Nvidia Kepler GPUs dominating the notebook market

I was just browsing through the GTX 700M news, and Nvidia have made a graph explaining Kepler`s impact on the notebook market.

Exactly when Kepler launched, Nvidia had a market share of 58% while AMD was at 42%. Looking at the graph, it looks like Kepler was the clear choice for notebook users. From Kepler launch to Q4 2012, Nvidia grew their market share from to 58 to 70%. AMDs market share on the other hand shrunk from 42% to 30%.

So as of Q4 2012, the market share is as following for notebooks: Nvidia = 70%, AMD = 30%.

What can AMD do to stop Nvidia? Does the future look grim for AMD? Surprised? Discuss

 

With the AMD/ATI Horror Enduro issues? Doubt it


Long Live Geforce!!!

 

kind of amusing actually. even though it sucks Intel is still the big winner since last time I looked there was about 18 laptops with an intel IGP inside without any discreet card. I also looked at that article and it does not count any of the laptops with AMD's APU chips. and was purely and intel and dedicated GPU chart.

another chart I would love to see is % of Application makers dumping CUDA ( 17 I know of ) and how much market slide Nvidia has taken in the GPGPU and Pro GPU markets ( with the horrendous OpenCL performance and FP64 )

 

Macbook Pro's discrete GPU is pretty much telling the same story. It was Nvidia pre-Fermi times, then turned into AMD during Fermi, and with Kepler it is back to Nvidia. Fermi was just so costly to produce it gave a big chunk of market share to AMD, but with Kepler, Nvidia is claiming back the throne (650m is a miracle).

 

The fact that Kepler is dominating the Intel notebooks which are a clear majority today, must be tough to swallow for AMD. Although AMD might do it well with notebooks with AMD APU, they are mainly without a discrete GPU, so the graph still hold a valid point. In the notebooks without dGPU, they are figthing Intel IGPs like you say and Intel sure knows their marketing. Plus Nvidia is gaining ground on these notebooks too, a notebook with GT 640M cost as low as $600. And it runs circle around any IGP solutions out there.

 

that is most certainly does. I am curious to see what happens in the 18-24 month mark though, Nvidia seems to be shifting focus a bit more to Tegra and mobile devices as where AMD managed a clean sweep of the console market in where we may see many games and console ports optimized more for their GCN architecture ( and NVidia PhysX ported to run on AMD hardware for the PS4 ).

Also with AMD optimizing heavily for FP64 and OpenCL/OpenGL in the GCN architecture in its cosumer line ( Radeon )it is really showing the market shift more between the two companies. I think AMD may be trying to focus on its strengths again like it did back in 2001 when it more or less removed Matrox from the 3D gaming segment, but only time will tell.

I am not sure if we will see a divergence in the GPU markets again like we did back in the late 90's with 3Dfx, ATI, Matrox and SIS though.

 

I want to see a graph of 2010 to 2011, those were the years that amd gained so much ground on nvidia. Although that 2012 graph is pretty much whats expected, you can clearly see there are more nvidia gpus in notebooks than amd ones. You can count on your fingers how many models got gcn. I do expect a reverse trend this year though

 

During kepler times, only 7700-7900M were GCN. The mainstream part of the market were rebranded 6000M series 40nm GPUs that could not compete vs. Nvidia's 28nm.

It'll be 28nm vs. 28nm this time, Solar Systems vs. Kepler up from the 8500M or even cut down 8700M series which can go into ultrabooks. While Nvidia puts fermis like into ultrabooks (probably up to Kepler's 640M LE to be fair), AMD's placing a GCN part in there now. That's good news for the consumers.

The 8790M ES that accidentally made its way into tomshardware has pretty respectable performance for what it can do to a 14 incher.

They're stepping up on the mainstream part too. Now the 8700M replaces 7600M series. 8700M has already been seen in things like the HP envy 4t/6t ultrabooks, lowly clocked ones. This thing definitely will be able to compete with 640M LE like offerings.

The 8790M can of course fit into a regular mainstream 14" too, it'll be interesting. The performance figures seemed already ahead of the 650m on this one.

I don't see a further slide going up ahead imo. I'd say leave it all to competition, it looks a lot healthier and balanced in the next quarters of '13.

But Nvidia obviously has a lead in Kelper vs VLIW.

 

to be truthful nvidia put tons of fermi cards in notebooks last year, some they die shrinked others just renamed.

and there was the 7800m series, that basically was available on the samsung series 7 gamer as the 7870m, the envy 17 with the 7850m and the firepro m6000 in the 8570w

 

Much of the success of nvidia came from their ability to use the same GPU with slight modifications (640, 650, 660, and variants inbetween being the same) coupled with AMD being chosen for virtually 0 notebooks hahaha, man I only saw like 2 AMD cards from the 7000 series. Compared to the much broader nvidia portfolio. Even if said porfolio was spammed.

AMD needs to step up, and nvidia needs to bring more variety like what they introduced with the MX series.

 

From my memory, there was the:

envy 15 - 7750m

Envy 17 - 7850m

Inspiron 15r - 7730m

and some hp notebooks that used amd apus in it.

it was a pretty abysmal year for amd. And given what they did with their drivers it was well deserved.

 

As far as I can remember, there were also the HP 4t/6t 1000 series with 7670M, G4t/G6t with 7670M.

On the driver part I remember these:

• Power express 4 stuttering after startup on switchable graphics certain machines (Windows 7 OS problem, only fixed recently, only ms could fix but obviously AMD took the blame)
• 12.6 WHQL - Ok & stable
• 12.8 WHQL (1st windows 8 driver) - If hybrid graphics was switched to switchable graphics via BIOS or so, BSOD on each startup after windows loaded, doesn't affect hybrid.
• 12.10 WHQL - Stable.
• 12.11 Enduro 7970M (supports 6000-7000M Hardware IDs) Ultra stable, hybrid graphics (predecessor of Enduro) also received dramatic performance bumps.
• 13.1 - better than 12.11 Enduro but crashes about once a week for me.

So baseline stability & performance wise they had a huge share of issues, not considering game optimisations. But it can be seen that things have been improving.

Likewise for a machine with optimus I own, it has its own crash issues but obviously not as pronounced (to the extent of BSOD).

Coupled with a poor catalyst install manager (and less adopted notebook reference driver programme & more OEM locks) that doesn't always work as intended they all have a negative impact.

I hope they continue to go in the correct directions and address the remaining concerns.

Otherwise, I'd like to see them putting up more WHQLs. The latest so far is actually 12.11 beta 11 with a WHQL. So in essence, its about 4-5 months without a new WHQL but a lot of betas.

Sent from my GT-I8190 using Tapatalk 2

 

the main problem was that the enduro problem was only solved almost 8 months from the launch of the cards and that is pretty much inacceptable

AMD changed the way that they release drivers, WHQL are when there are major changes, performance and instability are fixed in those betas and fixes

to get optimus to the way it is today (and that is by no means a perfect solution still), it took nvidia several and several years of work, I dont expect AMD to do it in less than a year, but those underutilization problems where very worrisome. I dont know who is the stupid that is coordinating their driver program, but he shouldve been fired years ago. Its simple, nvidia created a myth surrounding their drivers, amd created a legend around terrible ones. While there is some truth and fantasy in the middle, there is no denying that they havent been delivering great drivers and stable drivers with enough consistency that it changes perception.

One thing that they have been working on and quite frankly pathetically is the image of their cpus being hotter than intel. The bad image was created more than 10 years ago, and they have done very little in the way of improving that. Their marketing dept should be sent to the gallows not fired.

And truth be told amd cpus are waaaay cooler than intel ones now, for the mobile camp at least.

 

The problem with WHQL drivers being so far inbetween is that they are not certified to run properly on a computer. I.E. if you use it and your GPU breaks PERMANENTLY they take no blame as there were no guarantees; unlike when nVidia had that driver issue with their WHQL desktop driver that made their fans stop spinning and they replaced the broken GPUs that resulted.

Either way, AMD needs to start taking care of their notebook users a lot more. I read somewhere on this forum that any news about mobile fixes and such has to be gotten from other sites, as well as a lot of mobile drivers for their cards. That's just... no. If they sort themselves out and their cards lose their tendency to die after a year (I don't know if the 7970M has that issue, forgive me if it's already fixed) and don't regain it in the future, then maybe a lot more people will want them and they'll cement themselves right in the mobile market. Such competition can only be healthy.

I do remember when nVidia started their driver support turnaround. I had my machine with 179.68 and 186.03 was out at the time. Then MONTHS later 186.81 (I think) came out, then shortly after they were all "hey we're gonna release mobile and desktop card drivers at the same time and keep you updated regularly" then so many updates came through, always optimizing this and that. I presume they sucked prior to this, but as they are now AMD has to step their game up.

It's like when people prefer to use XBL Gold over PSN. Yes you pay more, but your service is better and you get less problems, your games run really consistently and the experience is just better overall, even if the two systems are quite similar in power.

 

I'd like to first comment on Karamazovmm's post.

