Nvidia cuts out reviewers who speak the truth

[v_rr]

IT IS ALWAYS funny when an unethical company turns on its own supporters as Nvidia did with the latest 'all new' GT250 cards. This time however, their PR stunts cross the line from unethical to purposely false, and hilarity ensues.

What are we talking about? The rebranding of the venerable G92, aka the 8800GT, 9800GT, 9800GTX, 9800GTX+, and several other variants as the GTS250. The NDA goes up on the third of March, and we have complete scores already, but there is no difference between these cards and the older G92 cards. We will save you from having to pour over spreadsheets scratching your head wondering how it is different... it isn't at all.

This time however, they crossed the line from plausible deniability to flat out deception. In the middle of last week we heard what Nvidia was up to this time around, but just couldn't believe they would be THAT sleazy. A day or so later, HardOCP published a story about Nvidia stock 'plummeting', basically an indignant backhand for being cut out of the GTS250's launch. Point one confirmed. The rest soon followed.

Kyle at HardOPC made the deal-breaking mistake of being honest, so it is doghouse time for him, and the site. Welcome to the club, we even have a fort. I assume Kyle got the list of who got cut too, so will know we will have quite big-name company soon joining us soon. Punch and pie.

So, short story, Nvidia is playing with the press once again. And since it has no new product, it is desperately afraid of the truth getting out. And if you didn't drool over PhysX and CUDA enough, you are cut out. This is exactly what Apple does to keep the press in line, but Apple has something Nvidia doesn't: competence.

If that wasn't bad enough, the next part is. Normally, when a vendor cuts you out, if you really care, you can go to one of their partners and get boards/chips/whatever. Sometimes this is even a better idea because one or two tend to have a special card, overclocked, shiny metal cooler, or box with bigger breasts on the model. This time Nvidia specifically forbade partners from giving sites parts if they were on honesty hiatus.

Not only that, but the flat-out dishonesty is that Nvidia gave its board partners 'special' boards to send to reviewers. They are not allowed to give out their own vanilla cards, they MUST use the special set supplied by Nvidia.
http://vr-zone.com/forums/396330/nvidia-cuts-out-reviewers-who-speak-the-truth.html

[STaRGaZeR]

Original source: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/123/1051123/nvidia-cuts-reviewers-gts250

NVIDIA rules! :up:

[Calmatory]

Man thats good business practice. :)

[Etihtsarom]

Nvidia is to the tech industry as Paris Hilton is to the entertainment world. Nothing worth paying attention to, but people can't help but pay attention to. There is really no such thing as bad publicity I guess.

[skycrane]

they are just lucky that CUDA dosent work with ATI, hell, my 7900gtx was working great for the games i play. the ONLY reason i upgraded is to do some GPU crunching.

So ATI get your act together, so we can fold on your gpus as well.

[trinibwoy]

Yeah we were talking about this in the GTS 250 thread when Kyle first broke the story. There's no win for Nvidia here so I don't get their angle. So what if people don't talk about CUDA and PhysX enough. I guess they think more people would have read Kyle's less than flattering review than would read these negative Inqwell type articles. Still, how can they make all these bone-headed renaming moves and expect people not to call them out on it?

[Shintai]

Love theinq source...and Kyle for that matter. Moar drama plz!

[SKYMTL]

Personally, I think this stroy has been blown a bit out of proportion. It started with Kyle stating that Nvidia won't be sending these cards to sites which didn't give PhysX and CUDA a good run-through. Now suddenly it is "Nvidia cuts out reviewers who speak the truth".

Give me a break.

[Eastcoasthandle]

It will be interesting to note which websites do publish that review.

[JohnJohn]

I like this part


Just what are the green fumblers doing this time? Two things: one bad, the other downright deceptive. The bad one is simple, if you don't review Nvidia cards and say that PhysX is the greatest thing since sliced bread and CUDA makes sex better, you aren't doing a good enough job. They will gently nudge you to change your tune, basically praise PhysX and CUDA until you wear the letters off your keyboard.

And this


Not only that, but the flat-out dishonesty is that Nvidia gave its board partners 'special' boards to send to reviewers. They are not allowed to give out their own vanilla cards, they MUST use the special set supplied by Nvidia.

Why is this dishonest? Want to bet that those boards have cherry-picked chips and RAM that clocks to the moon? That they will do everything better than any card you will ever be able to buy? Basically, Nvidia supplied ringers to the press that are not representative of what you can buy, and forced OEMs to give them to review sites without telling them. The technical term is 'mushrooming', feed them [scatological reference deleted] and keep them in the dark.

[SKYMTL]

It will be interesting to note which websites do publish that review.

If the rumors are correct, any website with enough PhysX and CUDA reviews to satisfy Nvidia. If the rumors are incorrect then many more sites will have reviews.

IMO, at this point it will be won't be interesting to see who publishes reviews but rather who publishes HONEST reviews.

[trinibwoy]

How about they spend their time and energy getting PhysX well represented in actual games. A reviewer's empty praise is meaningless if there's nothing tangible to talk about.

[CmB]

Personally, I think this stroy has been blown a bit out of proportion. It started with Kyle stating that Nvidia won't be sending these cards to sites which didn't give PhysX and CUDA a good run-through. Now suddenly it is "Nvidia cuts out reviewers who speak the truth".

Give me a break.

In your opinion, did Kyle mean good run-through as in solid testing or a positive review no matter the actual results? Just a question.

--Chris

[Leeghoofd]

ow boy another I want to flame Nvidia thread... get a life guys... if they handpick reviewers then the number of reviews will be scarce and the card will not get loads of publicity... do you really think marketing works that way ??

Nice inquirer/fudzilla find again, find some stuff now about the other player(s)

[Dami3n]

Why lose time reviewing something that isn´t new? :shrug:
If this story is true, i think nvidia did them a favour.

[MotF Bane]

Is there anything on [H] about this though? I didn't see anything.

[SKYMTL]

In your opinion, did Kyle mean good run-through as in solid testing or a positive review no matter the actual results? Just a question.

--Chris

From my perspective as a reviewer, I think he meant that Nvidia is more than happy to cut sites out of certain reviews if said sites don't cover certain aspects of Nvidia's technology. I think Kyle is actually in the same boat as we are: he sees very little consumer-oriented benefits right for either PhysX or CUDA. That in effect means that a site's resources are better used by reviewing products and technologies which actually spark a consumer's interest.

On the flip side of that coin, Nvidia REALLY seems to want to push those two technologies and now (judging from all the rumors circulating) is more than willing to "reward" sites they think properly covered said tech. For all I know that may mean only positive articles (come to think of it I have yet to see an overly negative review of either PhysX or CUDA) or sites that actually published one.

Personally, I can't really comment since most manufacturers are supposed to receive their sample lists over the next few days and I haven't heard anything about the whole process as of yet.

[SKYMTL]

Is there anything on [H] about this though? I didn't see anything.

http://www.hardocp.com/news.html?news=Mzc5NTUsLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdCwsLDE=

[K404]

If no-one/only a few ppl are reviewing these GTS150 cards then it leaves the field open for nV to spin performance however they like to get interest/sales up.

I can quite believe that poo reviews mean reviewers/sites get left out in the cold "next time"

I place more importance on integrity and think more highly of those who think the same.

[Chruschef]

.. lol, inquirer.. nvm

[CmB]

From my perspective as a reviewer, I think he meant that Nvidia is more than happy to cut sites out of certain reviews if said sites don't cover certain aspects of Nvidia's technology. I think Kyle is actually in the same boat as we are: he sees very little consumer-oriented benefits right for either PhysX or CUDA. That in effect means that a site's resources are better used by reviewing products and technologies which actually spark a consumer's interest.

On the flip side of that coin, Nvidia REALLY seems to want to push those two technologies and now (judging from all the rumors circulating) is more than willing to "reward" sites they think properly covered said tech. For all I know that may mean only positive articles (come to think of it I have yet to see an overly negative review of either PhysX or CUDA) or sites that actually published one.

Personally, I can't really comment since most manufacturers are supposed to receive their sample lists over the next few days and I haven't heard anything about the whole process as of yet.

Makes sense, I can see your and Kyle's point. Cuda does spark my interest though I could care less about PhysX, but I am in the minority. Thanks for the reply.

--Chris

[V2-V3]

Oh my! its a wonder i switched to ATI back on August 12th 2008 :)

[Eastcoasthandle]

If the rumors are correct, any website with enough PhysX and CUDA reviews to satisfy Nvidia. If the rumors are incorrect then many more sites will have reviews.

IMO, at this point it will be won't be interesting to see who publishes reviews but rather who publishes HONEST reviews.
After reading your reply it's clear for me that you didn't understand my post. I am interested in noting "who" actually publishes these reviews as a whole. :up:

[LowRun]

hardware.fr (http://www.hardware.fr/news/lire/23-02-2009/) had a news about it before the Inq published their one, they didn't mention the "cut reviewers out" thing but they talked about the "special review samples".

This is shamefull :down:

[Zaskar]

It is unfortunately become standard practice for companies to only send out early samples to review sites if their fairly sure that site will give them a positive review, leaving all other sites who might be less then favorable to them left with post release reviews which impact sales much less.

It leaves review sites with the tough choice of being not completely honest or not getting the early reviews.

[MotF Bane]

http://www.hardocp.com/news.html?news=Mzc5NTUsLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdCwsLDE=

Thanks.

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

My technical understanding of this is not good enough to know if its possible, and it sounds a bit conspiracy theorist BUT

Is it possible for nvidia to raise the clocks of a review sample card but make it look like to our eyes and every means we have that the clocks are in fact stock?

[perkam]

They could've at least put some GDDR5 on it. I wouldn't be surprised if Nvidia IS doing this though.

No one wants cards sitting in inventory and partners not having enough sales. There is a line you don't cross, however, and this is that line. If you're scared of an honest review, you're scared of your own product's incompetence...which shouldn't be the case since they've had a LOT of time to play around with the G92 core to tweak it here and there.

I don't mind them renaming the card, but trying to control reviews is just plain sad.

Perkam

[Bojamijams]

And ATI doesn't cherry pick cards to send to reviewers? Get real.

[SKYMTL]

Makes sense, I can see your and Kyle's point. Cuda does spark my interest though I could care less about PhysX, but I am in the minority. Thanks for the reply.

--Chris

Many of us think that CUDA is amazing but with a limited number of supporting apps to test with, it is extremely hard to give an objective opinion.

[perkam]

And ATI doesn't cherry pick cards to send to reviewers? Get real.ATI has never been in a position where they're scared that a renaming will hurt the sales of one of their graphics cards.

This would be disgusting if ATI did this as well though. This has nothing to do with ATI vs Nvidia. Any company that punishes reviewers for honesty is despicable because us readers expect that honesty.

Perkam

[Sparky]

And ATI doesn't cherry pick cards to send to reviewers? Get real.

There's a difference between cherry-picking and being scared of a true, honest review. Now whether this rumor is true or not is up for debate.
And this isn't ATI vs Nvidia here, so let's not send the thread that direction.

[perkam]

There's a difference between cherry-picking and being scared of a true, honest review. Now whether this rumor is true or not is up for debate.
And this isn't ATI vs Nvidia here, so let's not send the thread that direction.Learn to type faster young padawan :p:

Perkam

[imsochobo]

this is a while back, but still relevant.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTUxOSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

It feels like the next bad nvidia article/news comes after the other.

[CmB]

Many of us think that CUDA is amazing but with a limited number of supporting apps to test with, it is extremely hard to give an objective opinion.

That's exactly what I was thinking and you're right. I'm just hoping for a standardized API (mind you I'm not programmer) between nVidia and ATi so we, the end-users, can actually benefit from this technology as we won't have to guess about compatibility. I'm a pipe-dreamer, I know.
:cool:


this is a while back, but still relevant.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTUxOSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

It feels like the next bad nvidia article/news comes after the other.

AMD/ATi does this too as well as many others. It's part of their SPP agreement.

[imsochobo]

Quote:
Originally Posted by imsochobo View Post
this is a while back, but still relevant.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?...50aHVzaWFzdA==

It feels like the next bad nvidia article/news comes after the other.
AMD/ATi does this too as well as many others. It's part of their SPP agreement.
Is there a diffrence in how the prices are listed? if you are allowed to see the diffrence in mass listing, AMD are better.
Of course amd is controlling a part of the pricing, they have to, to keep the quality up!
But there is always a line of quality and making money, which appearantly nvidia likes very much!
I dont know know, i live in norway, doesnt seem like we are affected by this. :)



Quote:
Originally Posted by SKYMTL View Post
Many of us think that CUDA is amazing but with a limited number of supporting apps to test with, it is extremely hard to give an objective opinion.
That's exactly what I was thinking and you're right. I'm just hoping for a standardized API (mind you I'm not programmer) between nVidia and ATi so we, the end-users, can actually benefit from this technology as we won't have to guess about compatibility. I'm a pipe-dreamer, I know.


I dont think either will be a hit before AMD gets their hands into this aswell, to be quite honest, i dont care about theese "Physx" yet, why bother using more of the gpu power for physx when you already have a gpu bottleneck ?
And i always feel like the Physx is "not transparent" thing for me, havoc is at least just a logo i see.

As for cuda, what should i use it for ?.... Got no interest what so ever in getting more folding points, i use my gpu's to fold(4870's) and i dont care if a dude have more points than me, it all goes to a good cause.
Folding is the only place i know of where cuda excells(private use!)

physx, my games which have physx engine runs good without it, looks good without it!

End line of this: I belive in General Purpose GPU "GpGPU" but not 2 api's!

[Sr7]

My god, yet another case of over-reaction and people who have no idea going on passing judgment.

No one said if you don't review the cards favorably you can't have samples... this is merely something they're doing to highlight CUDA and PhysX. Clearly it doesn't have to be a positive review, as long as you review it. They want more exposure on that front by reviewers, and they know that certain review sites probably wouldn't care for this given that it's rebranded, and would not review CUDA or PhysX, so they didn't waste their time.

What's the problem with that?

I guess all of the conspiracy prone, braveheart-esque, "freedom" screaming individuals assume the worst and then start their campaign :rolleyes:

[wickedld9]

Nvidia has been doing crap like this for a while. In the X1900 / 7900 era on a review that I helped test and write (Nvidia sponsored), we forced AFR on a TWIMTBP DEMO title that CrossFire didn't have a profile for. We stated in the article that we had to force Cat AI to run in AFR so that readers knew that there was a work around for this particular game. The X1900 CrossFire outdid 7900 GTX SLI and Nvidia was beyond PO'd that we "cheated" for ATI. The site was "blacklisted" for a few months after...

[Sr7]

Nvidia has been doing crap like this for a while. In the X1900 / 7900 era on a review that I helped test and write (Nvidia sponsored), we forced AFR on a TWIMTBP DEMO title that CrossFire didn't have a profile for. We stated in the article that we had to force Cat AI to run in AFR so that readers knew that this was a user adjusted setting. The X1900 CrossFire outdid 7900 GTX SLI and Nvidia was beyond PO'd that we "cheated" for ATI. The site was "blacklisted" for a few months after...

You need to control the perception of your product very carefully, because no matter how good what you make is, if someone in between you and a gamer makes the product look bad unnecessarily, that's often irreversible, and irresponsible on the reviewers part.

If you force Crossfire or sli for them then you're not doing the same thing as the ati or nvidia crossfire/sli profile would. The profile can more accurately get scaling optimized and increased, so they probably would've had much better scaling that you led people to believe.. fair reason for both companies to be upset.

And know this.. no one reads the fine print of your reviews.. no matter what disclaimers you place there, the graphs do the talking.

