NVidia interviewed by MaximumPC

[mmj_uk]

I thought I'd make a new thread for this fascinating interview since the thread it was posted in has been derailed by fanboys arguing over who has the best capture software.

Some highlights:

Nvidia see themselves primarily as a gaming/software technology company, not a chip maker:

We're not selling a chip, we're creating an experience and that's what people are buying when they buy one of our GPU's.

Actually if you look at Nvidia in general, people think of us as a chip company but we have way less engineers working on chips than we do software, we're more of a software company than a chip company.

NVidia aren't just selling value hardware aimed at winning a few benchmarks:

We're developing a collection of things that work together and deliver a great experience.
...
The real challenge we have at NVidia is to help reviewers understand that the market is setting the prices of things. What we can do is enhance our products so that the market wants it more and is willing to pay a higher price, now how do you review that? It doesn't really fit performance per dollar, performance per dollar is meant to equalise across products that are the same and our whole job is to make our experience so much better. We're not going to say "oh, it's price perf equal so we're done", we're not doing that.
...
What's happening is over time the performance per dollar comparison is really not making sense anymore, because our performance per dollar doesn't factor in all the other stuff.

NVidia on AMD's lack of effort towards developers:

What does happen is that they enjoy all of the love and effort we throw at them. We give them engineers and artists that sit there and work with them and optimise the game in general and specifically on our products and they take that investment. Unfortunately the competition doesn't seem to want to or can't make the same size investments.

NVidia help to push PC gaming forward by proactively working with developers to improve their games (investing millions of dollars in the process):

I actually have not only engineers who develop the software but I have engineers and artists that we send to the game developer to work with them to add these effects in their game because they wouldn't do it otherwise, they don't have the funding available to address this segment of the market and sometimes just don't have the expertise, they have different priorities but they'd love to have it in their game so it's something extra we're giving to our users, to our customers that wouldn't be there otherwise. If AMD would like that, they are perfectly welcome to go invest the millions of dollars that we're investing to go and actually develop some technology and put it in games. We're investing in engineers and building cool stuff that makes games look great.

NVidia have a pop at AMD for not investing in their own technologies like NVidia do theirs (which is why they ultimately fail):

It's sort of like (AMD's) bullet physics to me, when you think about bullet it's kind of one of those silly things where we're going to announce it and then it'll just sort of happen and we don't have to invest in it. The truth is that things don't happen like that, it just doesn't work like that.

Programmes such as GameWorks improves gaming on other DirectX cards:

I would say the majority of work that we do actually does benefit our competitors as well, because we're just advancing gaming forward and a lot of our software does run on our competitors as well, a lot of the graphics work that we do with the game developer to just optimise their usage of DirectX in general helps everyone and we do a lot more of that than anybody else. We've got literally hundreds of engineers that we send on site to game developers, to work with them to just make their games better.

Lots more interesting stuff in the 1hr 43min interview above.

So, are NVidia good for the industry or an evil cancer like the AMD fanboys like to claim? you decide!

 

[Razor Time]

I watched this the other night and it made interesting viewing.

 

[bru]

As was said in the other thread (which I apologise again for helping to derail) this interview although long is really well worth a watch for anyone interested in computer tech.

 

[Rroff]

Was actually a surprisingly good watch, despite them getting a bit too excited over shield.

The slyly worked in poke about bullet physics made me laugh (any similarities between Tom Petersen and myself are entirely coincidental).

 

[Rusty0611]

Thanks for posting. Interesting stuff.

 

[bru]

The bit comparing the component of the new VESA standard for Adaptive-Sync to a hammer was brilliant in my opinion.

 

[tommybhoy]

NVidia aren't just selling value hardware aimed at winning a few benchmarks:

They are selling overpriced hardware aimed at competing and coming in second fastest with the competition.

NVidia help to push PC gaming forward by proactively working with developers to improve their games (investing millions of dollars in the process):

The same as the GE program.

NVidia have a pop at AMD for not investing in their own technologies like NVidia do theirs (which is why they ultimately fail):

Tit for tat, both have a point with the swipes at the competition, but, AMD have Mantle and True Audio(very quiet on the TA front though and not active enough).

Programmes such as GameWorks improves gaming on other DirectX cards:

True, regardless the argument, it works on all vendors.

So, are NVidia good for the industry or an evil cancer like the AMD fanboys like to claim? you decide!

Competition is needed, the good/bad reputation comes with the territory.



Should be merged with the other thread though, pointless making another thread to trash.

 

[jh30uk]

EDIT :NVM, sorry OP seen you mentioned it was in the "derailed thread"