's your point?

 

[Gstanfor]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

I can picture you working at BestBuy ( I honestly don't care where you work or what you do) in the PC section, telling everybody, "The PVP is broken on all nvidia cards, and than you will never need SM3.0".

If I worked at BestBuy I wouldn't even mention PVP unless asked. I don't actually care about it that much, I just bring it up because of the rampant double standards with regards to paper features. I mean nV trolls were slamming ATi's HDR + AA and even screenshots didn't count because the new Far Cry patch isn't availble yet. But when PVP isn't available for months that somehow doesn't count.

As for nVidia's dual core drivers and vertex processing, the CPU was working in conjunction with the GPU,

Same as ATi.

nVidia never shut down the vertex processors on GPU and used only the CPU to do vertex processing.

Neither did ATi. What's your point?

The point is simple. Part of the SM2/3 spec is vertex looping feature. On nVidia GPU, that looping is entirely hardwared accelerated, on ATi GPU's it is not hardware accelerated since the GPu must rely on the CPU to unroll the loop for it.

nVidia's dual core driver that you are so keen to bash (don't forget ATi also has a dual core driver in the works...) adds additional vertex processing power on top of what the GPU already offers - it does not perform parts of the vertex processing that should be hardware accelerated on the GPU (but are missing in the case of ATi's GPU's).

 

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by: munky

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster

Originally posted by: fierydemise

Originally posted by: Gstanfor

Originally posted by: munky

... Does he know that since a few months ago the x800 cards can now do transparency AA, while the 6800's cant even do gamma-corrected MSAA? ...

You are dead wrong, Munky - all NV4x cards are capable of gamma corrected MSAA, you can activate the feature through nHancer.

Munky is talking about Joe average, someone likely to be using official nVidia drivers not someone likely to use nHancer.

Hasnt that been updated with a driver release?
And transparcey AA is different to Adpative AA.

AAA acomplishes the same thing as TRAA - it applies antialiasing to transparent textures.

It applies AA to alpha textures, but the process and result of the AA is different.

4x Adaptive AA

4x TR MSAA

4x TR SSAA

Notice the difference?

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster

Originally posted by: munky

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster

Originally posted by: fierydemise

Originally posted by: Gstanfor

Originally posted by: munky

... Does he know that since a few months ago the x800 cards can now do transparency AA, while the 6800's cant even do gamma-corrected MSAA? ...

You are dead wrong, Munky - all NV4x cards are capable of gamma corrected MSAA, you can activate the feature through nHancer.

Munky is talking about Joe average, someone likely to be using official nVidia drivers not someone likely to use nHancer.

Hasnt that been updated with a driver release?
And transparcey AA is different to Adpative AA.

AAA acomplishes the same thing as TRAA - it applies antialiasing to transparent textures.

It applies AA to alpha textures, but the process and result of the AA is different.

4x Adaptive AA

4x TR MSAA

4x TR SSAA

Notice the difference?

Aye, I notice 2 things:
1) Nv's TRAA renders the wires on the fence thicker than Ati's AAA, and thus you can see more detail of the fence farther away in the upper right corner
2) Ati's AAA draws the thick wires above the fence better - it looks like a continuous line. With NV's AA I can still see the jaggies on the wire.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by: munky

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster

Originally posted by: munky

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster

Originally posted by: fierydemise

Originally posted by: Gstanfor

Originally posted by: munky

... Does he know that since a few months ago the x800 cards can now do transparency AA, while the 6800's cant even do gamma-corrected MSAA? ...

You are dead wrong, Munky - all NV4x cards are capable of gamma corrected MSAA, you can activate the feature through nHancer.

Munky is talking about Joe average, someone likely to be using official nVidia drivers not someone likely to use nHancer.

Hasnt that been updated with a driver release?
And transparcey AA is different to Adpative AA.

AAA acomplishes the same thing as TRAA - it applies antialiasing to transparent textures.

It applies AA to alpha textures, but the process and result of the AA is different.

4x Adaptive AA

4x TR MSAA

4x TR SSAA

Notice the difference?

Aye, I notice 2 things:
1) Nv's TRAA renders the wires on the fence thicker than Ati's AAA, and thus you can see more detail of the fence farther away in the upper right corner
2) Ati's AAA draws the thick wires above the fence better - it looks like a continuous line. With NV's AA I can still see the jaggies on the wire.

True, however overall i find TR SSAA the best. The fence on the right hand corner of the image looks alot better than the other two.

btw it was suppose to show the differences between the new AA modes (TRAA/AAA) by using the fence farther away. Source from xbitlabs.

 

[WelshBloke]

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster

Originally posted by: munky

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster

Originally posted by: munky

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster

Originally posted by: fierydemise

Originally posted by: Gstanfor

Originally posted by: munky

... Does he know that since a few months ago the x800 cards can now do transparency AA, while the 6800's cant even do gamma-corrected MSAA? ...

You are dead wrong, Munky - all NV4x cards are capable of gamma corrected MSAA, you can activate the feature through nHancer.

Munky is talking about Joe average, someone likely to be using official nVidia drivers not someone likely to use nHancer.

Hasnt that been updated with a driver release?
And transparcey AA is different to Adpative AA.

AAA acomplishes the same thing as TRAA - it applies antialiasing to transparent textures.

It applies AA to alpha textures, but the process and result of the AA is different.

4x Adaptive AA

4x TR MSAA

4x TR SSAA

Notice the difference?

Aye, I notice 2 things:
1) Nv's TRAA renders the wires on the fence thicker than Ati's AAA, and thus you can see more detail of the fence farther away in the upper right corner
2) Ati's AAA draws the thick wires above the fence better - it looks like a continuous line. With NV's AA I can still see the jaggies on the wire.

True, however overall i find TR SSAA the best. The fence on the right hand corner of the image looks alot better than the other two.

btw it was suppose to show the differences between the new AA modes (TRAA/AAA) by using the fence farther away. Source from xbitlabs.

Are there some screenshots that show ati card running at the same res as the 7800?

 

[BFG10K]

The point is simple. Part of the SM2/3 spec is vertex looping feature. On nVidia GPU, that looping is entirely hardwared accelerated, on ATi GPU's it is not hardware accelerated since the GPu must rely on the CPU to unroll the loop for it.

Looping (AKA dynamic branching) is an SM 3.0 feature which the R4xx series didn't support. Bashing ATi in that instance for using the CPU is as stupid as bashing nVidia's TNT2 for using the CPU for T&L calculations.

nVidia's dual core driver that you are so keen to bash (don't forget ATi also has a dual core driver in the works...)

Nobody's bashing anything, I'm just pointing out your double standards.

it does not perform parts of the vertex processing that should be hardware accelerated on the GPU (but are missing in the case of ATi's GPU's).

You mean like how the TNT2 didn't do T&L and hence nVidia got the CPU to do it for them? :roll: