Nvidia doesn't want to just dominate the graphics card market, it wants to own it

[Gregster]

When AMD rolled out the Radeon R9 Fury X and R9 Fury graphics cards in June and July respectively it appeared the company might regain some lost ground and battle Nvidia once again for desktop GPU supremacy. Based on Nvidia’s latest quarterly earnings report, however, it may be a long time before that happens—and Nvidia's moving quickly to roll out new features that encourage GeForce buyers to stay in the GeForce ecosystem for the long haul.

In August, Jon Peddie Research estimated that Nvidia owned 81.9 percent of the add-in graphics card market during the second quarter of 2015. After Nvidia’s latest earnings report those market share numbers may very well increase again. Team Green’s GPU business is doing better than ever, increasing by 12 percent compared to the year previous, hitting a new record for the company.

The long game

But as staggering AMD gears up for what could be a bigger battle in 2016—more on that later—Nvidia's fortifying its position by increasing GeForce's usefulness and making it harder, or at least less appealing, to switch over to Radeon graphics cards.

In mid-December, Nvidia will lock all its Game-Ready drivers behind the GeForce Experience (GFE) software. That means gamers looking to optimize their system with the latest drivers tweaked for new top-tier titles will have to be registered users of GFE.

nvidia game ready
That is just the first volley, however. The company wants to transform GFE from a basic desktop utility to a gaming hub where Nvidia has direct contact with its customers—thus the mandatory registration. GFE will soon be a hub for news, hardware giveaways, and early access codes for hot games on top of the place where you turn on ShadowPlay and use Nvidia's GameStream technology.

Nvidia's also made a clear effort to entice game developers into embracing its fancy GameWorks middleware effects in 2015, so that titles offer optimized or enhanced graphics effects that (typically) perform better on Nvidia GPUs. These include features like PhysX for game physics, and FaceWorks, HairWorks, and WaveWorks for more realistic in-game graphics.

Then there’s GeForce Now, Nvidia’s take on cloud game streaming that allows you to play a graphics intensive games on sub-par hardware, with the heavy computing done by the server. The catch is GeForce Now only works with Nvidia Shield devices such as the Shield Android TV and Shield tablet, thus encouraging more people who want a Netflix-for-games-like streaming experience to try a Shield device.

If the program's ever expanded to embrace GeForce-equipped PCs, too, it's easy to see how this could be a hit with gamers on a budget. GeForce Now streams modern games like Witcher 3 at up to 1080p at 60 frames per second, which is far better than entry-level cards like the GTX 950 can muster natively, and you can play all 70-plus supported PC titles as part of your $8 per month subscription.

What's more, one of GFE's major tabs is dedicated to streaming games from your PC to your Shield devices.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3001...-graphics-card-market-it-wants-to-own-it.html

The whole article is very interesting and really surprised to see an estimated ownership of 81.9% market share in favour of Nvidia.

Read the whole article before commenting please, as it is a good read.

 

[Gregster]

A good read, nvidia do need to be careful with this whole locking drivers behind gfe. Personally I like and use gfe and many of its features, but installing it shouldn't be forced upon those just looking for the latest driver. I have no doubt the drivers will get pulled from gfe and uploaded else where as a stand alone, but it's an inconvenience you shouldn't have to face.

Totally agreed and whilst me and you like GFE, not everyone does and I do feel that it could backfire on a few users who don't want it.

Really good article. It's exciting times being an Nvidia owner. Personally I dont like there being no competition but its been that way for a long time now and I've seen no downside. So, onwards and upwards as they say

I also don't want the competition dead and with the new crimson thing coming, hopefully it will bring some good additions to make AMD more attractive.

 

[Gregster]

Load of rubbish. Wonder how much Nvidia paid for this article, usual pcworld drivel.

As usual the Nvidia bods in here praise it and take it for the gospel.

This

No no no, I see the Nvidia bods saying otherwise. Quit with reading things how you want to and actually read things.

 

[Gregster]

Was just pointing out to greg that what he said wasn't entirely correct. You seem to have a penchant for being rather hostile to those who disagree with you. Anyone who does is "derailing the thread".