Speculation or truth regarding the part on changing the logo schedule (know of the news but honestly didn't know it was "WHQL" only if there are major changes), I think you completely described the issue. At least it seemed VERY obvious to people with an AMD card who are testing things out and looking at new drivers, that what you say can possibly be 100% true.

As obvious as it may seem, what AMD needs includes:

1. More WHQL, 1 in 2 months is reasonable.
2. Fix the broken installer (stop messing with the Intel HD custom driver that only comes from the OEM that runs Switchable/Hybrid graphics and other issues and then when the PC calls for an update, Intel installs a reference Intel HD driver that doesn't work with Hybrid/Switchable screwing up the AMD GPU preventing it from working... Not the only one)
3. Fix the broken installer (stop it from telling people that the installation was "successful" when in fact only CCC updated and the driver failed to install the update, its so common)
4. A more consistent and "Nvidia-Verde-Like" reference driver program (They probably should name it something and tell people what they're doing for PR reasons because PR can definitely help manage expectations positively). They need to work things out with the OEMs properly, start documenting things. The Verde program imo, is more PR than what goes under the hood but as far as the end user cares, its better than AMD's.
5. And if possible, put the Intel HD Hybrid/Switchable Custom driver IN the reference driver package. I think they should maintain more control and it helps with consistency. Not all OEMs care about their driver pages.

All the while, that wasn't my perception on the Microsoft Logo program. It is impossible to get a 100% bug/issue free driver to stamp a WHQL at any point of time. My perception was always that it is done on a regular basis with incremental tweaks, as long as the driver is stable enough. And I really mean, enough. There may be a cost involved but that's definitely not the primary thing.

There will definitely be a release (maybe with added minor tweaks) that can be good enough to be sent to microsoft for the logo and then distributed to the public.

Just an example, Catalyst 12.11 beta 11 = 13.1 WHQL., I mean really, like what Karamazovmm says, whoever's coordinating the WHQL schedule seriously has to go and is definitely preventing AMD GPU unit's very possible comeback from coming true against NV. I don't think he doesn't know how Windows 7 & 8 works.

I don't think an average consumer or at least a bulk of the market would even consider breaking Driver Signature Enforcement for the sake of running a driver labelled "beta". There has to be a higher frequency of WHQLs released.

I mean really, the large part of the world isn't just Anandtech, Guru3d or any other enthusiast....... its just tonnes of noobies who only care if "it just works".

 

There are several problems about AMD.

- They are still horrible with drivers. They have still stuttering and latency problems with their desktop models now. Mostly for CF setups. Nvidia is miles ahead with that, so AMD will still have to struggle with the driver ghost for years to come because of that. To be completely honest, they have come a long way with their 7970M driver problems, so kudos for that.

- AMD have almost none notebooks with their mid end GPUs. Search for any notebook with 7870M and 8870M and you will find only 1. Nvidia on the other hand is spreading out their mid end GPUs all over the place. Search for GT 650M, GTX 660M etc and you will find tons of them with every OEM featuring them. AMD is either horrible with marketing or the OEMs don`t trust them. I think its a mix of both. Its like AMD have a bad relationship with the OEMs for some reason.

- AMD get also similar bad coverage of their mobile APUs. You can maybe find 1 or two reviews of them. But the notebooks with them and a discrete GPU is almost non existent. There is a big reason for that too, since the A10-4600M cannot be mixed with a high end GPU. Take 7970M + 4600M for example. That 4600M is dragging down the 7970M performance down to GTX 660M. So the bad CPU performance isn`t helping them at all.

- AMD CPUs are cooler than Intel? What is your source here. HTWingNut mentioned that his 4600M ran pretty cool. I gave him my own measurements that showed that I get roughly the same temperatures on my 3610QM.
But disregard that, is it really strange that a 35W CPU is cooler than a 45W CPU? I`m curious to how a 35W Intel would compare against a 35W AMD APU.

 

Problem is oems don't implement amd gpus while there are as powerfull and power efficient as nvidia ones.

For example, if u take the new amd 8770M, it gives very good performances knowing that the power consumption is almost the same that the old 7670M. Something like 20W-25W at top. And it performs more or less like a 650M GT which is a 45W gpu...

 

Tis true

AnandTech | AMD Discontinues Monthly Driver Updates, Releases Catalyst 12.6 Beta

I still dont think its a bad idea, however they could actually make decent changes between each WHQL, its simple not everyone changes their drivers every month, I sometimes forgot to do that when my 4670m was new, did it 2-3 months period. I see the need for them to be more useful and decent.

I agree with that and will disregard the kudos, no company should launch a broken product and take a better part of a year to fix and receive any kind of a pat in the back, instead of a punch in the face, you did what was required of you to launch that product, you didnt do anything that supplementary.

Then I would take you to look at 2010, and 2011, those were the years that nvidia only had asus as its main bastion, amd has the badly run hp as its bastion now. I still hope more would come out since the underutilization problem is mostly gone

They do, its a really piece of crap cpu, underperforming. Their best cpu is the FX line, which still isnt amazing, it gets the job done mostly. Their A series is pathetic at best, african child lvl of anemic at worst

If you look at the numbers of the gx60 and the gt60 you can see the difference there. But the most data comes from desktop, they have been cooler than intel since P4. That bad 386 press still lingers on.

 

WHQL is basically a microsoft certification on a driver (or even hardware; if you see "Windows 7 certified" on a printer or something) that the device will NOT break your computer and will perform as intended for the most part on machines regardless of hardware/software combinations. Now this is impossible to prove, as there are trillions of combinations of hardware floating about. But for the most part it usually works. If you use a WHQL certified item and it causes harm to your system, either microsoft or the company making it MUST fix it, usually with you getting new hardware or your money back etc. It's something that's paid for with Windows. Companies submit hardware/drivers to Microsoft, they check it out and if it passes you get WHQL and you're safe. That added security while using windows is part of Windows' price. Just like the antivirus program Microsoft Security Essentials, and ANY program that requires your computer to be checked to be "windows genuine". Those programs are not actually free, but are paid for when you buy windows. This is why Mac oses are so much cheaper; you are not entitled to all of those kinds of software or hardware security while using it. Mac hardware is proprietary, therefore everything they release WILL work. Everything else is at your own risk.

This is why some people will not touch beta drivers unless it is necessary; such as when DiRT 2 came out and you NEEDED a windows driver update for GeForce GPUs to run it. The driver was quickly created on release day so that people could play the game, and as such could never have been WHQL'd and released that quickly. Most of nVidia's beta drivers as such are purely game-related. Crysis 3 beta? Beta driver. Tomb Raider? Beta driver adding SLI profiles, followed by another Beta driver optimizing performance especially when compared to previous models. Then another beta for a game I forget that came out (Bioshock I think). No sense WHQLing all of them in nVidia's case, but all the while they keep working on their drivers. Which is what's so good.

As for AMD... Well.

 

AMD sure needs to work on their drivers, but the real culprit was the whole Enduro issue. Other than that, they have been good. Hell, it took them a single driver release to make the HD7000 the performance winners per all segments at some point. nVidia did wonders with TDP in general, and only matched per se with Tahiti in such regard. But performancewise? AMD took the crown in general even if they do require quite more watts.

As for AMD CPUs, in mobile they are an absolute joke. Their FX line on desktop actually holds its own specially in multithreaded but they are nowhere near the intel series of each gen so they often compete with things like core i5 24xx etc. For mobile, they can't seem to even reach first gen core i7 yet.

Their TDP is indeed 35W but the cooling solution is entirely dependent on manufacturer, plus they do cram a more powerful GPU than intel. They should release a GPU-less CPU with 6 high speed cores to reach regular low end Core i7 of previous gens. So they would stop sucking.

Problem is, even their current desktop high end CPU, has trouble with new games... sigh. They need to get their stuff together.

 

Actually that wasn't my point or what i was driving towards, the other user probably can tell. The salient point was that its about 5 months since AMD made a WHQL. Like how the current 13.1 was actually 12.11 beta WHQL'd.

What a WHQL means to an average user is that the driver installation works without breaking things like driver signature enforcement. Some other average user would probably class using betas by breaking DSE as "hacking" some of these stuff. Something they will never touch.

If AMD does a WHQL only twice a year (what it looks like its going to be) the average users will encounter a lot of trouble and this is the point.

If that is their true intent of handling things, it'll probably cause the OEM more stress and trouble with their Call Center and clueless CSOs deflecting more problems back and forth in cases of AMD Driver related issues. And probably in the long term with these amounts of 'issues' that could have been avoided, it will encourage OEMs to pick more Keplers over GCN to build in their SKUs and inadvertently, it narrows consumer choices.

At this rate, they will never gain a sustained 40-60 like share (or even a near 50-50) in notebook dGPs or anything like a true comeback.

But anyway I'll leave it at this point.

Sent from my GT-I8190 using Tapatalk 2

 

Oh. Well geez I was like wayyy off. Holy.

 

Well, yup lol.