[GAR]

The INQ as the source??? everyone knows what CHARLIE thinks of nvidia, THE INQ should be banned from this website seriously, i stopped going on that garbage years ago, everyone should do the same.

[Sr7]

At the time the article was tested (weeks of testing) you had to force AFR. The day the review came out ATI released WHQL drivers which contained a profile for that game/demo. The performance was identical.

That's just my point though... even if performance was the same, it's a bad and inaccurate practice, do you understand that?

If there is no profile from either vendor, you should just not test in multi-gpu. Otherwise you're basically testing a product they haven't released yet in a fashion that likely won't be representative of its release state.

[SKYMTL]

The INQ as the source??? everyone knows what CHARLIE thinks of nvidia, THE INQ should be banned from this website seriously, i stopped going on that garbage years ago, everyone should do the same.

Considering HardOCP and several other websites are reporting the same thing since BEFORE the Inq post was even put live, I wouldn't be too quick to call BS.

[Ket]

The honest guys always get punished. I say sites need to grow a set of balls (or relocate them) and simply stand up to disgraceful behavior like this (assuming its true). People listen to the majority, and if that majority has proof to back up what they say, companies are left with no choice but to start doing things right or suffer the consequences.

[STaRGaZeR]

Many of us think that CUDA is amazing but with a limited number of supporting apps to test with, it is extremely hard to give an objective opinion.

Can you please tell me what do you find so amazing about CUDA?

[SKYMTL]

Can you please tell me what do you find so amazing about CUDA?

For fear of detracting any more from the original point of this thread, I will answer "no". ;)

[Ket]

That's just my point though... even if performance was the same, it's a bad and inaccurate practice, do you understand that?

If there is no profile from either vendor, you should just not test in multi-gpu. Otherwise you're basically testing a product they haven't released yet in a fashion that likely won't be representative of its release state.

I'd say the review you helped with was made more accurate with what you did, not less. Plenty of people tweak settings to accomplish things. nVidia just decided to spit their dummy out and throw all the toys out their buggy.

[Vienna]

That's just my point though... even if performance was the same, it's a bad and inaccurate practice, do you understand that?

If there is no profile from either vendor, you should just not test in multi-gpu. Otherwise you're basically testing a product they haven't released yet in a fashion that likely won't be representative of its release state.

Did you even read his post? The nVidia card was benched using default settings, it HAD a profile, it was the ATi card that was benched using a forced profile.

It showed that the ATi card outperformed the nVida card using unoptimized drivers, whle the nVidia card had optimized drivers. If anything it showed a WAY more acurate picture than simply runing the nVidia card in SLi and and the ATi card andf showing the nVidia solution as winning simply because ATi had not released a proper profile yet.

If it was the ATi card that had a built in profile and the nVidia card didn't, I would fully expect the reviewer to create a custom profile on the nVidia card to the best of their ablity, just the same.

[Ket]

Spiffy. Look how much I can buy a Zotac 9800GTX+ 512MB for (http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Product/35226?source=googleps) Who wants to bet a GTS250 will be around £30 more expensive than that? :p:

[wickedld9]

Thanks Ket and Vienna for reading and understanding what I wrote. I removed my last two posts as I'm adding a bit too much detail and don't want to end up on the short list again...

[Ket]

Only fanboys cause problems, not honesty ;) I have had plenty of nVidia and ATi cards, in all honesty, I just think ATi are better. Their drivers don't cause my systems to BSOD every other day.

[STaRGaZeR]

For fear of detracting any more from the original point of this thread, I will answer "no". ;)

I was not expecting that from you honestly. People like to say "CUDA ruls!" and when you ask them why you only get excuses.

CUDA is a big fail since the very beginning, and it'll disappear eventually. Not the concept, but CUDA itself.

[570091D]

Personally, I think this stroy has been blown a bit out of proportion. It started with Kyle stating that Nvidia won't be sending these cards to sites which didn't give PhysX and CUDA a good run-through. Now suddenly it is "Nvidia cuts out reviewers who speak the truth".

Give me a break.

i'm with you man:shakes:


I was not expecting that from you honestly. People like to say "CUDA ruls!" and when you ask them why you only get excuses.

CUDA is a big fail since the very beginning, and it'll disappear eventually. Not the concept, but CUDA itself.

i'm not understanding the failure.... i use cuda for folding, video transcoding, and eye cnady (physics). so far as i can tell the tech is solid, and so are the performance gains i've made on it's account. why the hate?

[moiraesfate]

:rolleyes: Oh stop. If you don't like it, then don't use them. Simple as that.

[perkam]

:rolleyes: Oh stop. If you don't like it, then don't use them. Simple as that.I agree. I have no problem with the renaming either.

But the anti-honesty-brigade at Nvidia has been confirmed by members at HardOCP.

It's one thing to rename your cards, quite another to force people not to tell others about it.

What Nvidia Wants: "The GTX 250 is a good step up from the previous generation and performs wonderfully at the price range."

What Nvidia doesn't want: "The GTX 250 is well priced, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a 2 year old card with little or no enhancements."

Perkam

[SKYMTL]

I was not expecting that from you honestly. People like to say "CUDA ruls!" and when you ask them why you only get excuses.

CUDA is a big fail since the very beginning, and it'll disappear eventually. Not the concept, but CUDA itself.

If you want to PM me to discuss the finer points of CUDA and GPGPU, please feel free to PM me. I just wanted to respect the original talking points behind this post without derailing the thread which would result in the thread being closed. :up:

[trinibwoy]

Heh, considering CUDA has been vastly successful in such a short time in terms of academic and commercial adoption as well as the amount of general interest it has sparked you sure have a weird definition of fail. Failed compared to what exactly? In case you didn't notice OpenCL and DX compute are carbon copies of this immense failure that beat everything to market by 2 years and counting.

As for the "special" review samples...I think Nvidia has gone completely wacko. What could they hope to gain by cherry picking stuff that will eventually be compared to retail products.

[zanzabar]

Heh, considering CUDA has been vastly successful in such a short time in terms of academic and commercial adoption as well as the amount of general interest it has sparked you sure have a weird definition of fail. Failed compared to what exactly? In case you didn't notice OpenCL and DX compute are carbon copies of this immense failure that beat everything to market by 2 years and counting.

As for the "special" review samples...I think Nvidia has gone completely wacko. What could they hope to gain by cherry picking stuff that will eventually be compared to retail products.


i'm with you man:shakes:



i'm not understanding the failure.... i use cuda for folding, video transcoding, and eye cnady (physics). so far as i can tell the tech is solid, and so are the performance gains i've made on it's account. why the hate?

how dose CUDA do anything just using DX u can transcode faster at a higher quality than cuda (the free CCC transcoder), and other than folding that uses CUDA to check the ram and ogl or dx to do the rest whats the point. atleast with open CL there is a working exchange server and sql add on that has a massive amount of database searching and sorting power. the whole GPGPU thing isnt going to work until there is a unified platform and even then cuda is using 16bit floating point and openCL is using 64bit so there wont be common ground. and its a huge pain to code for.

[trinibwoy]

You should do some more research. And if you're talking about avivo vs badaboom you REALLY need to do some more research :)

[halo112358]

Nvidia is to the tech industry as Paris Hilton is to the entertainment world: A train-wreck in slow motion that one can't help but pay attention to.

Fixed that for you

[zanzabar]

You should do some more research. And if you're talking about avivo vs badaboom you REALLY need to do some more research :)

u mean that it has higher IQ than the cuda and works faster on gforce cards :p:

[Cybercat]

Nice inquirer/fudzilla find again, find some stuff now about the other player(s)Don't lump fudzilla in with the Inq. While fudzilla is made of some ex-Inq people, their integrity is on a whole other level, which is to say they actually have some.

[Talonman]

Personally, I think this stroy has been blown a bit out of proportion. It started with Kyle stating that Nvidia won't be sending these cards to sites which didn't give PhysX and CUDA a good run-through. Now suddenly it is "Nvidia cuts out reviewers who speak the truth".

