End of the line for GTX 2xx series? [Archive]

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Maverickman

10-17-09, 10:58 AM

Many of you have probably seen some articles on the web claiming that Nvidia is eliminating its GTX 2xx series of cards in the face of intense competition from AMD. With Fermi not available until early next year, it seems Nvidia is throwing in the towel until then. It may not be a bad idea because Nvidia would really have to cur prices to be competitive with ATI's HD 5850 and 5700 series. Still, I don't like to see a company giving up so easily.

Maverick123w

10-17-09, 11:46 AM

I don't think they throwing in the towel so much as trying to stop the bleeding. Their entire lineup is outclassed, and I think it's obvious their isn't enough profit to be competitive so they are cutting their losses.

azanon

10-21-09, 06:55 PM

They're still pretty competitive with the 5800 series, ... judging by Newegg. The Nvidia cards are still priced about what they've always been, and the 5800 series isn't available for purchase. I'd say that's competitive.

Burnt_Ram

10-22-09, 08:58 AM

azanon

10-22-09, 10:01 AM

they're not completely throwing in the towel. they're about to release a GTX275 with a GTX250 on the same board for dedicated PhysX .... read about it this morn. i'm late for work or i would dig up a link.

That sounds like a great idea considering Batman runs just fine with max settings on a GTX275 without a GTX 250 chip!

Cool-ass game though. I'd prefer a nVidia card just for that reason alone. It's fast enough to run every game out so who needs more power anyway. I'd prefer the one with more usable features today.

trivium nate

10-22-09, 10:16 AM

so are they going to keep making driver updates for them?

Revs

10-22-09, 10:20 AM

I assume ATI have got their act together with the drivers?? I know a few people here went back to NV after ATI driver issues with the last series.

Also, some nVidia cards, as far as I can tell, are still superb VFM. You can get 2 GTX260's and change for the price of the 5870. Or are they making a loss at these prices?

BelligerentBill

10-22-09, 11:56 AM

I find it hard to believe Nvidia would cut their losses anywhere. They currently have far more compelling reasons to purchase their hardware as opposed to any competition. I have a Core2Quad 3.0 GHz system with a GTX 275 / 8800 GTS 512 PhysX and I'm am insanely happy. I've had the core of this system since January/February of 2008 the only change being the GTX 275 upgrade. The point is that faster is in no way better like it was 5 years ago. The enthusiast market isn't large enough to support any business model in the PC industry because these days people buy, for the most part, what will give them the most bang for their buck inside of what they prefer.

Say ATI came out with a card that was 3x faster than anything Nvidia has available (oh and claiming to support DX11 to boot). Even then I personally would stick with an Nvidia upgrade because that is my chosen preference (however I've chosen to build two AMD/ATI motherboard(integrated graphics)/processor based systems for non personal use since I built my almost 2 year old pc). I've done ATI.... sorry AMD, nothing against you but Nvidia is leagues ahead as the gaming industry is concerned. My experiences with ATI are nothing I will risk throwing my money away to experience again (I used ATI from the originally introduced Radeon chip until the x800 era or so so it's not like I had one issue and bailed. It was the overall experience which was love/hate/hate/hate).

Let us all not forget what happened when vendors claimed DX 10 support and when the first DX 10 supported applications officially released all that DX 10 hardware took massive performance hits and really had to be downscaled to DX 9 mode for playable framerates.

What's up now biatch (ATI).

Merefield

10-22-09, 12:37 PM

nekrosoft13

10-22-09, 01:11 PM

I assume ATI have got their act together with the drivers??

depends what do you mean by act.

stability is ok, GUI is horrible, still lacks game profile access.

Rollo

10-22-09, 02:25 PM

they're not completely throwing in the towel. they're about to release a GTX275 with a GTX250 on the same board for dedicated PhysX .... read about it this morn. i'm late for work or i would dig up a link.

http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-10368-view-Evga-G92b-and-GTX-275-dual-chip-card.html

Here's the link for that way cool GTX275 +GTX250 card, very good idea on EVGA's part.

As far as the OP goes, NVIDIA just discontinued producing last gen parts so inventory can be sold off before their next gen parts launch. Not a big deal.

mailman2

10-22-09, 02:37 PM

http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-10368-view-Evga-G92b-and-GTX-275-dual-chip-card.html

Here's the link for that way cool GTX275 +GTX250 card, very good idea on EVGA's part.

