NVIDIA Analyzes 3870 X2

FULL ARTICLE
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...snow-financial

1) I say pics or it didn't happen.
2) I don't trust the Inquirer.
3) They always bash NVIDIA
4) If true, that's bad. Or good?
5) Basically BS!

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From: Michael W Hara <MHara@nvidia>

To: Amanda Hindlian <amanda.hindlian@gs>; Andrew Buscaglia < abuscaglia@thinkequity>; Arnab Chanda <arnab.chanda@db>; Bobby Gujavarty <bobby.gujavarty@db>; Brian Piccioni <brian.piccioni@bmo> ; Craig Berger <cberger@fbr>; Daniel Ernst <daniel@hsqr>; Daniel Gelbtuch <daniel.gelbtuch@us.cibc>; Daniel Morris < daniel.morris@us.cibc>; David Hodgson <david.hodgson@genuitycm>; David Wu <david.wu@globalcrowncapital>; Devan Moodley < devan_moodley@scotiacapital>; Dinesh Moorjani <dmoorjani@bear>; Doug Freedman <dfreedman@amtechresearch>; Elizabeth Pate <epate@fbr>; Garik Shmois <gshmois@longbowresearch>; Glen Yeung < glen.yeung@citigroup>; Gordon Johnson <gordon.johnson@lehman>; Gurinder Kalra <gkalra@bear>; Hans Mosesmann <hans.mosesmann@raymondjames>; Heidi Poon <hpoon@tweisel>; James Covello <james.covello@gs>; Jan-Jesse Flores <janjesse.flores@lehman>; Jason Pflaum < jpflaum@tweisel>; Jean Orr <jorr@nutmegsec>; Jean-Pierre Becker < jean-pierre.becker@tdsecurities>; Jesse Tortora <jesse_tortora@prusec> ; JiHyung Yoo <jihyung.yoo@citigroup>; Jim Karlis < jkarlis@williamblair>; Feeney, JoAnne <joanne.feeney@ftnmidwest>; Joel Jackson <joel.jackson@bmo>; Kamal Das <kamal.das@lehman>; Krishna Shankar <kshankar@jmpsecurities>; Larry Cao <larry.cao@morningstar> ; Michael Masdea <michael.masdea@credit-suisse>; Michael McConnell < mmcconnell@pacific-crest>; Naser Iqbal <niqbal@salmanpartners>; Nicholas Aberle <naberle@cariscompany>; Peter Karazeris < peter.karazeris@citigroup>; Quinn Bolton <qbolton@needhamco>; Rick Schafer <richard.schafer@us.cibc>; Robert Burleson < rburleson@thinkequity>; Ryan Elliott <ryan.elliott@tdsecurities>; Shawn Webster <shawn.r.webster@jpmorgan>; Sidney Ho <sidney_ho@ml>; Simona Jankowski <simona.jankowski@gs>; Suji De Silva <sdesilva@kbro >; Tayyib Shah <tshah@longbowresearch>; Terry Thib < terry.thib@nbfinancial>; Thomas Smith <thomas_smith@sandp>; Tim Luke <tim.luke@lehman>; Uche Orji <uche.orji@ubs>; Will Gabrielski < wgabrielski@amtechresearch>; Yuka Miyake <yuka.miyake@gs>

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Sent: Wed Jan 30 15:53:29 2008

Subject: Analysis of Radeon HD 3870 X2

On Monday, January 28th, ATI launched the Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card. This is a dual-RV670 board that ATI is positioning at ~$449-499. Attached is a comparison presentation that outlines the advantages of the GeForce 8800 GPUs over the Radeon HD 3870 X2. There are a couple important things to keep in mind regarding the 3870 X2:

1) Radeon HD 3870 X2 relies on CrossFire driver technology, and thus has the same poor driver support that CrossFire has suffered from including:

- Poor support for next gen DirectX 10 games at launch

- Poor scaling and compatibility on games that are not top benchmarks

2) ATI has not been able to get their Quad drivers for 3870 X2 working and has delayed driver support for QuadFire until March(!). This indicates they are having serious problems with Quad support. GeForce 8800 in SLI remains the undisputed fastest gaming platform on the market.

3) GeForce 8800 GTX prices have been coming down, with overclocked versions readily available for <$449. As you can see from the attached presentation, GeForce 8800 GTX delivers superior DirectX 10 gaming performance than Radeon 3870 X2, and with overclocked 8800 GTX's available for less than Radeon 3870 X2, 8800 GTX continues to deliver the best price/performance. Even the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB beats Radeon HD 3870 X2 in a number of games and at ~$299 delivers outstanding price/performance.

Enjoy. <<3870 X2 Launch Analysis.Jan08.pdf>>

Michael Hara - NVIDIA Corporation - Vice President of Investor Relations - (408) 486-2511 - Fax: (408) 486-4511

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Even if it were true, consider the source. :P

I said i dont trust inquirer........