Give me a break.

+1 ...

More time should have been spent pointing out that PhysX is the future...

[railer]

CUDA is the future. Physics-X is the future. GPGPU is the future.
ALL your CPU belongs to us:ROTF:

Truly yours.

NVIDIA

[SmaKKed]

Show me one successful business that is ALWAYS honest?

Who cares move along.

[kadozer]

I care.

[Krizby87]

Heh, HardOCP states that they have always bought their own retail cards and review them, so what exactly is the fuzz here ? not getting free vid cards to play with piss off a lot of people eh ?

[Nedjo]

And ATI doesn't cherry pick cards to send to reviewers? Get real.
...and they cherry picked wrong 4830 with less SPs than it should have... so much of cherry picking

[Shintai]

Show me one successful business that is ALWAYS honest?

Who cares move along.

Maybe some one person newly started business with less than a week running :D

[Anth Seebel]

Hate is never really that interesting...

LOL INQ..............go figure :horse:

[Leeghoofd]

Don't lump fudzilla in with the Inq. While fudzilla is made of some ex-Inq people, their integrity is on a whole other level, which is to say they actually have some.

Not really wanted to compare both sites mate, but just a reminder for the OP as he likes to spread, let's call it dirt, of the green team in any way he can...

I really wished these ( to me ) useless posts stopped till there's solid proof... To me this is not news, this is gossip... but looking at all the crap in the real world, some consider it as news...

[LowRun]

Funny how some of you guys will keep on saying things like "INQ LOL" when they are not the only ones and where not even the first to bring the story up :rolleyes:

[MaDuLo]

Kyle is just a little retarted stupid kid..... What goes around, comes around

[Xoulz]

:rolleyes:

Honestly, who really cares about PhysX and CUDA ..?

Obviously, there might be a few people here, but they have special needs and can otherwise supplement elsewhere.

As an enthusiast and gamer, none of this really excites me, because hardly anything supports either. I don't see either technology going anywhere and with the advent of Intel & AMD second gen quad-cores, much of anything gained via Nvidia, can be done on the CPU.

I'm pretty sure i7 and Havok would yield some pretty remarkable results. If not now, 6 months from now!


So, I whole heartedly agree with Kyle and if Nvidia wants to re brand their products, let them. They just won't have known web-sites logos on their boxes because they are trying to scam my unsuspecting friends.

[Rammsteiner]

Kyle is just a little retarted stupid kid..... What goes around, comes around
Not like it's his fault, his parents should have used a condom:rolleyes:

IMO it seems like it's a new trend to :banana::banana::banana::banana: on nVidia in any possible way, especially because in the days that Intel had some good clockers and ATI didnt have superior GPU's quite a few people went with 680i to use with nVidia cards (SLI or not), which turned out quite bad (at least, if it wasnt used in proper special ways).

nVidia can be quite arrogant, take for example their GT200 at launch for a premium price with a non-premium performance compared to ATI, but after all they've always been like that (but with the premium performance).

Although nVidia ain't my primary choice, I think this crap is getting boring or maybe even retarded:rolleyes: IMO there's one thing to complain about and that's the constant renaming of products like it's entirely new. On the otherhand, we know by now they do this and as long as you dont pay a premium price for a moderate performance boost, whatever. Not everyone OC's/unlocks things:rolleyes:

Regarding this issue, look what happens if you completely mess up any product review three times in a row showing it to be utter :banana::banana::banana::banana:, you wont get another chance in a long while. IMO, this ain't wrong in anyway. They offer you a good premium review and it's to be expected they want something back for that. My dad for example gets often offers from other compagnies like laptops, smartphones etc, if he would accept those, these people would expect there would be a deal and not a kthxbye thing, this counts for such reviews as well.

[Nedjo]

Kyle is just a little retarted stupid kid..... What goes around, comes around
Kyle is serious family man!

[SKYMTL]

Heh, HardOCP states that they have always bought their own retail cards and review them, so what exactly is the fuzz here ?
What? Maybe SOME but definately not all. Several of my friends in the GPU industry send cards to Kyle to review.

Unfortunately, it seems like too many people read too much into certain statements.

[MaDuLo]

Kyle is serious family man!

Right, thats why he cannot stay objective in any conclusion he makes...
he always says the product is utter crap or fabolous, with such black and white statements it is possible to piss some people off... (especially if you are the creator of the utter crap product)
While some people may enjoy his very direct approach and statements, i dont think corporate people enjoy it

And know he does not get a scope anymore, he is doing the same thing, because he screwed up, he says nVidia cuts out reviewers who speak the truth. You can speak the truth in a million different ways, you can use the hard direct approach and offend people, or you can use the gentle & smooth approach.... Kyle made his choice, but guess what, it didnt not work out... Plus instead of stating he is at fault, he blames nVidia :rofl:
Yep, that wil surely improve the relationship :ROTF::ROTF:

To get it down to his level, the stole the little kids christmas present because he is always saying the previous presents sucked

[SKYMTL]

Like it or not, it was Kyle who brought this whole thing up in the first place. Without him mentioning it, alot of this would have stayed behind closed doors and there wouldn't have even been an open discussion about it.

[Particle]

I've preferred ATI cards for a while now and have been using them exclusively since my Radeon 9500 Non-Pro, but I never really hated nVidia until I got to know that jackass CEO of theirs better in these recent developments involving him.

[trinibwoy]

A little tidbit from Hardware.fr's Tridam regarding Nvidia's reviewer guidelines for the 250. Difference between fast and slow boards is apparently 100Mhz on the memory which is now bumped to 1GB.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1270590&postcount=39



3/3 – Reviews go live of GTS 250 1GB fast boards (738/1100)

3/10 – GTS 250 1GB fast boards (738/1100) and 512MB boards available for sale.

3/17 – GTS 250 1GB slow boards (738/1000) available for sale.

But that's nothing. It looks like Nvidia is gonna rename mobile G92b to GTX 280M !!! Woooo!!!
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12222&Itemid=1

[perkam]

3/3 – Reviews go live of GTS 250 1GB fast boards (738/1100)

3/10 – GTS 250 1GB fast boards (738/1100) and 512MB boards available for sale.

3/17 – GTS 250 1GB slow boards (738/1000) available for sale. Show me Godiva and send me Cadbury?

Classic bait' n switch. :down:

Perkam

[trinibwoy]

Yep, looks like it. I think Nvidia is acting out "How to destroy your brand image in 10 renames".

[Talonman]

Kyle hates PhysX, and stated to me that unless he sees more games produced, he holds his opinion that it isn't worth reporting about...

Well Mirrors Edge is out and a good game too. The Best are still being made. ;)

We will see if he is a man of his word and starts to throw Nvida a bone for spending millions on PhysX, than giving it to us for free.

ATI's best answer is to run an Nvidia card next to an ATI card in Windows 7.

http://forums.slizone.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=33232&view=findpost&p=273161

I wonder if as many people hated AA when it came out.

A new level of realism in graphics is always welcome to true enthusiasts.

I think you will also fine that the members who downplay PhysX, is in direct direct proportion to how big of an ATI fanboy they are.

I stand firm that PhysX will be BIG. :)
Time will prove this to be correct...

[perkam]

I think you will also fine that the members who downplay PhysX, is in direct direct proportion to how big of an ATI fanboy they are.

I stand firm that PhysX will be BIG. :)
Time will prove this to be correct...You're right that Physx will be BIG...someday...but you're wrong in saying that those who downplay Physx are ATI fanboys...

All technologies are prone to criticism and the word "average score" comes from having both top end and bottom end reviews. There will be people who LOVE a technology for their own reasons and those that hate it for their own reasons.

The FACT here is, that everyone is entitled to their opinion and Nvidia has decided to deny that right to longstanding review sites just which says a lot about their confidence in their product.

But this thread isn't about Kyle or Physx, its about the GTX 250. Look at Triniboy's post two posts above yours. They're playing the bait and switch game by offering performance numbers on cherry picked cards (the 1100Mhz memory cards) that we ALREADY know will not be what the majority of cards (the 1000Mhz memory cards) will perform like.

And here's the sad thing about it. I'm sure the product will be Kick-A*ss for the price range. It's merely the tactics and shenanigans that Nvidia pulls that make itself and its products look bad.

Perkam

[Talonman]

Nvidia cuts out reviewers who speak the truth

I thought this was about the [H] getting cutt out of getting a GTX 250...

and the reasons for it...

The downplay, or no mention of PhysX at all...

The Quad SLI review in a non i7 system comes to mind, and declaring that there were no performance benifits to running quad.
(The fastest GPU's, should have been run with the fastest CPU.) PC101.

I know that Stock post isn't helping things any.

There was a disturbing patten for 'the guy's who (cough cough) speak the truth'...

Sometimes that 'everyone is entitled to their opinion' thing, comes into play more than 'Nvidia cuts out reviewers who speak the truth'.

Kyle has his opinions, and they are strong. They just aren't in line with what Nvidia's opinion is. :)

I am not sure it was Nvidia's benifit to send them cards any more. Why??
We can have some snot nose kid run Quad SLI with his crappy processor, and hear the same declaration made to the world.

[perkam]

Nvidia cuts out reviewers who speak the truth

I thought this was about the [H] getting cutt out of getting a GTX 250...

and the reasons for it...

The downplay, or no mention of PhysX at all...

The Quad SLI review in a non i7 system comes to mind, and declaring that there were no performance benifits to running quad.

I know that Stock post isn't helping things any.

There is a disturbing patten for 'the guy's who (cough cough) speak the truth'...

Sometimes that 'that everyone is entitled to their opinion' thing comes into play more than, Nvidia cuts out reviewers who speak the truth.Dude, you're not seeing the forest for the trees :rofl: :p:

Nvidia's tactics atm suck. Doesn't matter if Kyle is a ZOMGSUPERATIFANBOI.

Perkam

[Talonman]

How many cards should Nvidia send out at their expense, to have the advantages over the ATI cards not talked about, and the cards strengths downplayed on a review site?

I think you would get your new eyes if it was your business, and your expense, and your product.

What is the benifit to Nvidia with such a transaction?

[Levish]

Nvidia or ATI can rebrand all they want, I don't care what they call their models as long as they are 30% faster than what I own which is my upgrade point :p

PhysX is great in the few games that make extensive use of it, I wonder if there's a licensing/development kit fee?
perhaps there would be more widespread adpotion and interest in it if it was dropped or even offered with free support?

There would be a higher cost up front for it but I believe they would also quickly expand your list of games in which its supported and properly implemented

[STaRGaZeR]

i'm with you man:shakes:



i'm not understanding the failure.... i use cuda for folding, video transcoding, and eye cnady (physics). so far as i can tell the tech is solid, and so are the performance gains i've made on it's account. why the hate?

First there is no hate, there is reality.
Second, Badaboom is slower and provides less IQ than using x264 with comparable settings for both speed and quality. In short if you use Badaboom is because you're misinformed or just plain stupid (no offense).
Third, PhysX hardware acceleration is just a joke, in many ways. I'm not going to discuss this further because this would be the 1000th thread about it.
Fourth, there are currently what, 2, 3 applications using CUDA to access the shaders and use them? Don't spect many more.

Using the GPU shaders for something other than gaming = good. Requiring a propietary API that comes from a company that doesn't have any influence in the general computer (not graphics) market is just not what the software companies want to develop for, and even less as NV will be becoming less and less important with all those CPU-GPU solutions coming from AMD and Intel. On top of that it's nowhere close to the C language as NV claims, what makes it even more difficult to code for. You have to code for it specifically, nobody wants to tie his future to a shrinking closed market. CUDA is just a glith and will be replaced in a short future by something global, more compatible, easier, etc.

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

CUDA is just a glith and will be replaced in a short future by something global, more compatible, easier, etc.

...OpenCL......


good post stargazer, very well said.

[Talonman]

First there is no hate, there is reality.
Second, Badaboom is slower and provides less IQ than using x264 with comparable settings for both speed and quality. In short if you use Badaboom is because you're misinformed or just plain stupid (no offense).
Third, PhysX hardware acceleration is just a joke, in many ways. I'm not going to discuss this further because this would be the 1000th thread about it.
Fourth, there are currently what, 2, 3 applications using CUDA to access the shaders and use them? Don't spect many more.

Using the GPU shaders for something other than gaming = good. Requiring a propietary API that comes from a company that doesn't have any influence in the general computer (not graphics) market is just not what the software companies want to develop for, and even less as NV will be becoming less and less important with all those CPU-GPU solutions coming from AMD and Intel. On top of that it's nowhere close to the C language as NV claims, what makes it even more difficult to code for. You have to code for it specifically, nobody wants to tie his future to a shrinking closed market. CUDA is just a glith and will be replaced in a short future by something global, more compatible, easier, etc.



I think you will also fine that the members who downplay PhysX, is in direct direct proportion to how big of an ATI fanboy they are.

Reality check!!
A good example of Badaboom's speed... (Watch the videos)
http://www.evga.com/articles/00459/

"PhysX hardware acceleration is just a joke"... You should tell adobe to save them some money.


Are you an ATI man?

It's not in your sig...

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

Are you an ATI man?

It's not in your sig...

It doesnt matter what man he is talon that was a factual post, badaboom is deifnitely a joke and CUDA is a PITA to code for. Companies are going to write for the open standard not the one that is closed controlled and owned.

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

for some reason the edit button is broken for me..... but this is my edit.

go play left4dead, play the no mercy campaign, and shoot the gas station in level3 "the sewers" watch that explosion and tell me again why CPU physics is not good and how you MUST HAAVE PHYSX to get amazing physics events in games. you dont need phsyx its just a way to make you games perform worse by taking gpu power away.

[Talonman]

We dont need PhysX or AA...

Lets go back to low res too. :p:

[STaRGaZeR]

watch that explosion and tell me again why CPU physics is not good and how you MUST HAAVE PHYSX to get stone age physics effects in games like Mirror's Edge. you dont need phsyx its just a way to make you games perform worse by taking gpu power away.

I fixed that for you :ROTF:

Lame effects that make the game perform worse if you don't use a second card for PhysX exclusively. Now that's progress.


Reality check!!
A good example of Badaboom's speed... (Watch the videos)
http://www.evga.com/articles/00459/

"PhysX hardware acceleration is just a joke"... You should tell adobe to save them some money.

First you looked misinformed but now you're looking more like the second option. I've looked at the videos. And then what? Should I say Badaboom rocks? It S U C K S compared to x264, go read Doom9's forum and culturize yourself a little. Or better, encode some videos.

Adobe? Maybe you're refering about how they use OpenGL to accelerate CS4?

[Talonman]

No responce to my question? Odd...

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

No responce to my question? Odd...

seriously talonman go play left4dead or just forget about arguing you need physx.

CPU physics is plenty sufficient (as shown by the amazing physics things like the source engine are capable of), easier to code for and more readily usable for developers.

[Dami3n]

Physx borned dead.
Do you remember what happend with the mighty glide?............ only standards survive.

[trinibwoy]

It doesnt matter what man he is talon that was a factual post, badaboom is deifnitely a joke and CUDA is a PITA to code for. Companies are going to write for the open standard not the one that is closed controlled and owned.

Well yeah, obviously open standards are better all around. But pretending that OpenCL is the bees knees while simultaneously degrading all of the innovation and progress CUDA has brought to the industry over the last two years is intellectually dishonest and simply out of touch with reality. The fact is that OpenCL is very similiar to CUDA and without it, GPGPU would not have risen out of the dark age that it was in pre-CUDA.

That open standard comment is funny though since the vast majority of software in the world is written for a closed, controlled, owned and proprietary instruction set. Let me introduce you to x86.

[Talonman]

seriously talonman go play left4dead or just forget about arguing you need physx.

CPU physics is plenty sufficient (as shown by the amazing physics things like the source engine are capable of), easier to code for and more readily usable for developers.

But waaaaay slower...

OK. Carry on. :)

Just let me to be recorded as a PhysX fan, and think there is a bright future for the gaming industry.

Poeple who don't get on the PhysX train will be left befind. Toot Toot!!! :p:

[STaRGaZeR]

No responce to my question? Odd...

How about a ninja edit? ;)

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

Well yeah, obviously open standards are better all around. But pretending that OpenCL is the bees knees while simultaneously degrading all of the innovation and progress CUDA has brought to the industry over the last two years is intellectually dishonest and simply out of touch with reality. The fact is that OpenCL is very similiar to CUDA and without it, GPGPU would not have risen out of the dark age that it was in pre-CUDA.

That open standard comment is funny though since the vast majority of software in the world is written for a closed, controlled, owned and proprietary instruction set. Let me introduce you to x86.

but the x86 cpu is an industry standard even though it is owned by intel. If nvidia has financial trouble and Nvidia GPU's are not widely used anymore, what good is a program written for CUDA? if intel cpus aren't used anymore x86 cpus still are.

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

But waaaaay slower...

OK. Carry on. :)

Just let me to be recorded as a PhysX fan, and think there is a bright future for the gaming industry.

Poeple who don't get on the PhysX train will be left befind. Toot Toot!!! :p:

omg, you really think games are using all 4 cores of a cpu??? no they are not. that leave a TON of power to be dedicated to physics and with i7 your got even more power for it.

fact is maybe you need a physics processor for a dual core or single core.... but to say that a simple GPU already doing its share churning out graphics (yes a gpu is simple and not very powerful compared to a cpu) can replace 2-6 cores/threads of a cpu is just being silly.

[STaRGaZeR]

but the x86 cpu is an industry standard even though it is owned by intel. If nvidia has financial trouble and Nvidia GPU's are not widely used anymore, what good is a program written for CUDA? if intel cpus aren't used anymore x86 cpus still are.

Exactly. That's why companies don't want to waste resources on CUDA. You have to rewrite your entire application to support CUDA, something that will only be used by some folks that don't represent the whole market. The industry needs a standard, OpenCL or whatever it doesn't matter, and then and only then GPUs will become something useful for the masses.

Of course this does not apply to certain cases when the company in question needs all the power it can use, CUDA is available now and this standard could perfectly be 5 years away in time. For those cases they'll code for CUDA even if they know in the future it'll be useless.

[Talonman]

How about a ninja edit? ;)

I looked and didn't see your GPU.

http://www.adobe.com/products/director/
Adobe has announced they are including PhysX in their Director 11.
Top Features: Advanced physics with the included AGEIA™ PhysX™ engine


http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1219754370466.html
NVIDIA Physx Technology To Power New Game From Futuremark Games Studio
Shattered Horizon™ Game Uses PhysX™ to Create Realistic Zero-Gravity Combat

I just wonder where the Nvidia guys are that think PhysX is a joke.

You must admit... They are rare.

[SKYMTL]

Personally, I think that some of the best physics in a game was seen in Company of Heroes and I didn't see one sign of PhysX.

[Talonman]

omg, you really think games are using all 4 cores of a cpu??? no they are not. that leave a TON of power to be dedicated to physics and with i7 your got even more power for it.

fact is maybe you need a physics processor for a dual core or single core.... but to say that a simple GPU already doing its share churning out graphics (yes a gpu is simple and not very powerful compared to a cpu) can replace 2-6 cores/threads of a cpu is just being silly.

If GPU PhysX isnt faster, we should get FutureMark to allow the Nvidia guys PhysX enabled scores to count too.

PhysX should be running about the same speed on the ATI guy's extra CPU cores, so it should just be a push.

[SKYMTL]

I think you have to remember that PROPER implementation of multi threaded software physics calculations (a la Havok) will still result in relatively low CPU usage even with a ton of effects on the screen. The issue is that there are far too many instances these days where a game is developed for consoles in which case the potential of a modern CPU to do physics calculations is completely ignored.

[tajoh111]

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3475&p=6

The image quality here shows badaboom definitely has some potential. Way better than avivo which has shown to be a scam that does nothing.

I sense alot of bias from anandtech those in this article because it is clear in that badaboom has better image quality than x264.

[STaRGaZeR]

I looked and didn't see your GPU.

And you won't see it, it's not relevant for this discussion ;)


http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1219754370466.html
NVIDIA Physx Technology To Power New Game From Futuremark Games Studio
Shattered Horizon™ Game Uses PhysX™ to Create Realistic Zero-Gravity Combat

Hey, HEY! We're talking about games, not tech demos that are not even released.


I looked and didn't see your GPU.

http://www.adobe.com/products/director/
Adobe has announced they are including PhysX in their Director 11.
Top Features: Advanced physics with the included AGEIA™ PhysX™ engine

Here we go again. PhysX does not imply you need a NVIDIA GPU or Ageia card. Hardware accelerated PhysX is a joke. The PhysX API has a CPU path, used in UE3 games like Gears of War. You don't need a dedicated processor for that. The same applies here.


I just wonder where the Nvidia guys are that think PhysX is a joke.

You must admit... They are rare.

Most guys don't know what PhysX is or what can and can't do, it's normal. Let alone NVidiots.


http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3475&p=6

The image quality here shows badaboom definitely has some potential. Way better than avivo which has shown to be a scam that does nothing.

I sense alot of bias from anandtech those in this article because it is clear in that badaboom has better image quality than x264.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=136847

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=142797&highlight=cuda+x264

Read how both suck ass.

[Rammsteiner]

But whether PhysX/CUDA is good or not... This still does not change the fact that reviewers who get premium review offers should simply overhype it and not present it as garbage.

Hyping in a review ain't good, but that's the price you'll have to pay for that. If you accept premium reviews and just crap over the product, then dont expect any manufacturer to be happy to offer you a premium review again.

Then to moan and cry over that, no, that's just lame. As said, nVidia ain't my primary choice, but I could no more than agree with them... as far as this story wasnt blown out of the water in the first place that is:rolleyes:

[Talonman]

"And you won't see it, it's not relevant for this discussion."
I don't need to hear anyway. :D

No need to insult... "Let alone NVidiots"

I rest my case! :p:

[xVeinx]

Fourth, there are currently what, 2, 3 applications using CUDA to access the shaders and use them? Don't spect many more.

Using the GPU shaders for something other than gaming = good. Requiring a propietary API that comes from a company that doesn't have any influence in the general computer (not graphics) market is just not what the software companies want to develop for, and even less as NV will be becoming less and less important with all those CPU-GPU solutions coming from AMD and Intel. On top of that it's nowhere close to the C language as NV claims, what makes it even more difficult to code for. You have to code for it specifically, nobody wants to tie his future to a shrinking closed market. CUDA is just a glith and will be replaced in a short future by something global, more compatible, easier, etc.

Lets step back a moment here. CUDA has been used, is being used, and will be used for awhile yet. Both ATI and nVidia have made attempts in the past with this (close to metal with ATI), and the current release of CUDA has helped to establish a well put together API and associated documentation, resulting in greater use in applications like Boinc, Folding at Home, and a good number of scientific, medical, and financial software packages. Consumer applications, like Photoshop, are finally being realized as well. I don't think you can realistically question the validity or impact of CUDA-it has allowed for some quality programs (A newer, more powerful version of NAMD for instance) to come out. OpenCL has the potential to overtake CUDA mainly due to the larger base backing it's development, not because CUDA is a bad API per say. CUDA (and like programming in general) is complicated largely because of the nature of the hardware. Also, CUDA isn't exactly like C, but does use a similar enough syntax so that it isn't lost on the majority of programmers. It may not be (currently anyway) much for the consumer, but assuming that OpenCL is going to simply (and effortlessly) replace CUDA and to trash its existence is a little much. Progress is journey, not a destination.

