**thread name change* Nvidia and AMD moral and immoral business practices

[Rezident]

Please, stop this pro-AMD/ATi madness. It's gone WAY too far.

Wrong Scali, it's not pro-anyone, it's anti-Nvidia and their negative practices, it's bad for PC gaming.

 

[Scali]

Wrong Scali, it's not pro-anyone, it's anti-Nvidia and their negative practices, it's bad for PC gaming.

Read what I was replying to. How is it a negative nVidia practice when ATi refuses to collaborate with nVidia on PhysX?
You're being pro-AMD/ATi when you're excusing AMD's behaviour here, and putting the blame on nVidia, who are trying to be as open as they can to their competitors.
AMD is bad for PC gaming. Not supporting OpenCL, not offering accelerated physics, not wanting to collaborate with their competitors to try and establish good standards, etc.

 

[Nox51]

Read what I was replying to. How is it a negative nVidia practice when ATi refuses to collaborate with nVidia on PhysX?
You're being pro-AMD/ATi when you're excusing AMD's behaviour here, and putting the blame on nVidia, who are trying to be as open as they can to their competitors.
AMD is bad for PC gaming. Not supporting OpenCL, not offering accelerated physics, not wanting to collaborate with their competitors to try and establish good standards, etc.

Bahahha you make me laugh! Good job!


Per the mod post in the OP as well as above in this thread, if you can't behave yourself, keep it "mature" and avoid the derogatory remarks then there would be infractions to come of your actions.

If you have nothing technical or relevant to contribute then you are best to lurk and observe, thread-crapping is unacceptable.

1) No trolling, flaming or personally attacking members. Deftly attacking ideas and backing up arguments with facts is acceptable and encouraged. Attacking other members personally and purposefully causing trouble with no motive other than to upset the crowd is not allowed.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=60552

Moderator Idontcare

 

[nemesismk2]

Deleted

 

[railven]

I never heard of anything like that before so I went to dig into it a little.
This is what I understand from what I read today so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

First off, the whole thing being a pr stunt from nvidia doesn't really add up. The first news of this hack mentioned that the 3850 was getting better performance than its nvidia counterpart of the day while running physx. I agree that at that point in time, it sounded more like a scam than anything serious because there wasn't anything except an easily spoofed screenshot available, however if it were nvidia trying to promote themselves, then I don't know how to explain that they would go through that much risks and trouble to do damage to themselves. Ironically, it would have made more sense if it were amd's doing.

Secondly, despite those somewhat embarrassing turns of events, the first time nvidia was made aware of this theater, they seemed to actually be interested to help (which, according to toms, was independently corroborated), and while they hardly asked amd for company secrets, the latter apparently denied the official support required and engineering samples of the hd4800s so the project could really not survive the next product cycle. In addition, the guy publicly admits that the project was turning out to be much harder than he thought, if possible at all without amd's help and that he probably bit off more than he could chew. At this point, it sounded a lot more reasonable a story considering the enormity of the scope of such a project and knowing amd's dev support as well as what eventually happened to ati's stance on fos drivers.

Lastly, according to the admin of the source site (which started to be more credible to me since I found out that he had provided many unofficial patches and modified drivers for both nvidia and ati up to windows vista), the whole thing sunk due to nvidia eventually changing its policy about physx and introducing the driver vendor lock in addition to amd's unchanging stance of apathy about the whole hardware physics deal. So I guess there is room to blame nvidia at the very end here but it's not really like there was any guaranty he could have pulled the thing off anyway.
If anything he might just be a lone dev who got a healthy dose of publicity by finding out just how hard it was to port physx to ati hardware the hard way and then milked some traffic off of the noise his initial enthusiasm made by posting updates while knowing that it was really a dead end (note that I don't have proof of that; it's just my speculation).

The only thing I never saw mentioned anywhere in this case was your claim that "NV rejected ATI when THEY said they will do it" and even if it were true, how that prove that nvidia were behind it.

I think the part that raised the red flag for me through all my reading was this coder was asking ATI for HD4800 hardware before it was set to release. And nVidia was "supporting" the guy.

As a company do you give your unreleased hardware to a random guy who's being supported by your main competitor? That was the part that raised a stink as I read it.

 

[Keysplayr]

I think the part that raised the red flag for me through all my reading was this coder was asking ATI for HD4800 hardware before it was set to release. And nVidia was "supporting" the guy.

As a company do you give your unreleased hardware to a random guy who's being supported by your main competitor? That was the part that raised a stink as I read it.

Did you come across this in your reading?

"He also noted that he made progress getting his hands on a Radeon 4800 card and noted that his CUDA Radeon library is "almost done."

"He" being Eran Badit and this is from the Toms Hardware article linked in taserbro's extensive post above.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-ati-physx,5841.html

1st sentence in 3rd paragraph.

So this went on even after 4xxx was made available at least to devs and review sites.

 

[Janooo]

Firstly, I don't agree on the lawsuit thing.
Secondly, people sue quicker than any company can even respond.
Unless that company is AMD. Apparently their customers like them so much, that they never sued over the Athlon or Barcelona bugs. Even though AMD took no action at all.
In other words: nVidia still handled the situation better than AMD did.

