Nvidia: DirectX 11 Won't Define GPU Sales
Nvidia says that special-purpose software relying on GPGPU will propel GPU sales, not PC gaming.
Are PC games no longer the driving force behind graphics cards? That's the indication Nvidia made Wednesday at the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference, saying that the upcoming DirectX 11 application programming interface (API) will not be what drives future sales. Instead, Nvidia said the graphics market will pocket wads of cash from general purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU). Tools for GPGPU and software taking advantage of the technology will also propel sales, not DirectX 11-driven PC games.
"DirectX 11 by itself is not going be the defining reason to buy a new GPU," said Mike Hard, vice president of investor relations at Nvidia. "It will be one of the reasons. This is why Microsoft is in work with the industry to allow more freedom and more creativity in how you build content, which is always good, and the new features in DirectX 11 are going to allow people to do that. But that no longer is the only reason, we believe, consumers would want to invest in a GPU."
X-Bit Labs points out that Nvidia may have problems, as ATI is about to crank out its Radeon HD 5800-series graphics cards that fully support DirectX 11, and Nvidia is remaining speechless in regards to its DirectX 11-flavored plans. Nvidia's CUDA GPGPU technology is also incompatible with OpenCL and DirectCompute 11 environments, both supported by the Radeon HD 4000 and 5000 series. This could mean to computer enthusiasts that Nvidia is no longer the "technology leader."
But Nvidia doesn't seem phased, and stands firm on its belief that special-purpose software relying on GPGPU will be what drives people to the store, begging for more power, not id Software's Rage or some other PC game with insane requirements. That's too bad, as The Jerk had a special purpose but didn't need a GPGPU.
This is as good as admiting defeat.
-nuff said
GG Nvidia, it was nice knowing you...
ATI is definitely going to be my next graphics provider now.
This is as good as admiting defeat.
GG Nvidia, it was nice knowing you...
ATI is definitely going to be my next graphics provider now.
I admit the DX11 lack from NVidia is worrisome though.
-nuff said
nVidia: DX10.1 isn't a large enough upgrade to support.
nVidia: DX11 isn't important.
Seems to me that if nVidia can keep the 2005 market it would be fantastic. They didn't do their R&D, now they are paying for it. My bet is that AMD buys nVidia if they go far enough down. Then AMD can claim gaming.
Since nVidia has been on the other side of that stick, I can only assume their are trying to stall potential buyers and persuade them to wait for their own directx11 cards.
Anytime you have to reduce your product price 50% or more (as NVIDIA did after the Radeon 4870 came out), indicates a serious over-estimate of value on the part of the company. Add in the heat-induced failures plaguing numerous laptops with IGPs, and the relative failure of the PS3 console (the only latest-gen sporting NVIDIA graphics), and NVIDIA has to do some serious rethinking.
Maybe this comment about DX11 is a product of that rethinking. Maybe they've given up on consumer graphics and really just aim to push GPGPU towards the science and research sector.
Its sort of a shame to see them go. While I switched to ATI with the Radeon 4850, every GPU before that had been a GeForce.
His Bio: http://www.nvidia.com/object/bio_hara.html
VizWorld's correction: : http://www.vizworld.com/2009/09/nvidia-directx-11-stimulate-sales-graphics-cards/
I'm sure they'll have to do it eventually, but still...
Yeah, you are. The two mentioned in the article are supposed to be open standards that anyone could make something compatible with, and therefore anyone making software can use to write software that will simply run as long as the stuff the end user is running is standards compliant. They don't need to worry about what specific stuff is there. Just like most of the time stuff for 64-bit CPU's are mainly written to just the subset of commands that AMD and Intel can both run.
CUDA is just some shit that nVidia made up that only runs on their cards period, and now that an open implementation is coming it will die. Just like ATI's stream stuff which is the same thing, just with ATI only.