[Talonman]

But whether PhysX/CUDA is good or not... This still does not change the fact that reviewers who get premium review offers should simply overhype it and not present it as garbage.

Hyping in a review ain't good, but that's the price you'll have to pay for that. If you accept premium reviews and just crap over the product, then dont expect any manufacturer to be happy to offer you a premium review again.

Then to moan and cry over that, no, that's just lame. As said, nVidia ain't my primary choice, but I could no more than agree with them... as far as this story wasnt blown out of the water in the first place that is:rolleyes:


Conversely, reviewers who don't cover all of a products features and advantages is not the correct way either. ;)

[tajoh111]

And you won't see it, it's not relevant for this discussion ;)



Hey, HEY! We're talking about games, not tech demos that are not even released.



Here we go again. PhysX does not imply you need a NVIDIA GPU or Ageia card. Hardware accelerated PhysX is a joke. The PhysX API has a CPU path, used in UE3 games like Gears of War. You don't need a dedicated processor for that. The same applies here.



Most guys don't know what PhysX is or what can and can't do, it's normal. Let alone NVidiots.



http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=136847

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=142797&highlight=cuda+x264

Read how both suck ass.

The date of the anand uses a newer version.

AVIVO and badaboom are not even in the same class, avivo is worse than garbage.

[Rammsteiner]

Conversely, reviewers who don't cover all of a products features and advantages is not the correct way either. ;)
Not in this case no.

Nothing wrong with a review with its own opinion, in the end that's what we need for a solid and honest idea about a new product. But if anyone offers you a premium review there's a price to be paid and yeah, that's basicly only showing what the manufacturer wants to be published:rolleyes:

[Mechromancer]

they are just lucky that CUDA dosent work with ATI, hell, my 7900gtx was working great for the games i play. the ONLY reason i upgraded is to do some GPU crunching.

So ATI get your act together, so we can fold on your gpus as well.

Dude, F@H's ATI client is terribly unoptimized for ATI GPUs. Stanford themselves have said that ATI GPUs have more crunching powerm, but they have yet to access it all.

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=8245

F@H needs to get THEIR act together. AMD has the hardware, projects just have to use it!

[Cybercat]

Personally, I think that some of the best physics in a game was seen in Company of Heroes and I didn't see one sign of PhysX.Yes, and we've seen the full potential of PhysX already, so that's REALLY saying something!

Honestly I can't believe some of you people. Why anyone would argue against using these 1 billion plus transistor GPUs for something other than just 3D rendering is beyond me. PhysX and CUDA cost us nothing out of our pockets, and yet I see staunch critics in this thread like I haven't seen anywhere else.

To those reasonably-minded individuals who like cool little added features like PhysX as enthusiasts of computer technology and the industry, I advise you to ignore the more narrow-minded views in this thread as you might ignore the religious zealots at Westboro Baptist Church (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church). Arguing with them is less beneficial than kicking an 80 pound boulder with your bare foot.

[safan80]

.. lol, inquirer.. nvm

lol that's not the problem.

The problem is it's from Charlie Demerjian

just ask anyone wearing RED.

[trinibwoy]

but the x86 cpu is an industry standard even though it is owned by intel. If nvidia has financial trouble and Nvidia GPU's are not widely used anymore, what good is a program written for CUDA? if intel cpus aren't used anymore x86 cpus still are.

The x86 argument doesn't really stand since you're essentially saying we should never adopt new technologies since they don't have widespread use from day one. Should mankind code to x86 for all eternity?


Exactly. That's why companies don't want to waste resources on CUDA.

Any resources "wasted" on CUDA will go a long way toward easing development on subsequent APIs including OpenCL. CUDA's greatest contribution to the industry is that it has gotten developers to start thinking about parallelism in more creative and useful ways. Those skills are transferable regardless of the API you're using. The hard part about parallel programming isn't learning some language syntax, it's about designing the solution to the problem. Most people would appreciate that fact, assuming they actually understood what something like CUDA has meant for the industry. They're actually teaching the thing in dozens of universities all over the world.

That's why treating OpenCL as the best thing since sliced bread but scorning the standard that set the foundation for its success is highly illogical. In the long run yes OpenCL should be more pervasive than CUDA. But like all non-proprietary standards OpenCL development will be glacially slow. So there will still be a market for those folks who continue using CUDA because they will be able to quickly take advantage of improvements in hardware capability faster than they would if they stuck to OpenCL.


Progress is journey, not a destination.

Yep, good insight. And that definitely applies to disruptive new technologies like CUDA, PhysX, OpenCL etc.

[Tonucci]

They make great cards but this time they crossed the line badly... I hope that a few good ole lawsuits make them re-think their tactics.

[Talonman]

If the law requires Nvidia to send out manditory cards for review to all who want one, put me on the list too.

I promise I will cover PhysX, and will only test Quad SLI out on i7 systems...

The quality of our information would only go up. :)

[Talonman]

Honestly I can't believe some of you people. Why anyone would argue against using these 1 billion plus transistor GPUs for something other than just 3D rendering is beyond me. PhysX and CUDA cost us nothing out of our pockets, and yet I see staunch critics in this thread like I haven't seen anywhere else.

Well said! :up:

[STaRGaZeR]

Yes, and we've seen the full potential of PhysX already, so that's REALLY saying something!

Honestly I can't believe some of you people. Why anyone would argue against using these 1 billion plus transistor GPUs for something other than just 3D rendering is beyond me. PhysX and CUDA cost us nothing out of our pockets, and yet I see staunch critics in this thread like I haven't seen anywhere else.

To those reasonably-minded individuals who like cool little added features like PhysX as enthusiasts of computer technology and the industry, I advise you to ignore the more narrow-minded views in this thread as you might ignore the religious zealots at Westboro Baptist Church (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church). Arguing with them is less beneficial than kicking an 80 pound boulder with your bare foot.

You talk from the typical user perspective. Of course it's nice to have all that horsepower available. But you just don't say "here you have 1 billion transistors, use them". We are not against the capabilities, we are against the viability.


Any resources "wasted" on CUDA will go a long way toward easing development on subsequent APIs including OpenCL. CUDA's greatest contribution to the industry is that it has gotten developers to start thinking about parallelism in more creative and useful ways. Those skills are transferable regardless of the API you're using. The hard part about parallel programming isn't learning some language syntax, it's about designing the solution to the problem. Most people would appreciate that fact, assuming they actually understood what something like CUDA has meant for the industry. They're actually teaching the thing in dozens of universities all over the world

Most of the resources are burnt in optimizing your software, not in writing it. Parallel programming was not started by CUDA and it's not promoted by CUDA alone by any means. Do you really thing that programmers are now focusing in multithreaded apps because of CUDA? The world was going multithreaded without its help, that's a fact. It's just about the massive marketing campaign, the programs that those people in the university will have to do in the future will not be writen in CUDA. When you take that in consideration and add that porting C code to CUDA can be a nightmare things don't look too promising. Also you have to do a helluva lot (I mean A LOT, much more than with traditional x86) of specific optimizations that will only work in CUDA. This is not really a problem by itself (happens with all languages), it's a problem when you consider the reduced market it's aimed at and the fact that CUDA is propietary. The only thing OpenCL brings to the party is that it's an open standard, but has the same standarization problem as CUDA. It's just too immature to become mainstream and it'll not be ready until some years at least. Neither NV or ATI have the influence Intel has to impose any standard, and with Intel agressively introducing x86 processors in the graphics market each day I see less and less space for traditional GPUs, and even for NVIDIA itself. What if Larrabee is a complete success? What if then AMD follows that idea? What will happen if it's not? Me and others really take CUDA as a last try to survive in a market that really doesn't need NVIDIA at all in the long future.

On a side note, what's about SuperPi CUDA? Too difficult to implement? Too bad times compared to Nehalem? :p:


The date of the anand uses a newer version.

AVIVO and badaboom are not even in the same class, avivo is worse than garbage.

Even Badaboom 1.1 doesn't support High Profile, but it doesn't matter. Both are garbage when you talk about quality, but the thing gets worse talking about speed. x264 is faster by a wide margin than these things when outputting the same quality which is the base og their marketing campaign. And if you use the same amount of time x264 will give better output by far. These are the advantages of have been optimizing it for years now.

Oh I haven't said it yet: did they use the same resolution in those test at Anand? Big LOL right there.

[Talonman]

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3475&p=6

The image quality here shows badaboom definitely has some potential. Way better than avivo which has shown to be a scam that does nothing.

I sense alot of bias from anandtech those in this article because it is clear in that badaboom has better image quality than x264.

Thanks for the post... :up:

I think the quality of badaboom looks outstanding!

[Glow9]

BFG will make everything okay for Kyle I'm sure

[perkam]

Thanks for the post... :up:

I think the quality of badaboom looks outstanding!I've seen some nice ATI vs Nvidia threads in my time Talonman.

But your constant thanking of posts that put Nvidia Up and ATI down don't help your credibility at all.

When looked at from a neutral standpoint, Physx is underrealized and underused whereas ATI has used AVIVO very well without hyping it up to the Stratosphere like Nvidia has with Physx.

While I agree that Physx may be superior, there are instances ingames where Nvidia has implement Physx in places where regular mainstream videocards can provided same smooth physics performance without it.

Hence the number of games such as GRAW and Cellfactor which were hacked into displaying awesome physics without the need for Physx: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/185393-33-play-cellfactor-demo-physx

Perkam

[trinibwoy]

Most of the resources are burnt in optimizing your software, not in writing it.

CUDA's syntax is ridiculously simple. And it only gets easier if you have some programming background. The optimization you refer to is a function of the underlying problem and not the specific API you're using. It'll be just as hard for OpenCL and as CUDA matures it will probably end up easier to optimize compared to the slower moving OpenCL spec.


Parallel programming was not started by CUDA and it's not promoted by CUDA alone by any means.

Right, but what CUDA did was commoditize access to it. How many hobbyist HPC developers did you see before CUDA? Now anyone can spend $200 and drop a highly parallel and programmable 32-bit floating point processor into their PC. I really can't fathom how you can dismiss CUDA as worthless with all the glaring evidence to the contrary out there for you to see. The maturity of CUDA in terms of the SDK, documentation and support is miles ahead of anything that was out there before.


What if Larrabee is a complete success?

Well besides the fact that Larrabee is still just a powerpoint slide and CUDA is almost 2 years old....if Nvidia's next architectural evolution doesn't resemble Larrabee in many ways I'd be very surprised. The probable next step is to get rid of dedicated front-end bits like triangle setup and rasterization and/or blending hardware. There's going to be a tradeoff between efficiency and programmability but GPUs will continue to strip away dedicated hardware and add CPU like bits like larger, coherent caches. Nvidia accelerated the process a lot with their love affair with CUDA but AMD will soon follow as they need to provide robust support for OpenCL and DirectX Compute.

[kadozer]

So if Physx eventually becomes the greatest next thing since a slice of bread (like the largely successful 9800gx2) and all the pundits singing its praises now are right, is it really that big a deal. Windows 7 allows ATI main and Nvidia physx card doesn't it?

[perkam]

So if Physx eventually becomes the greatest next thing since a slice of bread (like the largely successful 9800gx2) and all the pundits singing its praises now are right, is it really that big a deal. Windows 7 allows ATI main and Nvidia physx card doesn't it?Careful Kadozer, you might end up in a lot of angry fans' deathnotes :rofl:

I hope the reviewers handle this professionally but make mention of the likeness of the two cards (250 and 9800GT) so that normal folk have all the information before making the right decision.

Perkam

[kadozer]

Careful Kadozer, you might end up in a lot of angry fans' deathnotes :rofl:

I hope the reviewers handle this professionally but make mention of the likeness of the two cards (250 and 9800GT) so that normal folk have all the information before making the right decision.

Perkam

:) so true.

I do like both companies just like the red side a little more lately, but no matter how this news is downplayed and spun, do respect the review sites that take a stand.

[trinibwoy]

So if Physx eventually becomes the greatest next thing since a slice of bread (like the largely successful 9800gx2) and all the pundits singing its praises now are right, is it really that big a deal. Windows 7 allows ATI main and Nvidia physx card doesn't it?

That depends on whether you care about getting better physics or if you just care about AMD/Nvidia squabbling. I'm not really seeing the connection between PhysX being a success and the Windows 7 driver model. Is PhysX only a big deal if it forces you to use Nvidia GPUs for 3D tasks as well? I thought it was a big deal if it gives us better physics.....

[Talonman]

I've seen some nice ATI vs Nvidia threads in my time Talonman.

But your constant thanking of posts that put Nvidia Up and ATI down don't help your credibility at all.
When looked at from a neutral standpoint, Physx is underrealized and underused whereas ATI has used AVIVO very well without hyping it up to the Stratosphere like Nvidia has with Physx.

While I agree that Physx may be superior, there are instances ingames where Nvidia has implement Physx in places where regular mainstream videocards can provided same smooth physics performance without it.

Hence the number of games such as GRAW and Cellfactor which were hacked into displaying awesome physics without the need for Physx: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/185393-33-play-cellfactor-demo-physx

Perkam

Me putting ATI down... lol. Quote it for me... I can't seem to find it.

I only wish you were a sensitive to the guys putting Nvidia down.

I only thanked two people, all the rest were ATI guys putting Nvidia down.

I think we need more balance on this board.

With Snipe around, us Nvidia guys don't get to have many un-trashed threads.

I would like to know XtremeSystems view on this. How many Nvidia members have been chased away? I can't be the first to notice.



Most guys don't know what PhysX is or what can and can't do, it's normal. Let alone NVidiots.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=136847

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=142797&highlight=cuda+x264

Read how both suck ass.

I can assure you that everybody on the EVGA site knows about PhysX...

Where were you on this post perkam? If you were going to start correcting people, why start with me? This dosen't help your credibility at all. (See how it feels.)


...OpenCL......


good post stargazer, very well said.

I noticed you didnt mind when others got thanked.... Odd...
But then again, it wasen't flattering to Nvidia.

If we are to look at this from a 'neutral standpoint', the least we can do is identify what GPU we own for a little perspective... I do. Most here don't. What GPU do you have in your rig?

If this conversation happend on the EVGA site, it would have gone allot differently.

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

Me putting ATI down... lol. Quote it for me... I can't seem to find it.

I only wish you were a sensitive to the guys putting Nvidia down.

I only thanked two people, all the rest were ATI guys putting Nvidia down.

I think we need more balance on this board.

With Snipe around, us Nvidia guys don't get to have many un-trashed threads.

I would like to know XtremeSystems view on this. How many Nvidia members have been chased away? I can't be the first to notice.



I can assure you that everybody on the EVGA site knows about PhysX...

Where were you on this post perkam? If you were going to start correcting people, why start with me? This dosen't help your credibility at all. (See how it feels.)



I noticed you didnt mind when others got thanked.... Odd...
But then again, it wasen't flattering to Nvidia.

If we are to look at this from a 'neutral standpoint', the least we can do is identify what GPU we own for a little perspective... I do. Most here don't. What GPU do you have in your rig?

If this conversation happend on the EVGA site, it would have gone allot differently.


you wanna know why I dont like nvidia? because the F#$&ed me over too many times. The bull crap with the 680i and the Terrible drivers of 2007 drove me away from them forever.

That said the massive price gauging committed by nivdia during the reign of the G80 didn't help my opinion of them. Then add on that Jen-Hsung is an overly hubristic person who thinks a gpu is all you need for your computer to run, and the company being full of scamming marketing execs who want to sell you a video card or chipset (780i:rolleyes:) you bought the year before for a markup.

so sorry if I don't like nvidia, but there is nothing there to like in the first place so I don't really feel bad

*** Enough for now. Thread locked. -Ashraf