As far as the OP goes, NVIDIA just discontinued producing last gen parts so inventory can be sold off before their next gen parts launch. Not a big deal.

Thats the dumbest thing I've ever seen. They are just trying to clean out stock. Like putting lipstick on a pig... Who wants to buy more obsolete hardware? ATI can't even keep stock if HD5870 and HD5850s, clearly people aren't buying Nvidia products right now. I really don't see this as a wise decision but more of a Hail Mary. Wow, Nvidia is leading the way with stupid **** lately.

Sorry Nvidia, at least someone is focusing on real progress for gamers... http://ve3d.ign.com/videos/57180/PC/Dirt-2/Trailer/DirectX-11-PC-Tech-Trailer

Blacklash

10-22-09, 02:49 PM

Yep the 5870 and 5850 are great cards at their price point. The 4890s are around 170usd with rebates now.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&Description=hd%204890&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=True&Order=PRICE

5770s are cheaper than that and about the power of HD 4870 1Gb.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&Description=hd%205770&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=True&Order=PRICE

http://techreport.com/articles.x/17747/6

Rollo

10-22-09, 09:16 PM

Thats the dumbest thing I've ever seen. They are just trying to clean out stock. Like putting lipstick on a pig... Who wants to buy more obsolete hardware? ATI can't even keep stock if HD5870 and HD5850s, clearly people aren't buying Nvidia products right now. I really don't see this as a wise decision but more of a Hail Mary. Wow, Nvidia is leading the way with stupid **** lately.

Sorry Nvidia, at least someone is focusing on real progress for gamers... http://ve3d.ign.com/videos/57180/PC/Dirt-2/Trailer/DirectX-11-PC-Tech-Trailer

Are they out of stock because people are buying a lot, or are they out of stock because yields are low and they had to give what they have to Dell?

As far as this card goes, there will likely be more PhysX games launched in the next year than DX11 games.

Last, people will always buy more NVIDIA products than ATi, for the same reason people buy more Intel CPUs than AMD. Intel and NVIDIA are brand names the public associates with quality. Time after time, even when AMD/ATi 'win" for a little while, they end up losing.

Nothing you can post here will change that. (or keep the Grim Reaper off their door as creditors grow anxious for that $5b they owe)

Ninja Prime

10-23-09, 05:48 AM

Are they out of stock because people are buying a lot, or are they out of stock because yields are low and they had to give what they have to Dell?

As far as this card goes, there will likely be more PhysX games launched in the next year than DX11 games.

Last, people will always buy more NVIDIA products than ATi, for the same reason people buy more Intel CPUs than AMD. Intel and NVIDIA are brand names the public associates with quality. Time after time, even when AMD/ATi 'win" for a little while, they end up losing.

Nothing you can post here will change that. (or keep the Grim Reaper off their door as creditors grow anxious for that $5b they owe)

LOL, ok fanboy. You do realize that in all likelyhood, ATI is going to win the next round as well, and might even catch up or maybe even beat NV in marketshare by next year? Hence NV re-imagining Fermi as a supercomputer device, because they know they are backed into a corner at the moment, and need to find a new angle to sell their product.

NV themselves are down this year considerably, its just ignorance not to see it. ATI is looking up, and moving towards profitability, whereas NV is going in the other direction. That is reality. You can live in whatever fantasy land you want though, if it makes you feel better...

IMO, NV would be better off to stop this "supercomputer" crap and Physx and focus more on making an awesome GPU, rather than spread themselves thin trying to cover all bases.

ChrisRay

10-23-09, 07:24 AM

NV re-imagining Fermi as a supercomputer device

No. Nvidia is a gaming company first. And their GPUS are "Not" being reimagined as Supercomputing devices. Nvidia isn't stupid.

1) NVidia has invested a ton into Devrel
2) Nvidia has invested a ton into PhysX and its aqquisition.
3) Nvidia has invested a ton into 3D Vision.
4) Nvidia has built new software that compiles to OpenGL/DirectX/DirectX Compute/CUDA/OpenCL

None of this translates into Nvidia "reimagining" its hardware. And considering the money Nvidia has invested into the PC gaming market. It doesn't make a lick of common sense.