Are they sane, posting several other people's email addresses on a public page?!

to be hones, these are bold statements :shakes:

i have no problems with my 3870s in crossfire, scaling is good and i still have to find a game which has problems with CF (crysis works perfect for me, same with COD4, source based games, oblivion :shrug: )

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Originally Posted by generics_user

to be hones, these are bold statements :shakes:

i have no problems with my 3870s in crossfire, scaling is good and i still have to find a game which has problems with CF (crysis works perfect for me, same with COD4, source based games, oblivion :shrug: )

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QFT

retards

this "news" is first class BS

Wow ati really must have them rattled. this doesn't look good for their x2 coming soon.

bs!!!!!!!

well they removed all teh .com from the end of the address, but I would still be pissed about it. maybe I could email Michael W Hara <MHara@nvidia.com> and see if I can get that PDF, or maybe a pair of 8800 Ultras, hell 3 of them!

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1) Radeon HD 3870 X2 relies on CrossFire driver technology, and thus has the same poor driver support that CrossFire has suffered from including:

- Poor support for next gen DirectX 10 games at launch

- Poor scaling and compatibility on games that are not top benchmarks

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same as 9800gx2...

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2) ATI has not been able to get their Quad drivers for 3870 X2 working and has delayed driver support for QuadFire until March(!). This indicates they are having serious problems with Quad support. GeForce 8800 in SLI remains the undisputed fastest gaming platform on the market.

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quadfire betas are publicly available on ati.com and while the dont scale well YET they are better than nvidias quad drivers which are nonexistant

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3) GeForce 8800 GTX prices have been coming down, with overclocked versions readily available for <$449. As you can see from the attached presentation, GeForce 8800 GTX delivers superior DirectX 10 gaming performance than Radeon 3870 X2, and with overclocked 8800 GTX's available for less than Radeon 3870 X2, 8800 GTX continues to deliver the best price/performance. Even the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB beats Radeon HD 3870 X2 in a number of games and at ~$299 delivers outstanding price/performance.

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true! i wouldnt say the gtx cards beat the 3870x2 but they perform about the same and cost about the same with the 3870x2 being slightly faster and slightly cheaper.

Rant: First off I'd like to say, if you're just going to bash it for being from the Inq, don't reply, don't comment, just go about your day. I'm sure it's fun to post "it's from the Inq so it's garbage." It didn't use to be this way here at XS until so many of you came over from other forums like [H] where you're not cool unless you bash the Inq and Fudo.
So please, if you don't have anything relevant to add to the discussion hit the back button on your browser instead of clicking reply/quote.

Back on topic...the 3870 X2 is a considerable threat to Nvidia, they were beaten at their own game with a much more elegant solution and they know full well that the press is going to rip the upcoming GX2 apart for lack of innovation over the 7950GX2.

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Originally Posted by Charlie @ Inq

If you are in the mood to make Mr. Hara squirm, ask him about NVs relationship with Intel right about now, and then ask Intel the same questions. How much of their business is based on Intel chipsets?.....*snip* Ask why it is having such trouble geting chipsets working with Intel 45nm parts. *snip*

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Aw come on Charlie, let the whole cat out of the bag on this one! Ask Nvidia how they are liking C1/C2 Quad 45nm!

BS or not, but funny. :rofl:

cards like the 8800gtx and 8800u don't make sense nowadays when the g92 8800gts is out, i wonder why it is even mentioned. with all things considered(including price), the 8800gts and 3870x2 are both pretty good, its hard to say which is better.

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Originally Posted by wickedld9

Rant: First off I'd like to say, if you're just going to bash it for being from the Inq, don't reply, don't comment, just go about your day. I'm sure it's fun to post "it's from the Inq so it's garbage." It didn't use to be this way here at XS until so many of you came over from other forums like [H] where you're not cool unless you bash the Inq and Fudo.
So please, if you don't have anything relevant to add to the discussion hit the back button on your browser instead of clicking reply/quote.

Back on topic...the 3870 X2 is a considerable threat to Nvidia, they were beaten at their own game with a much more elegant solution and they know full well that the press is going to rip the upcoming GX2 apart for lack of innovation over the 7950GX2.


Aw come on Charlie, let the whole cat out of the bag on this one! Ask Nvidia how they are liking C1/C2 Quad 45nm!

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Wow, aren't you the one for supporting the only source of false information that the 'net has to offer. Ladies and Gentleman, welcome to a supporter of the "free-world" news. Allow me to welcome him to the real world and offer him a kick in the right direction when it comes to valid information.

I highly doubt you've been going past the 3DMark scores to see the true performance of the 3870. Allow me to say that I "use to have" a 3870 CrossFire setup while still owing an 8800 GTX. After so many years of AA/AF problems that ATi had with their products, the same still remains for the 3870. ATi still cannot produce a GPU that can adequately perform with 16x/16x AA/AF!