You said yourself that bugs had fixes.
NV made a paperweight out of my laptop. You can not compare the two cases.
Who of you knew about the bad bumps before Charlie wrote the article?
I am sure NV would pay much less to OEMs if he did not make it a public knowledge what was going on.
NV made him an enemy and it cost them millions.

 

[Keysplayr]

You said yourself that bugs had fixes.
NV made a paperweight out of my laptop. You can not compare the two cases.
Who of you knew about the bad bumps before Charlie wrote the article?
I am sure NV would pay much less to OEMs if he did not make it a public knowledge what was going on.
NV made him an enemy and it cost them millions.

Will you be trying to put in a claim for your laptop even though it isn't listed?
There's always a chance. But you need to try first.

 

[Scali]

You said yourself that bugs had fixes.

They do, yes. nVidia's newer chips don't suffer from bumpgate, so fixed.

NV made a paperweight out of my laptop. You can not compare the two cases.

So go cry about it. Hardware breaks down, fact of life.
NV didn't "make a paperweight" out of your laptop. It just happened. They didn't do it on purpose.
You're being irrational. Get a grip.


The condescending/derogatory tone is a personal insult/attack. Unacceptable.

Re: "So go cry about it." and "You're being irrational. Get a grip."

Moderator Idontcare

 

[Janooo]

Will you be trying to put in a claim for your laptop even though it isn't listed?
There's always a chance. But you need to try first.

I am not in the US. I am not sure how it would work.

 

[Janooo]

They do, yes. nVidia's newer chips don't suffer from bumpgate, so fixed.



So go cry about it. Hardware breaks down, fact of life.
NV didn't "make a paperweight" out of your laptop. It just happened. They didn't do it on purpose.
You're being irrational. Get a grip.

Nice way to admit that you don't have a point comparing TLB bug to bad bumps.

 

[SirPauly]

I don't know, expect in a competitive world, at times, companies may be very protective, based that their decisions actually mean something and not sitting it an arm chair after-the-fact. Also, expect companies, at times, to sometimes enter grey territory where things may appear to be very questionable. Don't get emotional, point fingers strongly.

There are some things, on the surface, that disappoints me with nVidia but I'm just a gamer with a single view and means absolutely nothing. For what disappoints me with nVidia sure the heck makes up for it by being pro-active.

That is the reason for their success to me. They don't stop trying to innovate.

 

[Scali]

Nice way to admit that you don't have a point comparing TLB bug to bad bumps.

Nope, TLB is worse.
With the bump problem, at least the product works as advertised for as long as it lasts (which in my case was more than 2 years, which I find acceptable in any case. I've had worse).
With TLB, you never get your money's worth, the chip never performs as advertised. And there is NO way to get your money back or to get a replacement.
With nVidia a lot of laptops were exchanged/fixed, so at least you'd get another laptop that works as advertised, for as long as it lasts (might get another 2 years out of it, 4 years total wouldn't be bad really, on average).

I mean, come on, are we a bunch of newbies here? Surely most of us have been using hardware long enough to know that it can be extremely flaky at times. If you want reliable technology, buy a car.
What about LCD technology for example? Where often it arrives with dead pixels out-of-the-box? Or harddisks that simply don't work the first time you hook them up? Been there, done that. Guess most of us have. It happens.
If you think this is all an evil scheme by LCD/harddisk manufacturers to annoy their customers, you're pretty far gone.... Same with the nVidia issue, or the TLB for that matter.

 

[Keysplayr]

Nice way to admit that you don't have a point comparing TLB bug to bad bumps.

Why are you comparing TLB bug to bad bumps in this way? Both are hardware defects. AMD's was in the silicon. the bump problem was the material used in the solder. One is a logic problem, the other is a physical assembly problem. Nothing was actually wrong with Nvidia silicon. The chips themselves operated fine. The solder was the problem. If something like that was foreseeable, I'm sure the manufacturers would have corrected it. However, this problem is a long term expansion and contraction fracture problem that develops over longer periods of time. Unfortunate, but that hardly compares to AMD releasing a product KNOWING that it had the TLB bug.

 

[Kenmitch]

Ask the guys over at NGOHQ.

Here is a very good place to start your quest.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Nvidia-Helps-Porting-PhysX-on-Radeon-89601.shtml

Thanks for the link....I took a look at it without wearing any blinders

Quick summary of article. A group of guys thought it would be cool to get physX to run on AMD hardware. Nvidia giggle'd at it and was somewhat cooperative. When ask'd for preproduction samples of the 4xxx series of cards from this group of guys AMD said no.

Unless I've got blinders on still or don't have the ability to see the hidden text between the lines (maybe need physX to see it?) I don't see where Nvidia made an offer to AMD to get physX on the radeon. I didn't see where AMD told Nvidia to pound sand either.

 

[SirPauly]

Imho,

I just don't understand the logic. Sometimes, considering the sheer complexity, technology companies have problems from time-to-time.

