Putting this PhysX Business to Rest

Let me put things in perspective. Remember our Radeon HD 4870/4850 article that went up last year? It was a straight crown-robbing on ATI’s part, NVIDIA had no competitively priced response at the time.

About two hours before the NDA lifted on the Radeon HD 4800 series we got an urgent call from NVIDIA. The purpose of the call? To attempt to persuade us to weigh PhysX and CUDA support as major benefits of GeForce GPUs. A performance win by ATI shouldn’t matter, ATI can’t accelerate PhysX in hardware and can’t run CUDA applications.

The argument NVIDIA gave us was preposterous. The global economy was weakening and NVIDIA cautioned us against recommending a card that in 12 months would not be the right choice because new titles supporting PhysX and new CUDA applications would be coming right around the corner.

The tactics didn’t work obviously, and history showed us that despite NVIDIA’s doomsday warnings - Radeon HD 4800 series owners didn’t live to regret their purchases. Yes, the global economy did take a turn for the worst, but no - NVIDIA’s PhysX and CUDA support hadn’t done anything to incite buyer’s remorse for anyone who has purchased a 4800 series card. The only thing those users got were higher frame rates. (Note that if you did buy a Radeon HD 4870/4850 and severely regretted your purchase due to a lack of PhysX/CUDA support, please post in the comments).

This wasn’t a one time thing. NVIDIA has delivered the same tired message at every single opportunity. NVIDIA’s latest attempt was to punish those reviewers who haven’t been sold on the PhysX/CUDA messages by not sending them GeForce GTS 250 cards for review. The plan seemed to backfire thanks to one vigilant Inquirer reporter.

More recently we had our briefing for the GeForce GTX 275. The presentation for the briefing was 53 slides long, now the length wasn’t bothersome, but let’s look at the content of the slides:

Slides About... Number of Slides in NVIDIA's GTX 275 Presentation
The GeForce GTX 275 8
PhysX/CUDA 34
Miscellaneous (DX11, Title Slides, etc...) 11

 

You could argue that NVIDIA truly believes that PhysX and CUDA support are the strongest features of its GPUs. You could also argue that NVIDIA is trying to justify a premium for its much larger GPUs rather than having to sell them as cheap as possible to stand up to an unusually competitive ATI.

NVIDIA’s stance is that when you buy a GeForce GPU, it’s more than just how well it runs games. It’s about everything else you can run on it, whether that means in-game GPU accelerated PhysX or CUDA applications.

Maybe we’ve been wrong this entire time. Maybe instead of just presenting you with bar charts of which GPU is faster we should be penalizing ATI GPUs for not being able to run CUDA code or accelerate PhysX. Self reflection is a very important human trait, let’s see if NVIDIA is truly right about the value of PhysX and CUDA today.

Another Look at the $180 Price Point: 260 core 216 vs. 4870 1GB The Widespread Support Fallacy
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  • helldrell666 - Wednesday, April 8, 2009 - link

    Stick that fudzilla bench up in your.....
    Fudzilla is the number one nvidia troll site.Put aside, the fugglier nvidia sponored sites, like Hardocp, neoseeker, Driverheaven, Bjorn3d.................And you go on.

    Your one ugly fugly creataure.
  • SiliconDoc - Wednesday, August 5, 2009 - link

    helldrell666 - then here's another long set of wins for the GTX275 against the 4890 - you can go tell johnjames on pg. 29 to stick all of them up his... since you're so "red" with embarrassment...
    http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews.php?reviewid=7...">http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews.php?reviewid=7...

    http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2009/04/...">http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphi...03/radeo...

    http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1539&pageI...">http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1539&pageI...

    http://www.dailytech.com/422009+Daily+Hardware+Rev...">http://www.dailytech.com/422009+Daily+H...adeon+HD...

    http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-275-revi...">http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-275-revi...

    http://www.legitreviews.com/article/944/15/">http://www.legitreviews.com/article/944/15/

    http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/nvidia_3d_...">http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/nvidia_3d_...

    http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canu...">http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/ha...a-geforc...

    http://hothardware.com/Articles/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX...">http://hothardware.com/Articles/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX...

    http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/02/nvidia-gtx-275-...">http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/02/nvid...275-ati-...

    http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/nvidia_gtx...">http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/nvidia_gtx...

    http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=684&type=...">http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=684&type=...

    ----
    There you go - now I'm sure every one of those sights is filled with green bias, huh , the worst kind...
    ROFLMAO
  • mav3rick - Wednesday, April 8, 2009 - link

    ehehe.. he goes around name calling almost everyone a red rooster.. wonder if he sees himself as the green goblin? :D

    jokes aside.. seriously, why limit yourselves to just one camp?? why be fanboys? just get whatever card which give the most bang for your budget and also your needs. i started out with a Matrox G200 (eheh.. you can basically guess how 'young' i am). This was followed by the NVidia GeForce2 MX. The next upgrade was the Radeon 9500.. plus.. managed to unlock the 4 pipelines to make it the legendary 9700.. what more can you ask for. next came the X1800GTO, again managing to unlock 4 disabled pipelines and it became X1800XL. and before silicondoc calls me a red rooster.. lolz.. my current card is the 8800GT. real great buy with it oc capabilities and longevity..

    currently with the flurry of releases, i'm targeting either the GTX 260+ or the 1GB 4870 as i only have a 22" flat screen. Performance between both cards are comparable. the difference of a few framerates are barely noticeable.. so its down to pricing. Waiting now to see if there are any further reductions :p As for PhysX, it doesnt seem to have really taken off yet.. game developers are not stupid. if they wanna sell more copies, they will have to make sure it works on as many cards as possible.
  • SiliconDoc - Friday, April 24, 2009 - link

    Green Goblin, ahh... many that is ugly...
    Now, one problem with what you said - you definitely should note I don't call everyone a red rooster - just the liars - there are quite a few posts here that make fine points for ati that aren't steeped in bs up to their necks and over their heads.
    You should also note I make the proper POINTS when I post, that prove what is and has been said by this brainwashed crew of red rooster just isn't the truth, period.
    See that's the problem -
    I certainly don't mind one bit if the truth is told, but if you have to lie so often to keep your favorite looking good, well, that's just stupidity besides being dishonest.
    I've made quite a few points the in the box cluckers cannot effectively, fairly, or honestly counter - and the months and months of brainwashing won't unwind right away - but at least it's going into their noggins, and will eat away at the lies, little by little the small voice inside will spank their inner red stepchild into shape.
    Hey, I'm a helpful person. Reality should win.
  • tamalero - Thursday, April 9, 2009 - link

    dont forget the X800GTO2 that could unlock extra pipes to become X850XT
  • Jamahl - Tuesday, April 7, 2009 - link

    Oh wait lol no they aren't. If they were they wouldn't have a failing chipset side of their business and revenues down from 1.2bn to 480m in the last quarter.

    They don't have an x86 licence and intel are suing them. How bad do you have to be for intel to sue lol. Oh yeah, on intel - that reminds me, who was it that took the playstation away from Nvidia again? Seeing as we're talking about consoles now, how about we talk about the 50 million wii's sold with ATI graphics inside?

    Fusion is the party of the future and Nvidia aren't invited. To sum up, this desperate little company is going down the tubes and taking all of its clueless fanbois with it. It will be great in the near future when you are all forced to game on ATI graphics lol.
  • SiliconDoc - Tuesday, April 7, 2009 - link

    January 2008 - and perhaps as bad or worse since then.
    " Without the charge, AMD came close to breaking even in the quarter, listing an operating loss of $9 million. Revenue for Q4 was $1.77 billion, up 8% sequentially and virtually flat compared to Q4 2006. The ATI write-down resulted in a total loss of $3.38 billion for the year, with total non-cash charges adding up to $2.0 billion. 2007 sales were $6.0 billion, up 6$ from 2006. "
    http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/35669/118/">http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/35669/118/
    .
    That looks like ATI writedown was 3.38 billion - gee, 2 billion loss for one year.
    Oh well, they can crush nvidia with their tiny core vs nvidia's big core by dropping prices, right ?
    LOL
    Thanks for nothing but lies, red roosters.
  • SiliconDoc - Tuesday, April 7, 2009 - link

    Oh and let's not forget the Dubai ownership portion of ati/amd.
    Great.
    Not trusted for US ports by the American people, but fanboys love it anyway.
    Great.
  • helldrell666 - Tuesday, April 7, 2009 - link

    Yes, whether you believe me or not, it's true.I had had much more driver problems with my 8800gtx than what i have had with my current 4870.

    As for the arabs, they don't own the company.AMD just bought part of it's manufacturing business to the arabic company,ALMUBSDALA.
    And to be more specific, AMD decided to share it's manufacturing business with another "foregin" company because it can't afford the manufacturing costs.

    I don't see anything wrong with that.But in case you don't know, i have to give you some informations about who owns what.
    Did you know that 2 russian "jewish" billionaires, "Naoom Birizofski and Jacob Trotski", own 79% of INTELs shares.

    Did you know that JEWs own all the major technological companies in the WEST. From IBM, Ford, Boeing, Le Stabrolle, Shell..........to ADIDAS, Mercedes, OPEL, NPD Petrochemicals ......

    Put aside the US Media, that is totally owned and controled by jewish businessmen..

    The whole western civilization in it's all glory is getting purchased by jews.So if you think that those Arabs will/have any kind of effect on anything, then your wrong.
    AMD was in big trouble and no other company offered any kind of help.AMD simply wasn't able to keep both it's manufacturing and designing business and make a revenue.
    Now, with their manufacturing business is getting fixed and grown, the company is definitely in a better state.As you know, or maybe don't, the global foundaries is expanding now by building two other fabs in NY and Malta.Beside, they fixed and did a lot to AMDs to fabs in Germany. so what AMd has done is establishing a new manufacturing
    entity, that will provide thousands of jobs for those great minds in both Europe and USA, and will compete efficiently with those Taiwanese manufacturing companies.

    But you, with your stupid little brain, can't recognize all that.you think that your nvidia, that small little company with it's 5000 workers, is more important than anything else.

    What about competition?
    What about innovation?
    what about prices? Are you aware of what the state of the prices of gpu, cpus... or any other products would become without competition?


  • SiliconDoc - Wednesday, April 8, 2009 - link

    Here's the other thing, no matter how much you give your opinion on amd/ati, ati lost them billions, and nvidia, even though you pretend otherwise, actually "puts to work" more people than ati making and selling their gpu's, even if they don't have some holding corporation monster over the top of them, bleeding billions as well.
    So, you went into your love for amd, and I guess your love for ati, which according to you "saved the loser" called amd. Like I said, you're more fanboy than one could initially have surmised, and your bias is still bleeding out like mad, not to mention the crazy conspiracy talk.

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