is NVIDIA learning from Intel???

Everyone knows (or almost) that the Geforce 8800m GTS and the upcoming Geforce 9650m GT are EXACTLY the same card, w/pretty much the same specs, being both based on the g92 concept, using 64 stream processors, etc...

But, has nvidia gone too far trying to fool us all with its "new" card models?

Well, Nvdia's mobile vga models would be something like this by the 3Q/08 (from the high-end to mainstream):


- Geforce 9800m GTX (pretty much the current 8800m GTX version but with an increased memory size and faster speed)
- Geforce 9650m or 9700m GT (As said before, the same as the 8800m GTS sold today. It's an underclocked version of the desktop Geforce 9600 GT)
- Geforce 9650m GS (same card as the Geforce 8700m GT, but because of the smaller die, it can run without a cooler, thus it's gonna aim the under 15" size screen laptop market. You can check the specs that attest this here)
- Geforce 9500 GS (it's a die-shrinked Geforce 8600m GT but as it's become a mainstream card no longer uses 256mb GDDR3, coming usually with 512mb DDR2 instead)
- Geforce 9300 GS (the same card as the old 8600m GS, a.k.a the mobile version of the Geforce 8500)


So, that's it. Nvidia won't bring anything really "new" to the market this year... The company would rather just rename and rearrange its own cards position on the market.


Err... Wait... I think I've already seen where this is going....

Isn't there another big, leading company that does pretty much the same thing with its own "new" products???

Oh! I remember: INTEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Honestly I don't see anything wrong with what NVIDIA's doing. The Geforce 8 series were and still are very powerful and one of the best series of graphics cards released by this company. I don’t see ATi as a big competitor at this phase so why rush to release new category of cards while the 8 series architecture at present time is good enough to get the job done? Basically how I look at it, NVIDIA is improving already effective and capable technology to better suit the market. Plus let’s not forget that the mobile 8 series aren’t that aged yet to shelf off, so why not slightly improve it for the best?

 

Blame AMD/ATI.

 

When there is no competition there is no pressure on the company to do better. I blame AMD and ATI too.

 

nVidia's just doing this so that the Millions of 8 series users don't feel obsolete.

 

no they aren't. the company isn't going out of its way to make sure people who have already paid don't feel obsolete. quite the contrary.

 

The real difference between the 8 and 9 series cards is that the new 9 series cards are DirectX10.1 compatible.

 

True, maybe we should call these the 8.1 series as there is no "real" 9 series as of yet.

 

Incorrect, the 9 series are not DirectX10.1 compatible.

What the present 9 series (9300M, 9500M GS) provides is:

"Increased performance for similar power draw compared to GeForce 8M series for low-end and midrange notebooks,
Full HD DVD / Blu-ray hardware decoding."

 

I hope you know I was just joking.

 

Nothing really new has come out recently. DirectX 10.1 insignificant when compared to something such as a new Shader Model, so there is not much nVidia can do other than make their GPUs more power efficient and have faster clocks.

I'm sure the Geforce 9 series will yield performance increases of 10-20% when compared with the 8 series, just like the 7 series did when compared to the 6 series (although the 7 series had full support for Shader 3.0, but that's a different story).

 

WRONG!

That's the point... in Geforce's previous generations, they actually had changed their architecture a litte bit in the newer series... but not in this one... even the "famous" Geforce 9800 x2 is nothing more than 2 geforces 9600 put together!!! And even if you take a close look to the geforce 9600 itself (the only "new" card on the 9 series) you're gonna realize it's actually a geforce 8800 gt w/less stream processors and more "horse power" (a.k.a. faster clock speeds).

So, if they're doing that to the desktop market... what could we expect from the mobile? I tell you: even worst treatment!

In the mobile market they're not even making anything new... just renaming their old models!

Then, the "next" generation, won't be any faster than the "previous" generation... cause they're actually the very same thing!

And yes, blame AMD who's going bankrupt and did us the "favor" of taking ATI to the pit with them... Leaving both the processor and graphics market without any real competition!!!!!!

DAmn you, AMD!

 

maybe this will mark a positive trend in the industry. take the focus away from the hardware and put more time and effort into the software.

 

Devil's advocate, but the laptop 7800GTX was followed by the 7900 GTX, then the 7950 GTX all just faster versions of the same basic core.

The current 8 series is seeing something similar.

The only problem I have is Nvidia calling these revisions 9XXX rather than 8650, 8850, etc. I agree with you that renaming the same basic cores as a whole new series is grossly misleading on Nvidia's part.

 

I thought the 9800 gx2 is two 8800 gts 512 mb put together, not two 9600 gt put together. But yea the 9xxx series doesn't seem to offer anything new beyond a die shrink of the 8xxx series cards. But let's wait until the entire line is released and draw our conclusions, though I still think it's nice that the high end cards in the 9xxx series will be beefier versions of the 8800 cards, which are good enough for most games out there anyways.

