Monday, March 29, 2010

Nvidia Fermi – mis-step?

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3651&p=1
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=7824

These are just two of many articles written about Nvidia’s latest gpu platform. However when combined, (hot, expensive, power-hungry, just barely faster than AMD’s latest, coupled with a concentration on the general compute aspect of the platform) indicates to me that Nvidia may have sacrificed gaming graphics development and personal computing innovation in favor of their quest to compete with Intel etc. for CPU business.

Meanwhile AMD has lowered prices, lowered heat, lowered power requirements, all while providing cards that scream right up there with NVidia’s brand new offerings. They have finally got a good plan, and are executing on it.

And then AMD adds what is in my opinion their coup de grace, Eyefinity -http://sites.amd.com/us/underground/products/eyefinity/Pages/eyefinity.aspx . Up to now we have called dual monitors multi-monitor support, not realizing how much harder it is to go to three or more than it is to go to two monitors.. Many graphics cards, including those embedded in laptops, provided support for two monitors. However to add more required special graphics cards, external black boxes, and a hefty dose of if-you-have-to-ask-how-much-you-can’t-afford-it. AMD comes along and includes support for six monitors in their off-the-shelf card. True it’s the top of the line card, with lesser but still multi-monitor support in other cards in the line, but it’s still a shipping consumer card. This is a game-changer (pun intended) in my opinion.

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