kiss of death!
Why Nvidia will fail this year? Nviida will be hit on all sides, low,
mid and high end discrete graphic boards (video cards) and chipsets
(mother boards). AMD has finally release its quad core and spider 4
pci-e slot solutions offering competition at the ultra high where
there was none. Lets face it nvidia has been selling $400, $500 and
$800 graphics cards with little competition that is all ending now.
The 8800 series was to top out at $500 in 2007 yet the top of the line
cards sold for premium almost all year, around $700. Crossfire
(multiple card solutions for mid and high end systems) has finally
caught up and passed SLI technology. Even though this is a small part
of the market - you have the corvette affect. Classic marketing sell
Vega's by having that vette in the show room.
First GPU's, nvidia total domination high and mid level graphic
solutions is ending. AMDATI (amod-ti) has finally brought a decent
graphics card to market the 3870. Two 3870 combined, called crossfire,
is far more efficient then SLI - SLI is Nvidia's scalable link
interface. AMDATI has released spider with 4 card slots and drivers to
make it all work. Nvidia has introduced 3-way SLI, testing of 3-way
in real life has only shown around a 20% gain in performance when the
third card is added. 2-way SLI shows approximately 50% gain when a
second card is added. Bottom line is crossfire allows the mid level
AMDATI cards to catch up and possibly surpass Nvidia.
Nvidia did not cross license Intel to use SLI but Intel has allowed
nvidia to build chipsets. The agreements ends with the new batch 45nm
CPU's from Intel in early 2008. The lack of SLI in Intel mother boards
and total dominance of Nvidia graphics cards has allowed Nvidia to
sell many high and mid level mother boards. For instance in Velocity
Micro systems at BestBuy and Circuit city you find Nvidia 650i mother
boards and 7800 then 8800 cards. The low end (sub $1000 pc's) you
have "corvette affect" this trickles down to the low end.
The Question is when the newest CPU technology by Intel in late 2008
with the integrated memory controller, whcih productivity will take a
giant leap once again, will Nvidia be in the same position? Nvidia may
not have a licence to build motherboards in late 2008. Do they? Intel
is now teaming up with AMDATI to offer a good solution in the mid and
high end systems. Again this will affect the low end buying decisions
as it has in the past.
ATI will be chopping at the mid, and low level discrete graphics
market. Yes, nvidia is offering its integrated graphics chipset
solutions but so is AMDATI. Both will not doubt get part of Intels 70%
market share of IGC.
Now that Nvidia has already seen its big profit boost from $800
graphic cards and the $500 ones too, with out a match - where is the
9800GTX? Is there an issue with it? or is nvidia holding back until
the dual gpu cards from AMDATI come out in a few weeks. The HD 3870 X2
is a 2 gpu card that can be combined with a second card in crossfire
and offer nvidia real competition in the high end gaming systems
market. Rumors are the R700 will not be another R600 disaster for ATI.
The near complete failure of the R600 (2900XT) with its 100 watt
energy premium and slower fps in all gaming tests gave Nvidia the
entire market above $250.
Finally as a small PC builder, warpedsystems, i have used only nvidia
graphics cards for all of 2007 and mother boards for good part of 2007
- in 2008 we are now using ATI and Intel parts once again.
by me! a few days ago on google fiance
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