 

This has been done before by video card manufacturers... what's the big deal? We know the difference, so why whine about it?

nVidia's next big baby is the GT200, which should come out late this year or early next year.

And I thought the new mobile 9300 GS was just the old 8400 GS, not the 8600? If so, that's quite a big leap forward for the lower-end cards.

 

yeah im getting a little sick of these threads....this keeps being talked about and has been done in the past b4...why is it such a big deal.

 

narsnail,

I totally agree with you: getting laid is better than SLI!

 

Actually, I'm not sure if I would blame AMD/ATI.

AMD/ATI officially announced that it's forging a greater presence in laptops for itself a little while ago, aiming that it aims to grab about 30-40% of the mobile GPU market.

That means that we're going to see mobile versions of the HD3870, HD3850, and probably also the HD3830 (or was it HD3820?), all of which perform competitively against the 9600GT (in some cases notably better I think) and priced the same as well.

The thing about the whole "rebranding" thing is that the G92 was already a "new" GPU anyway, nVidia just deemed that it needed/wanted to release it early under an "old" name for whatever reason. I think the reason why they codenamed it G92 was that they always intended it to be the "mid-range" card of the newer generation of nVidia GPU's.

I, for one, am all for it since it does come with some optimizations and will hopefully be priced much more cheaply than the 8800M GTS since it would be a x6xx-class GeForce card and not an x8xx or x9xx. I mean, would it really be so bad to snag a notebook with near-10,000 3DMark06 performance for ~$1000 and under? Currently you need to overclock 8600M GT's like mad just to get half that for (generally) a comparable price.

 

that is so wrong

the 7600gt equaled 6800 in performance.

the 7950gtx was 2x the power of the previous gen card

every generation previously provides around 2x the performance of the previous gen.

but it wasn't labeled as a new series

9 series = rebadge + miniaturizations + a few HD video decode

i blame both. amd paid way too much for ati, and nvidia is a lazy money grabbing POS who won't do jack if it doesn't have comptition.

all the nvidia/intel fanboys should thank amd, because if not, you'd be getting the pentium 5 and the FX series

the hd3870 competes with 9600gt, the 3850 isn't as powerful as the 9600gt

i hardly think they'd make in cheaper, in fact , they'd price it even higher considering its marketed as "new"

 

Ugh, i'm tired of this. If you ask me the 7 series was the pinnacle for Nvidia.

 

ugh god whats with all the hate if you don't like the new series just don't buy it vote with your feet and nvidia will have to come up with something better and how can you compare this to intel? huh any answers?

 

Without competition [aka AMD/ATI] there's really nothing to drive nVidia into making better, "more competitive" products. Why would they improve their products if AMD can't even offer anything to compete against the 8800M cards?

 

Kind of makes you wish Matrox would get back in the consumer 3D game.

 

Maybe they are just waiting for thier competotor to move before they make their own move.

(Like CHess)

 

Well, then today the only competition is to be able to run Crysis in a single card, no?

 

Wait if the 9300m GS is the 8600m GS....what about the 8400m GS??

Does that mean 14" mainstream laptops will get it??

 

Probably... the only real differences between the Geforce 8600m GS and the "new" (cough, cough...) Geforce 9300m G are lower stock speeds and the use of 64-bits instead of 128-bits, as you can check on the image below:





You can also check the links for the geforce 8600m GS and 9300m G info.

 

They have competition from AMD but it's about price, not performance, and that's because neither has brought anything to dislodge the G8800Ultras in the eWang rigs.

Regardless of whether nV had competition or not, it is unlikely we would've seen much of anything different in the refresh realm, if it were just competition, then nV would have their next part ready for the spring/summer right when/before the competition launches, but sofar it doesn't look like that will be the case.

So I wouldn't blame competition for the lack of improvements, it didn't help in the past, and the only thing that drives the names is PR-marketing, not performance and features.

More important to the name change wasn't performance competition in the segments so much as AMD changed their name and so must nV or else they look old to all the n00bs that still make up most of their sales.

 

Are you serious???

If it wasn't due to AMD's competition, Intel would still be selling us Pentium 4 with 5 GHz (of fake performance) and almost burning our homes with a core temperature of over 150 ºC !!! Well, perhaps they would come up with something to cool it down... But then, instead of burning our homes they would be burning our money with a power sucker CPU !!!

So, if Intel had to "rethink" it's concepts and comeback to the design board, you should thank AMD! Because if it wasn't for the success achieved by the Atlhon XP and Athlon 64 line, Intel would never have improved their processors and released the centrino based CPUs as they did... They would definitely have done the same thing NVIDIA is doing now: just stick with what they've got, save some money on research and try to only maximize their own profits!!!

 

Um, maybe you should see the 8400GS info, then:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8400M.html

9300 = 8400

9300 =! 8600

 

The mobile 9000 series so far has been die shrinks. No, it's not as innovative as making newer, better GPUs, but ATI, Intel, nVidia, and AMD have been doing this forever. I don't know why you're all up in arms about it.

 

i don't know what you're feeling so pissed off about? look, 8800 can handle pretty much any game u throw at it as it is. the information is out there. it's not like nvidia is forcing u to blindly go out there any buy the "new" 9 series. do your research before you buy anyhting, that's my stance on it. who knows, maybe there will be something better available down the road.

 

Err, Centrino(and it isn't a CPU but a platform!!) was released for other reasons, and had to do much less with AMD. Core 2 Duo coming to desktop had to do with AMD, cause Pentium 4 was struggling, but Intel was never uncompetitive on laptop. I'd say that's because having low power consumption is essential on laptops and you can't really use experimental architecture(trace cache, double pumped ALU, ultra long pipeline stages and lets see what happens approach) like Netburst on them.

And referring to the first post, Penryn does bring benefits over Merom. About the closest thing Intel have done to changing the name without changing the architecture was Pentium II to Pentium III change.

Mostly, this is an ignorant thread.

 

I'm satisfied with it; the Geforce 9500M GS gets the job done and that's all that matters to me.

 

Yes I'm serious, and I'm not talking about the existance of a competitor, since that is still the case, I'm talking about the eWang version you and others seem to think drives these companies instead of the bottom lines. Are you that unaware of the past, for both CPUs and VPUs?

Competition pushes companies somewhat, but it's not something that makes them risk it all to shift mid-stride, they get technological breaks that they capitalize on most of the time.

Now on the graphics front what examples make you think either of them pushed more than what they had too? The GF4, the FX, the X800, the GF7800? Generational flip-flops, the only exception maybe being the X1900 which had next to nothing to do with competition and was more about a guess where games were heading, that one succeeded the R600 guess overshot the mark on features and undershot performance.

Really the thing you're griping about is short term change/issue, and then you use glacial long term examples to justify it. There are very few examples of short term competition spurring on quick successful refresh replies so much as longer term replies. And using intel as an example is funny, because they took 4 major generations to reply, and did so because of the success of a product in another segment and the minute AMD had competition they've continued to fall behind.

Really the name change for nV was because that's exactly what the competition did, the performance issue is still a money losingproblem, answered by an expensive GX2, if nV could bring out a succesor to the G80 they would.

 

All the better. I`ll upgrade easier to the 9th series

 

eh.
I would just rather wait for the 10th series. i wonder how would they name it after the 10th.

 

Mate,

if you're happy about it and if you believe that renaming old products and releasing then as new ones is a fair merchant policy... that's ok. Go ahead and buy Nvidia's "new" generation of vgas...

But for me that's NOT ok, and you bet I won't pay any money for the same crap I already have!

I'd rather wait until something REALLY new comes out. Perhaps in 2009... or maybe if AMD/ATI were bought by IBM that could actually changes the current market rulez for the better! And because of this money injection, AMD could come back to the game and offer some descent stuff once again ***.


*** Nevertheless, if AMD/ATI remain on their own (a.k.a. almost bankrupted, I doubt they'd be able to ever release high performance products on pair with their competition again).

 

Why would I be happy or sad about it? Naming is for n00bz, anyone who's knowledgeable about the situation never thinks of them as just a GF9600 or HD3870, they think of them as either fast/slow RV670 or G94. You complain about them adding th GF9xxx series, yet were you equally complaining when they continued the GF8800GTS name with two completely different refreshes (one a 112SP 640MB the other a 128SP 512MB model)? Did that help either?

intel doesn't do that, but AMD & ATi has with the 128bit R9700PRO or the 3 or more variants of a 3200+, etc. Anyone even half-informed knows to look deeper than just the numbers on the box. Heck I was more ticked off at AMD dumbing down the schemes by using numbers instead of suffixes for those who wouldn't know the F'in difference unless told anyways, as if HD3650 means more ot someone than HD3650XT, or avoids them confusing that the HD2900XT destroys it.

Fine, but don't pin your hopes on IBM, they are a nice looking suitor, but unlikely, more likely someone like Samsung. And once again short term it would mean nothing regardless of who was involved, their 2008 to mid 2009 strategy is already formulated, any sudden development boost from a cash infusion / debt reduction would be converted into new/bold designs until late 2009 or more likely 2010.

Well we'll find out in a few more weeks/months, and right now ATi is AMD's life blood feed it profits to waste on it's CPU segment. With intel entering the fray next year, both AMD and nVidia may focus on winning the profitable segments, not the Bungholiomark chasers. And with the way the market is heading nVidia will need to figure out their VIA / x86 situation before too long because the high end alone won't sustain a company like that.