My GTX has no problems performing well with those settings and it is a video card that I still plan to keep for a long time. Before you spout that the 3870 X2 will wipe Nvidia off the map, perhaps you should acquire both competitors cards and do some testing yourself.

Seeing that you mentioned [H], I think Kyle Bennett called. He wants their.... (get the pun?)

Charlie Demerjian has got some serious issues with nVidia, he rants literally every article about them, not very professional, and it's getting really pathetic aswell. :confused:

I'd almost call him a troll. Sheesh.

Financial analysts could care less all they want to know is are sales going up.

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Originally Posted by Unbornchild

Are they sane, posting several other people's email addresses on a public page?!

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Those are the emails of sell-side analysts, which are public information and readily available if you look on Thomson, Factset or Bloomberg.

Maybe Mr. Hara needs to learn to bcc.

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Originally Posted by BTK

I said i dont trust inquirer........

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What I meant was, even if the email were true (which I'm sure it isn't) consider the source - nVidia. :)

Anyways, yes, nVidia still doesn't have an answer to quadfire yet - even AMD has beta drivers for them, regardless of how well they work yet. Let's see their answer to the 3870 X2...

Seems like AMD is putting some pressure from Nvidia, I'm pretty sure they weren't very nervous about R600 when it launched. :D

But yeah, the email if deemed true is from the NV Investor Relations guy, since their downgrade on their stocks a few weeks back, they need to SHOW the market how "proactive" they are against the competitor.

BIG boooo!! for Nvidia. :|

Why is everyone so quick to call BS? From what I see alot of those email addresses are legit...especially the ones from CIBC and BMO.

And YES those types of people DO care about the performance of Nvidia's card against the competition. Why wouldn't they? Many of them SPECIALIZE in the computer industry side of stock trading. If they do not advise their firms to buy stock, companies like Nvidia would fizzle out. Take Mr. Gelbtuch for example:

LINK

I suggest some of you do a bit of research before you call out BS.

I am not saying it is BS and I am not saying it is legit...I am just making a point that people shouldn't be so fast to jump in one direction.

releasing to the public emails and phone n&#176; those guys are retards really....

Of course they send out emails discussing the competitors possible impacts on their own marketing. First they show they are aware of competition and second they demonstrate where they think that competition hits their product line and what it will mean. Then when they have the investor relations meetings they dig into the detail of what's getting hit and how they are responding.

Who knows if this particular email is legit or not; doesn't matter. If this wasn't the actual email then they sent one that was similar anyhow, rest assured.

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Originally Posted by Ugly n Grey

Of course they send out emails discussing the competitors possible impacts on their own marketing. First they show they are aware of competition and second they demonstrate where they think that competition hits their product line and what it will mean. Then when they have the investor relations meetings they dig into the detail of what's getting hit and how they are responding.

Who knows if this particular email is legit or not; doesn't matter. If this wasn't the actual email then they sent one that was similar anyhow, rest assured.

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Emails full of lies. 8(

This is not a nice move by NVIDIA but the Inq hates so much NVIDIA that impresses me.

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You will notice that the vanilla 3870, a $250 card, spanks the Geforce 8800Ultra, a nearly $700 card, in several areas. Pick the one you want, but it is far from what NV claims, and its conclusion of better at DX10 is not even close. Then again, NV seems to have picked the one slide that backs its argument from a 20-page review with at times multiple slides per page. Funny that.

What does Toms say in conclusion? "The fastest card today, once again, carries the AMD signature, after a long domination by NVIDIA. Based on two RV670, the HD 3870 X2 suffers, however, in part from its conception and isn't as thrilling as a new chip, like a real R680, would have been." You can read it all here, no cherry picking needed.

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Thats the biggest crock of :banana::banana::banana::banana: i've ever heard. :down:

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Radeon HD 3870 X2 relies on CrossFire driver technology, and thus has the same poor driver support that CrossFire has suffered from including:

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I dread to think how badly that statement could come back and bite nVidia in the ass if the new GX2 doesnt have flawless performance in comparison to the 3870X2.

Most likely why the new releases are delayed until March.

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Originally Posted by metro.cl

This is not a nice move by NVIDIA but the Inq hates so much NVIDIA that impresses me.

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Hates? Aren't those statements quite true afterall? Would you still say so, if Nvidia released more trustworthy/neutral analyzis, and Inq didn't have much to say about it?

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Originally Posted by Calmatory

Hates? Aren't those statements quite true afterall? Would you still say so, if Nvidia released more trustworthy/neutral analyzis, and Inq didn't have much to say about it?

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Yeah, they are true. X2 relies on CF driver technology. I was hoping for a card that was not like that, but eh, too much hope.