It seems some are trying to say nVidia is good and AMD is bad or nVidia is bad or AMD is good and just an extension of the AMD/ATI vs nVidia Paradox Syndrome -- an affliction that hits forums hard as one has to prove which company is better or good and one is worse or evil.

They're both good, but if one is searching for idealism, one is never going to find it with either.

 

[Scali]

Unless I've got blinders on still or don't have the ability to see the hidden text between the lines (maybe need physX to see it?) I don't see where Nvidia made an offer to AMD to get physX on the radeon. I didn't see where AMD told Nvidia to pound sand either.

This is the one you're looking for, I think:

It's not misinformation, it's the truth:
http://www.bit-tech.net/custompc/news/602205/nvidia-offers-physx-support-to-amd--ati.html

It is pretty explicit.
And this is 2 years old, AMD never did anything with it, apparently.

 

[Keysplayr]

This is the one you're looking for, I think:


It is pretty explicit.
And this is 2 years old, AMD never did anything with it, apparently.

Ah, that is the other one I was looking for. PhysX was openly offered to ANY GPU maker. License fee, contract agreements, whatever, it was still offered. And AFAIK, it still is. PhysX block does not mean that it can't be removed when licensed.

In light of AMD's current status with GPU physics, does it appear to you that AMD took up the offer? And the offer was to ANY GPU maker.
Not too many lines to read between if you are reading it without the blinders like you said you had. Easy to see that AMD had, and still has no intention of contributing to moving GPU PhysX forward. Bullet is their last path being that Havok GPU PhysX has been crushed by Intel.

In the eyes of AMD, it appears they are collectively saying, "Anything, anything at all buy Nvidia." I can't blame them though. Even though their decision really does slow down the adoption of PhysX, as was their intention. Notice I said "slow", not "stop". I don't think there is any stopping PhysX now even if and when it's ported to OpenCL (if that ever happens.).

 

[formulav8]

Edit so i'm not seen as stepping on someones toes.



Per the mod post in the OP as well as above in this thread, if you can't behave yourself, keep it "mature" and avoid the derogatory remarks then there would be infractions to come of your actions.

If you have nothing technical or relevant to contribute then you are best to lurk and observe, thread-crapping is unacceptable.

1) No trolling, flaming or personally attacking members. Deftly attacking ideas and backing up arguments with facts is acceptable and encouraged. Attacking other members personally and purposefully causing trouble with no motive other than to upset the crowd is not allowed.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=60552

Moderator Idontcare

 

[Creig]

So go cry about it. Hardware breaks down, fact of life.
NV didn't "make a paperweight" out of your laptop. It just happened. They didn't do it on purpose.
You're being irrational. Get a grip.

Wow, nice attitude there. I'm sure you wouldn't be so flippant about it if it was your laptop that died prematurely. Laptops aren't cheap MP3 players, they're supposed to last.

Nvidia may not have created bumpgate on purpose, but they sure didn't step up to the plate and admit their responsibility. First they denied that there was ever an issue. Then they blamed it on the fabbing companies. Then they blamed it on insufficient cooling designs. They even tried blaming it on the end consumers usage patterns!

While we have not been able to determine a root cause for these failures, testing suggests a weak material set of die/package combination, system thermal management designs, and customer use patterns are contributing factors.

It wasn't until it was PROVEN what was failing that Nvidia finally admitted it was their own GPUs that were at fault, as was originally suspected by everyone.

That's a wonderful company you're defending.

 

[formulav8]

Edit: What is it with people feeling an attachment to a corp who could care less about you?

 

[badb0y]

Lol, so basically nVidia offered PhysX to AMD but AMD refused it due to licensing fees and contracts. Seems pretty reasonable to me not like PhysX exploded anyway.

As far as morality is concerened I think both companies are guilty. Both are companies that want to make money so saying one has more morals than the other is stupid.

 

[Keysplayr]

Wow, nice attitude there. I'm sure you wouldn't be so flippant about it if it was your laptop that died prematurely. Laptops aren't cheap MP3 players, they're supposed to last.

Nvidia may not have created bumpgate on purpose, but they sure didn't step up to the plate and admit their responsibility. First they denied that there was ever an issue. Then they blamed it on the fabbing companies. Then they blamed it on insufficient cooling designs. They even tried blaming it on the end consumers usage patterns!

It wasn't until it was PROVEN what was failing that Nvidia finally admitted it was their own GPUs that were at fault, as was originally suspected by everyone.

That's a wonderful company you're defending.

Ok, what failed again? The solder, or the GPUs? Why does this matter? Because you're alluding that the GPU's themselves failed.

 

[SirPauly]

I don't think companies actually care about me but my monies. I'm a number on the package.

 

[Keysplayr]

Wow, the the nvidia fanny's are in full swing. They must forsee AMD flattening nVidia lineup again this generation as well. But even fanny's should be able to see how nVidia is one of the worse corp's for business practices in tech.

I am still not sure what the real purpose of this thread is though...

It's to try to find out which company is "less" immoral. To which the Angel halo gets awarded.