Just because Nvidia announced its shader architecture for Fermi at the GPU Convention does not mean that Nvidia is "Refocusing" anywhere. The Discreet Desktop market makes NVidia alot of its money. Nvidia is not going to turn its back on one of its core market. It is simply going to leverage the flexibility of the Nvidia GPU design to enter other markets.

Fermi's shader core is an evolutionary step from the GT200/G80 shader cores. Which are both good gaming cards. Just because there something faster now does not make them bad cards today. There is no reason Nvidia can't design a card dedicated to gaming that has extra functions that allow it to tackle a new market. The market is moving towards general purpose GPU devices. And thats exactly what Fermi is. DirectX Compute. Which is a big part of DirectX 11. Will leverage Fermi's GPU Compute capability. And so will PhysX and so will Bullet. All of which are gaming relevant. The APIS and architectures have been leaning this way for a while. Eventually GPUS are going to be doing alot of "General" Tasks within their own hardware as directed by the APIS such as DirectX and OpenCL . And it will only benefit gaming.

Saying that Nvidia is "Refocusing, Moving Away, changing focus" from GPU gaming is just obsurd given how little information is publically known about Nvidia next gen architecture.

Rollo

10-23-09, 09:05 AM

LOL, ok fanboy. You do realize that in all likelyhood, ATI is going to win the next round as well, and might even catch up or maybe even beat NV in marketshare by next year? Hence NV re-imagining Fermi as a supercomputer device, because they know they are backed into a corner at the moment, and need to find a new angle to sell their product.

NV themselves are down this year considerably, its just ignorance not to see it. ATI is looking up, and moving towards profitability, whereas NV is going in the other direction. That is reality. You can live in whatever fantasy land you want though, if it makes you feel better...

IMO, NV would be better off to stop this "supercomputer" crap and Physx and focus more on making an awesome GPU, rather than spread themselves thin trying to cover all bases.

I seem to remember you (and other ATi fans) saying this last summer. :D How NVIDIA "couldn't compete" because you imagined their chips "too big, too expensive to produce". Look how that turned out-
http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases/details/jon-peddie-research-more-positives-than-negatives-in-q209-for-the-graphics-/

AMD’s unit share rising from 31% in the first quarter to 35% in Q2’09, with Nvidia declining four points to 64%.

So after a whole year of selling their best product since the 9700Pro, ATi managed to claw their way to a 35% desktop market share. Errr....woot?

I personally don't use the GPGPU stuff beyond Badaboom transcoding, but it can't be denied there's a huge market for it. Every week I get press releases about a new company starting to use it, or a University starting to teach it. The economics involved are too significant for the market to ignore, as is the computing power.

As far as "NVIDIA going down":

http://www.************/viewnews.php?id=3837

MS just gave NVIDIA a partner award for the Ion, as Intel integrated can't even run all Windows 7 features. AMD isn't mentioned, as usual.

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/10/13/nvidia-tegra-wins-contract-for-next-gen-nintendo-ds.aspx

And of course Tegra is in the new MS Zune, and will be in next gen Nintendo DS.

And then there's Fermi- which should pretty much own HD5XXX on all fronts. Having the market to themselves for a quarter won't help ATi in 2010 NP. As we saw with the GT200, and the G80, having the leading edge single GPU leads to having the leading edge multi GPU. Very soon, ATi's only possible selling point will be price. Just the way it is.

That's a bad position to be in, because AMD has no competing products in their fight with Intel, and waging a price war on the ATi side is the LAST thing the deep in debt the lumbering Frankenstein firm needs these days. How many quarters can AMD go without a profit? 12 straight so far, and $5 billion in debt to service. Credit has to be getting tight for AMD as year after year they chant the "Return to profitability" mantra.:(

If their tech actually had value, NVIDIA probably would have bought their little company by now.:cool:

Toss3

10-23-09, 11:26 AM

I seem to remember you (and other ATi fans) saying this last summer. :D How NVIDIA "couldn't compete" because you imagined their chips "too big, too expensive to produce". Look how that turned out-
http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases/details/jon-peddie-research-more-positives-than-negatives-in-q209-for-the-graphics-/

Both companies had great cards, but now only ati have their new cards in circulation so we're not in the same position we were in last year.

So after a whole year of selling their best product since the 9700Pro, ATi managed to claw their way to a 35% desktop market share. Errr....woot?
That's still a significant improvement especially considering nvidia had equally good and faster products out at the time.