Charlie with his irrational NVIDIA vendetta again.

I never really got this, why whatever The Inq writes gets called BS. I bet that if tomorrow they come out with a story saying that the sun rises to the east there would still be some calling it BS. Bah, it's kinda easy calling BS the news we don't like.

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Originally Posted by Pisu87

I never really got this, why whatever The Inq writes gets called BS. I bet that if tomorrow they come out with a story saying that the sun rises to the east there would still be some calling it BS. Bah, it's kinda easy calling BS the news we don't like.

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Inq and FUDzilla just shout out random guesses from time to time, alot of them are false, and when some of them happen to be true, they are like "News? Lohol, we knew this 4 months ago! :ROTF: "

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Originally Posted by saaya

quadfire betas are publicly available on ati.com and while the dont scale well YET they are better than nvidias quad drivers which are nonexistant

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Got a link?

Probably it's only for the "premium" users

The INQ doesn't always bash Nvidia, Charlie Demerjian does. But then again how could he not grow up as a living embodiment of mindless partisanship?

If both companies would get SLI and Crossfire support working 100&#37; in games for their dual GPU cards I would buy it immedaitely, but Nvidia already ripped me of once with the 7950X2 which was mostly a tad slower than my 7900GTX due to crappy drivers and support.... I hope they both learned a lesson from the past !!

All in all that 3870X2 looks pretty okay to me...

let's ask Charlie to analyse Theo's garbage article in which he cracked 30K 3DMARK06 with a phenom and dual Xfire cards many many months ago :D:D:D:D:D:D::D

LOL!

He does have a point in some of the things he says but it's a bit hypocritical don't you think Charlie :D :p:

I'm not calling shens, but I do say, why would they possibly admit something could be better. Comments seem skirting actually. Drivers have serious problems? Does that mean when Nvidia delayed driver updates and sli updates there were serious problems? No not really, but they wanted to make it right instead of just okay. Also CF scales better then SLI we've seen!
And X2 seems to beat GTX across the charts I've seen...

X2 is a great product
even for xtreme cooling

nvidia one will be a pain in the arse to cool due to that stupid design :(

nvidia needs to do the same or intergrate two cores together and make the price similar to ATI

i hope for everyone's sake that ATI will bounce back a little to entice a bit of competition

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Originally Posted by Calmatory

Hates? Aren't those statements quite true afterall? Would you still say so, if Nvidia released more trustworthy/neutral analyzis, and Inq didn't have much to say about it?

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Yes they are true, and what nvidia says is bad form my point of view, but how the Inq writes about is just plain hate to NVIDIA.

I know both company do many of this kind of things to each other is nothing new.

Regardless of whether or not it is BS, it's just plain stupid. Besides, nvidia isn't in a position to be talking about quad CF not working when Nvidia's quad SLI doesn't work either! And although the email addresses might be legit, anyone can find them on the web and paste them in an email.

BS.

ahh poor nvidia lost it's performance crown. I'm actually happy that AMD brought this product to us. No need to pay almost double for an ultra that's actually slower :D

I found the article to be on point in many areas, so who cares if the guy hates Nvidia. It really won't change anything in the grande scheme of things.

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Originally Posted by TSFroggy

Even if it were true, consider the source. :P

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That made no sense whatsoever.

It does make sense as the Inquirer is within the same realm as the National Enquirer. Their source of information tends to be half-baked and misconstrued, as it comes from the "free world". Free world meaning it comes from some unknown freelance that thinks they know something about nothing, or got a mislead due to false communication. I take it with a grain of salt.

It's Legit, I know someone who was bcc'ed... ;)

This is standard IR stuff. They've got earnings in 2 weeks, And they're just trying to minimize speculation before making everything official. Also, Any "Boo Nvidia" comments are unnecessary, As this is the same way every other company reacts to competition.

many blah blah for nothing here ... have someone that PDF? Thats important ... not BS on INQ

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Originally Posted by LiViD

It does make sense as the Inquirer is within the same realm as the National Enquirer. Their source of information tends to be half-baked and misconstrued, as it comes from the "free world". Free world meaning it comes from some unknown freelance that thinks they know something about nothing, or got a mislead due to false communication. I take it with a grain of salt.

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Haha, but it DOESN'T make sense. If it's true then why would the source matter? Truth is truth, even if it's a talking horse telling the truth.

Hehe, I like that. :p:

I want the 3870 X2 Launch Analysis.Jan08.pdf please!

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Originally Posted by Yukon Trooper

Haha, but it DOESN'T make sense. If it's true then why would the source matter? Truth is truth, even if it's a talking horse telling the truth.

Hehe, I like that. :p:

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Perhaps the Inquirer got lucky while they sifted through someones' corporate garbage? Perhaps Ned changed jobs and started working for the Inquirer, which wouldn't be hard to swallow. :rofl: