AMD nearly bought Nvidia

[drunkenmaster]

Hmm, to a degree Nvidia are actually doing some very interesting things with Tegra, but ultimately when you are late with everything, using too much power and providing more power than any application needs in the target segment...... you're destined to fail. If they did a bog standard dual core A15 and were first out, it would have cost significantly less in R&D, lower cost chips to sell in higher volume and worth more money.

Charlie has often praised Nvidia engineers and mercilessly mocked the management, much the same with Intel. I think he has said, and I've always thought Intel could without question make fantastic drivers for their gpu's, they can go to Nvidia, or AMD and buy the entire driver team with higher wages, they just have no interest. Atom could have been on 32nm years earlier at far lower power and higher performance but they just decided not to, making Atom literally useless in the market they wanted it in.

Low margins doesn't mean no profits, and as you say they see discrete GPU all but disappearing for them which is very likely in the not too distant future, low end market, by FAR the biggest is shrinking stupidly quickly and with Intel actually putting in marginally more driver effort, things like quicksync and Intel/AMD moving into the future with far more intergrated IGP acceleration of basic apps, well that shrinking of the low end discrete will accelerate, couple that with losing out in all the consoles and Nvidia is screwed.

Essentially low margin anything is better than no margin nothing

Nvidia really need to stop being stupid about it though, a 5 core 40nm chip months before everyone else gets their a15 28nm chips ready that will spank them in every useful metric in the targetted markets is just utter utter madness. They also delayed their 28nm chips to "force" this behemoth stupid chip into the market, when the exact opposite was required, dump the quad core, bring the dual core 28nm forward as much as possible.

 

[Rroff]

Dunno quite a few upcoming phones are using tegra, I haven't tracked the long term market for that tho as I don't think it has any real implications on whether nVidia sink or swim

 

[drunkenmaster]

Thats not really likely to happen. Their professional markets alone i.e. workstation, compute, etc. are growing pretty decently.

Growing, yes, off the top of my head discrete gpu, non professional/workstation/compute is still the biggest portion of their income, dump most of that in the next couple years and the low volume of the professional market won't cover the loss of general gpu sales and R&D suddenly costs more than the profits they can make.

Also even worse for them, Intel IGP's are pushing into professional market, CAD is working ever better on Intel IGP's which will eventually cut hugely into Nvidia's sales numbers in that area as well.

Intel will likely gain market share in those markets faster than Nvidia, and AMD are likely to finally go after it and in terms of APU's might end up growing as strongly as Nvidia. Its a segment that AMD has ignored for FAR to long and something Read is likely to push into as quickly as possible. Nvidia's getting it on every front at the moment and Tegra is seen by most of the world as their "escape route/backup plan", and its missing every target, making some really bad decisions and losing money as more and more of the main sellers of tablets/phones get their own chips. Samsung were a fairly big Nvidia customer, but now have their own chips and is really another customer being lost to Nvidia.

 

[Pottsey]

Thats not really likely to happen. Their professional markets alone i.e. workstation, compute, etc. are growing pretty decently.

At the lower end of the professional and workstation market more companies are finding they no longer need Nvidia, as the base line of Intel GPU's are now getting to a stage where they are powerful enough. At the very high end you have stuff like the PowerVR ray tracing card that looks to be over x10 faster and cheaper then Nvidia Quadro so it might put a large dint in Nvidia market share. EDIT: In the compute market 8 major companies have licensed the new PowerVR compute chip so again Nvidia have high competition.

Dunno quite a few upcoming phones are using tegra, I haven't tracked the long term market for that tho as I don't think it has any real implications on whether nVidia sink or swim

Almost no phones use Tegra, depening on which figures you look at. The largest market figures show 1.7% including tablets. Most figures show less than 1% with tablets. To top if of those market share numbers are before the very sharp decline in Tegra sales and most of those numbers are Tablets over phones.

We agree .

Yep a rare event and I guess it's most likely true if we both agree.

I see now about market share. The person I quoted said "second largest share of the total graphics chip market" but they did not mean total graphics chip market, they meant PC market. In which case what they said is correct.

Back to mobiles one of the biggest problems with Nvidia and Tegra is they are arrogant in regards to the competition. They do not even consider Arm, PowerVR and the other big player's competition coming out and saying Qualcomm on the only other players. They also seem to think they are have the best mobile GPU that's light-years ahead of everyone, or at least that's how they marketing BS comes across.

 

[Sasahara]

Just a small important point Nivdia is #1 in revenue and profits from graphics chips.

Number of units on such a wide product range is very misleading.

It's like combining motor bikes and car sales together, that would put Honda as 1st rather than 6th. It's not done because they are different market, just like a discrete GPU is different from an integrated GPU.

 

[Mal X]

AMD certainly seem a better company than Nvidia, Nvidia seem to be on the slide, that 580 is getting old now and they're so slow getting another one out, and when it does come out, it'll be way too expensive ! and a complete waste of time on 1080p

 

[Marine-RX179]

AMD certainly seem a better company than Nvidia, Nvidia seem to be on the slide, that 580 is getting old now and they're so slow getting another one out, and when it does come out, it'll be way too expensive ! and a complete waste of time on 1080p

Actually it depends on how you look at it. The way I see it AMD rushed their cards out the door as a business decision, so that can beat the last gen fastest GTX580 and try to get whatever sales that can, probably because they want to avoid launching their new cards at the same time as Nvidia going head to head with them, and end up like 8800 vs 2900 back then. The 7970 is no doubt the current fastest single GPU card without a doubt, but is its performance as good as people expected, especially going from 40nm to 28nm, plus an extra £100 higher price tag? The answer is no.

As people have put it...bang for bucks wise, this gen is worse than previous gen and the gen before the previous. If Nvidia follows AMD's pricing approach, that would mean poor value/bang for bucks for everyone hurray~~~

 

[no_1_dave]

Actually it depends on how you look at it. The way I see it AMD rushed their cards out the door as a business decision, so that can beat the last gen fastest GTX580 and try to get whatever sales that can, probably because they want to avoid launching their new cards at the same time as Nvidia going head to head with them, and end up like 8800 vs 2900 back then. The 7970 is no doubt the current fastest single GPU card without a doubt, but is its performance as good as people expected, especially going from 40nm to 28nm, plus an extra £100 higher price tag? The answer is no.

This. It is known Nvidia's new high end card is more powerful and AMD didn't want to go head to head.

 

[DrBombcrater]

The 7970 is no doubt the current fastest single GPU card without a doubt, but is its performance as good as people expected, especially going from 40nm to 28nm, plus an extra £100 higher price tag? The answer is no.

I'm pretty sure that is a deliberate move on AMDs part. The 7970's performance is right where it needed to be - quicker than the 580, but not hugely so. The sheer amount of overclocking headroom people are finding with the Tahiti GPU suggests AMD set the 7970's clocks only as high as required to beat the 580.

They're in the enviable position right now of being able to charge a premium price because they have the fastest card on the market, doing it with a GPU that's clocked well below its limits and thus will be cheaper and easier to manufacture, and have got that GPU out the door way before the competition. There's been no leaks from board partners about NV's high-end Kepler chip, which suggests it's still months away from going on sale.

When it does arrive I would not be shocked to see AMD be able to immediately retaliate with a '7980' card that pushes Tahiti's clock up by 20-30%.

 

[arc@css]

^^ Love the name, DrBombcrater.

 

[flopper]

I'm pretty sure that is a deliberate move on AMDs part. The 7970's performance is right where it needed to be - quicker than the 580, but not hugely so. The sheer amount of overclocking headroom people are finding with the Tahiti GPU suggests AMD set the 7970's clocks only as high as required to beat the 580.

They're in the enviable position right now of being able to charge a premium price because they have the fastest card on the market, doing it with a GPU that's clocked well below its limits and thus will be cheaper and easier to manufacture, and have got that GPU out the door way before the competition. There's been no leaks from board partners about NV's high-end Kepler chip, which suggests it's still months away from going on sale.

When it does arrive I would not be shocked to see AMD be able to immediately retaliate with a '7980' card that pushes Tahiti's clock up by 20-30%.

when people who used a 580 that was way expensive vs a 6970 could say the same the performance of the 580 was a let down due to 15% difference isnt much.
the 7970 is the fastest card out there.
the 7990 is soon out.

Kepler is late, it might be good but then it will cost an arm and leg also.

7970 is set pretty good, fastest and with OC ability for those that likes that. I expect kepler to be done the same way.

 

[Marine-RX179]

when people who used a 580 that was way expensive vs a 6970 could say the same the performance of the 580 was a let down due to 15% difference isnt much.

It's not the same as the GTX580 is the same gen card as 6970 and was launch at around the same time. 7970 on the other hand is picking a fight with a year old card that's about to retire and charge premium on top of premium, which pushed the price to beyond £400 and out of the price range of what most people willing to pay.

 

[Mal X]

for me crunch time will be july, i'll save for the 7950 and see what's around then, i'll aim to save 400 quid and if i have more, i'll put this towards a 50'' 1080p plasma, because these are very cheap nowadays.