Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 11:58 pm
First off great post, I cannot argue that amd has the price point advantage over nvidia in the mid-range market. ATI/AMD has changed their business model around the "2nd best but cheap" model. Thats always been the case for amd ever since the K7 CPU vs Intel P3. They beat intel to 1ghz and lost ever since adopting cheap alternatives for more bang for the price, but ALWAYS at the cost of more chips burning out because of heat , poor chipset support etc.. (Yes I was once a Die Hard AMD fan until I gave up on the 1ghz CPU with the AMD 750/VIA 686A Slot-A board god that was a nightmare computer from hell.) AMD lost not only to stability and performance but to HUGE innovative technologies like Hyper-threading.
Getting back on track, in the GPU market NVIDIA is getting a huge rival..... INTEL Larrabee architecture. There is already a WAR brewing about chipset support for BOTH AMD and NVIDIA.
check out an interesting read here
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/intel_ ... r_revealed
I also will agree that when Nvidia came out with their 8800 series (that beat ATI) their "mid-range cards were lacking in every aspect and way over priced. ATI managed to fill that gap and the same is true about the 200 series you pointed out.
In closing you MAY think your getting a better deal in the mid-range market by saving $20-$30 on a card that performs the same as nvidia... But at what cost? Overclockability? Heat? Drivers? Technology advancement? Software Gaming support like AGE OF CONAN?
Nvidia not only sets the bar in performance, it has adopted truely innovative technologies AMD/ATI manages to "copy" later on.
For instance CUDA ...
http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_what_is.html
The 200 series will support PhysX directly from their hardware GPU and drivers.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_physx.html
People BUY premiums for a reason... they expect the best and thats what NVIDIA delivers. They set the bar and ATI fills in the gaps but always at a cost.
Getting back on track, in the GPU market NVIDIA is getting a huge rival..... INTEL Larrabee architecture. There is already a WAR brewing about chipset support for BOTH AMD and NVIDIA.
check out an interesting read here
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/intel_ ... r_revealed
I also will agree that when Nvidia came out with their 8800 series (that beat ATI) their "mid-range cards were lacking in every aspect and way over priced. ATI managed to fill that gap and the same is true about the 200 series you pointed out.
In closing you MAY think your getting a better deal in the mid-range market by saving $20-$30 on a card that performs the same as nvidia... But at what cost? Overclockability? Heat? Drivers? Technology advancement? Software Gaming support like AGE OF CONAN?
Nvidia not only sets the bar in performance, it has adopted truely innovative technologies AMD/ATI manages to "copy" later on.
For instance CUDA ...
http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_what_is.html
The 200 series will support PhysX directly from their hardware GPU and drivers.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_physx.html
People BUY premiums for a reason... they expect the best and thats what NVIDIA delivers. They set the bar and ATI fills in the gaps but always at a cost.