You look at many threads and you get lots of bias regardless of it being Nvidia or AMD, that is the nature of having only 2 competitors, it has been that way since the Spectrum Vs C64 days and will continue but whilst I really do enjoy a good debate (as anyone knows), this article is also bigging up AMD and this is why I asked people to fully read the article before commenting.

I personally enjoy seeing the competition and whilst I am a wind up ****, I want AMD around, as do pretty much everyone I speak to. The latest Crimson thing is looking good and according to Shanks latest thread, the latest AMD drivers have really given a big boost to AMD GPUs, so all pluses.

Long may healthy debates continue and a good battle over Greenland and Pascal please

 

[Gregster]

It will work, anything Nvidia does works, look at the 970, vram-gate, once that came to light, they were flying back in their millions with extra cash for their 980s.

If it was AMD, they would have been absolutely slammed, and they'd have been going back in their millions for Nvidia cards.


Its sad, but true unfortunately

You have to ask why they were swapping out 970s for 980s really and why not jump on the 390 etc? Did they see the AMD card as a really poor alternative? Did they see the jump to a 980 as a cheap upgrade?

I see a few jumping to a 980, I see a few sticking with the 970 and I did see the occasional jump to AMD but it was a mountain out of a molehill scenario that Nvidia did **** up on and should have been more honest about. It isn't like AMD ever sell you an 8 core processor that can't actually use all 8 cores at once now is it?

 

[Gregster]

And AMD are not a charity. People shouldn't feel compelled to buy AMD just because they are poor.

 

[Gregster]

Agreed guys, you should buy because it does what you need. I will buy AMD again if it delivers what I want and that is that. I won't buy because they are "the underdog" or "the little guy"

 

[Gregster]

People have a budget and will generally stick to that. If performance upgrade is poor, they will sit on what they have. Why am I still running a 3930K that is years old? Point proven in my case.

 

[Gregster]

People with a $300 budget for a GPU aren't going to pay $1000 for a GPU just because its the only one on the market, and people with a $300 budget aren't going to spend that $300 on a 10% improvment, so if NVIDIA try to go that route their sales will shrink, regardless of there being no PC alternative and its pure hyperbole to suggest that as a viable strategy.

Nvidia's interests are to sell product. They still need to offer performance improvements at certain price points to sell product, regardless of what AMD are doing.

Humbug knows this but just arguing for the sake of it.

 

[Gregster]

Sorry Humbug but I am just not buying what you are selling. That is a serious tin foil hat way of looking at things.

 

[Gregster]

Guys need to understand that Adaptive Sync would only work on Nvidia via a module in the monitor as the hardware isn't capable of running it without it. Nvidia didn't hang about either and had the tech out a year before AMD and took the bull by the horns so to speak. AMD realised that they could actually do what Nvidia did and didn't need the monitor module to do this.

Sure G-Sync is proprietary but I give credit for Nvidia bringing this tech to us and it is a game changer for me personally.

 

[Gregster]

Completely agree. TBH if NVIDIA do become the only option, I can see myself swapping to console gaming. Literally despise the way NVIDIA conduct business.

AMD are far from squeaky clean, hence another lawsuit against them for mis-selling the Bulldozer chip.

 

[Gregster]

Wrong thread sorry.

 

[Gregster]

if what you are saying is true, nvidia should have had a big rise in sales figures from the period when the 780ti was on sale to the time period where the 980 was on sale... that didn't happen, AMD's sales fell off but the overall market went down as well, the card that really sold well was the 970, not the 980

you are looking purely at anecdotal evidence and assuming that seeing a few people on one forum do something extrapolates to an entire world wide market... I don't remember very many people saying they were selling a 780ti to get a 980, I think you are reading too much in to a few isolated cases

I don't recall seeing many switching from a 780Ti to a 980 when the 980 was launched but for those that did, maybe they had a higher res and wanted the extra 1GB of VRAM. I did see someone buy a Titan X and do nothing but whinge at people for buying Nvidia though