I personally don't use the GPGPU stuff beyond Badaboom transcoding, but it can't be denied there's a huge market for it. Every week I get press releases about a new company starting to use it, or a University starting to teach it. The economics involved are too significant for the market to ignore, as is the computing power.

First of all badaboom sucks. I do however think that gpgpu is the future, but now that OpenCL is available on both nvidia and ati hardware, cuda doesn't matter anymore.

As far as "NVIDIA going down":

http://www.************/viewnews.php?id=3837

MS just gave NVIDIA a partner award for the Ion, as Intel integrated can't even run all Windows 7 features. AMD isn't mentioned, as usual.
Ion is great no doubt about that and AMD isn't mentioned obviously as they don't have a competing product in that market yet.

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/10/13/nvidia-tegra-wins-contract-for-next-gen-nintendo-ds.aspx

And of course Tegra is in the new MS Zune, and will be in next gen Nintendo DS.

Tegra is still not used in any large numbers so until then its a moot point. The next gen Nintendo DS contract is a huge deal, but until it hits the market its not worth mentioning.

And then there's Fermi- which should pretty much own HD5XXX on all fronts. Having the market to themselves for a quarter won't help ATi in 2010 NP. As we saw with the GT200, and the G80, having the leading edge single GPU leads to having the leading edge multi GPU. Very soon, ATi's only possible selling point will be price. Just the way it is.

This paragraph is just bull****; until we see actual benchmarks and price we have no clue whether fermi even beats the 5870.

That's a bad position to be in, because AMD has no competing products in their fight with Intel, and waging a price war on the ATi side is the LAST thing the deep in debt the lumbering Frankenstein firm needs these days. How many quarters can AMD go without a profit? 12 straight so far, and $5 billion in debt to service. Credit has to be getting tight for AMD as year after year they chant the "Return to profitability" mantra.:(

http://www.timesunion.com/ASPStories/Story.asp?StoryID=853479&LinkFrom=RSS

"Without GlobalFoundries, AMD posted a profit of $2 million, a bright spot for a company that had lost billions of dollars before the spinoff.

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/ASPStories/Story.asp?StoryID=853479&LinkFrom=RSS#ixzz0UlhUHWNr"

So by your logic the US is bankrupt? :rolleyes:

If their tech actually had value, NVIDIA probably would have bought their little company by now.:cool:

Just for your knowledge - nvidia couldn't afford buying amd.

Rollo

10-23-09, 02:29 PM

Toss3

10-23-09, 03:29 PM

Toss3:
It's true that AMD/ATi is a larger company, but their market cap is always dropping very low due to their huge debt, and failure to establish market share and make a profit year after year.

About the only bright spot on their horizon is PC gaming graphics cards, and half of that market isn't enough to float a company their size. (even if they weren't saddled with the billions in remaining debt after they had to sell their foundry)

AMD without ATI would be doomed, but their Phenoms seem to do pretty well and AMD could make a profit by the end of the year. Really don't understand why we haven't seen more ion-like stuff from amd yet(which was something I think everyone expected from the fusion).

They don't compete in their primary business (CPUs) at all, and they get stomped flat in the handheld/workstation/MCP/GPGPU markets. I've heard their console business might break even, if that.
Right now all we have to go on are rumors and they all suggest that the next generation of consoles are going to carry either intel or amd gpus.

Nvidia have only managed to snatch a contract with Nintendo thus far for the Nintendo DS, but even that hasn't been officially confirmed I think.

It's nice ATi could add 20fps to their last gen by doubling everything, but my hunch is Fermi will do everything the 5870s do, better, and add much more. The only advantage being first to market with DX11 is going to have in this case is some sales for a quarter.

Your wording is pretty weird here as 20 fps in crysis would be a tremendous feat while in COD 4 it wouldn't amount to anything. The 5870 is easily 50-100% faster than its predecessor when it comes to high resolutions and AA. On top of it all it's pretty cheap and rumor has it that the price has a lot of wiggle-room yet as productions ramp up.

Nvidia I think are going to have a hard time keeping up with AMDs aggressive pricing this round.

Very soon every product AMD/ATi sells is going to be totally outclassed on all fronts.
That remains to be seen, but right now ATi has the upper hand at least when it comes to desktop graphics cards.

Ninja Prime

10-24-09, 07:37 PM

I seem to remember you (and other ATi fans) saying this last summer. :D How NVIDIA "couldn't compete" because you imagined their chips "too big, too expensive to produce". Look how that turned out-

Uhhh I'm not sure your point here, you post evidence that I'm right? "Only" a 13% marketshare gain for ATI? Furthermore, look at the fact that NV has dropped the GT200 line all together; even NV knows it failed, only fanboys can't figure it out.

Ninja Prime

10-24-09, 07:48 PM

Very soon every product AMD/ATi sells is going to be totally outclassed on all fronts.

With what? What kind of magic secret special sauce does NV have that will make it all better? Right now, we know pretty much what Fermi will be, because NV pretty much paper launched it a while ago. Its slightly more than a double GTX280, by about 15% on shaders. Everything else is about doubled. That makes it maybe slightly more than double a GTX280 in performance, with ATI having the 5870, which is a slightly more than double 4870. Its the same situation... so tell me Rollo, what happened last round?

Only this time, ATI is way ahead on the launch, and has 30+% more performance in reserve for a 5890 card if they need it to beat whatever NV launches next year. Not to mention, the moment NV launches their card, ATI can just bring out the 5870x2 and beat it soundly. The situation for NV is bad now, when last year they lost when the situation for them was great, and they were poised to crush ATI.

Well? You think fanboyism will change reality?

Rollo

10-24-09, 09:16 PM

With what? What kind of magic secret special sauce does NV have that will make it all better? Right now, we know pretty much what Fermi will be, because NV pretty much paper launched it a while ago. Its slightly more than a double GTX280, by about 15% on shaders. Everything else is about doubled. That makes it maybe slightly more than double a GTX280 in performance, with ATI having the 5870, which is a slightly more than double 4870. Its the same situation... so tell me Rollo, what happened last round?

Only this time, ATI is way ahead on the launch, and has 30+% more performance in reserve for a 5890 card if they need it to beat whatever NV launches next year. Not to mention, the moment NV launches their card, ATI can just bring out the 5870x2 and beat it soundly. The situation for NV is bad now, when last year they lost when the situation for them was great, and they were poised to crush ATI.

Well? You think fanboyism will change reality?

Can't look at it that way NP- NVIDIA actually re-designed their shaders. (unlike ATi, who really did just double up on the 4870)

ATi has 30% more performance they held back? I guess people who bought 5870s got ripped off and people who didn't should wait. Sounds like another 1800>1900 situation in the making.

If you're going to talk about the 5870X2, shouldn't you mention the 5870 is getting beat down pretty handily by the GTX295 in many benchmarks currently?

That's another interesting thing about your post- you think ATi is holding back the 5870X2 till Fermi launches?! Man, from the sound of things even ATi fans should leave their wallet in their pocket. You make it sound like the 5970 was rushed out the door to mop up some sales from the impatient, while ATi holds the 30% faster GPU and the X2 until they need them. How unethical, and unfair to their fans.:(

Ninja Prime

10-25-09, 01:50 AM

Can't look at it that way NP- NVIDIA actually re-designed their shaders. (unlike ATi, who really did just double up on the 4870)

... Just like last gen when they were claiming 30-50% faster shaders? However, it turned out to be like 1%. Marketing speak(lies, I'd say), you should know it well.

Spare me the PR spin on the rest, because NV does the same thing... hell they probably taught it to ATI back in the day.

If Fermi comes out and its awesome with magical shaders that are twice as fast because they were re-designed by ninjas, I will buy it. I had a 8800 GTX for almost 2 years and a GTX 280 for 6 months after that, I buy whats good. Right now though, it seems to me NV is pissing on gamers for the sake of spreading into other markets.

noko

10-25-09, 05:11 AM

Nvidia is rather clever plus I don't see a shortage of 200 series of cards yet so maybe there are still plenty until next generation hits. Plus if there are a shortage of Nvidia cards it might play into Fermi release with folks glad that Nvidia has another generation out to rush out and buy from their favorite GPU vendor.

Now yes if I was going to buy a gaming card tomorrow it would be from ATI but I am not buying one tomorrow and maybe not this year. So when I do get ready to buy one, things maybe much different and for alot of folks this will be the case. I was previously set on buying a 4870 but when it came time for me to upgrade, the Nvidia designed card was the better deal at that time, I am still extremely happy with it even today. Now the longer ATI has an advantage the more impact it will have on Nvidia.