nVidia Conference Call

[Paul]

The nVidia Conference Call for this quarter just finished, and these were the main points that I can remember:

- Complete family of NV4x to launch in April, with a bridge chip providing PCI-E compatibility
- Bridge chip apparently isn't causing bandwidth problems (i.e. it's performing better than AGP 8x)
- Native PCI-E solutions to appear in June
- Refresh chips to appear in September (or at least, that's how I read it)
- New nForce 3's to support both 939-pin A64 and PCI-E
- Mainstream and Budget offers are unquestionably better than those from competitors. High-end is merely "competitive".
- Happy with IBM and 5700 margins/volumes
- Continuing to split manufacturing between IBM and TSMC, with 0.11 products at TSMC mentionned.
- Increased cycle times and costs are associated with Low-K, and they're not convinced it's right for high-volume parts. They say they're still looking at the possibility of using it somewhere in their line-up at sometime this year.
- Effectively confirmed they were working on an Intel chipset (when pressed, they simply issued an awkward "no comment", saying they'd only be happy commenting on their AMD chipsets at the moment)
- XBox revenues are down, and the trend is going to keep going down over the next quarter
- Q1 2004 is expected to be flat or down 5%

If this is the wrong forum for this, feel free to move it.

[mikechai]

- Mainstream and Budget offers are unquestionably better than those from competitors. High-end is merely "competitive".

That is for the NV3X line up or the upcoming NV4X line up?

[Malfunction]

See for yourself:

http://biz.yahoo.com/cc/9/38689.html

Peace,

:afro:

[Paul]

Originally posted by mikechai
That is for the NV3X line up or the upcoming NV4X line up?

NV3x

[AthlonXP1800]

Originally posted by Malfunction
See for yourself:

Cant see the text version? Oh well it the audio version to hear for yourself.

I am profoundly deaf, I need my eyes to see the text transcripts to read. :p

[Malfunction]

Originally posted by AthlonXP1800
Cant see the text version? Oh well it the audio version to hear for yourself.

I am profoundly deaf, I need my eyes to see the text transcripts to read. :p

Ya, I was tired...lol :p

Peace,

:afro:

*Edit - Still tired apparently...lol, forgot my Peace, :afro: closing.. hehe. Ahh, first cup of coffee... gotta get the motor going still. :D

[Razor04]

Originally posted by Paul
- Bridge chip apparently isn't causing bandwidth problems (i.e. it's performing better than AGP 8x)
Can someone please explain to me how this is possible? A bridge that converts AGP to PCI-E can only run at the speed of its slowest component...in this case AGP. I fail to see where they can claim it is faster than their existing AGP solutions.

Oh wait...this must have come from the marketing department...where they aren't comparing the same generations (i.e. NV3X with AGP and NV4X with Bridge). In that case no matter what the card using the bridge would be faster as it is next gen. That whole quote prolly has no relation to how fast the bridge is or isn't.

[Malfunction]

The bridge will provide an improved performance over native AGP8x. It's not going to shatter the AGP8x performance, it will improve it. My understanding is the PCI-X bus is more efficient. That efficiency will translate in to better performance than AGP8x. I don't see how a more efficient bus translate into marketing. ATi is so confident in PCI-X that it will not offer a bridge.

Nvidia's bridge will benefit the early PCI-X adopters greatly. PCI-X/AGP bridge will support the entire line of FX GPU's. Kudo's to Nvidia for providing that option to people who have just purchased 5950's/5900's/5700's. :thumbsup:

Peace,

:afro:

[nutball]

Originally posted by Razor04
Can someone please explain to me how this is possible? A bridge that converts AGP to PCI-E can only run at the speed of its slowest component...in this case AGP. I fail to see where they can claim it is faster than their existing AGP solutions.

Oh wait...this must have come from the marketing department...where they aren't comparing the same generations (i.e. NV3X with AGP and NV4X with Bridge). In that case no matter what the card using the bridge would be faster as it is next gen. That whole quote prolly has no relation to how fast the bridge is or isn't.

That depends how you read the statement above, the "isn't causing bandwidth problems (i.e. it's performing better than AGP 8x)".

Is it referring to the bridge chip in isolation, or the AGP+bridge+PCI-E combo?

If the bridge chip in isolation was "performing worse than AGP 8x" then there would be a problem, as the bridge would be a bottleneck not AGP 8x.

So long as the bridge in isolation performs "better than AGP 8x", then AGP 8x is the bottleneck, as you say, so won't be "causing bandwidth problems".

Now if they genuinely are claiming that the whole caboodle is better than AGP 8x then it's as fishy as a fish market on a hot summers day.

But I'd say it's reasonbly important to know what the claim acutally is before going Off On One(TM).

[Mariner]

Malfunction wrote:
Nvidia's bridge will benefit the early PCI-X adopters greatly. PCI-X/AGP bridge will support the entire line of FX GPU's. Kudo's to Nvidia for providing that option to people who have just purchased 5950's/5900's/5700's.

Hmm. I think you're getting somewhat confused here.

The "bridge" you are hearing about is a chip to be used on the graphics cards themselves. They allow the same GPU to be used on either an AGP card or a PCI express card (please note that PCI-X is not PCI express). Physically the cards are different so anyone with a 5950/5900/5700 has an AGP card which will not fit in a PCI express slot.

NVidia does not have a "slotket" with which you can use AGP cards on a PCI express motherboard!

Bearing in mind this bridge chip will make the NV40 et al interface with the AGP on your motherboard, I fail to see how performance could be faster than an AGP card could manage!

ATI, on the other hand is producing two versions of their new GPUs one of which will go on an AGP card and one which will go on PCI express cards.

Hokay? :)

[EMunEeE]

Originally posted by Mariner
Malfunction wrote:


Hmm. I think you're getting somewhat confused here.

The "bridge" you are hearing about is a chip to be used on the graphics cards themselves. They allow the same GPU to be used on either an AGP card or a PCI express card (please note that PCI-X is not PCI express). Physically the cards are different so anyone with a 5950/5900/5700 has an AGP card which will not fit in a PCI express slot.

NVidia does not have a "slotket" with which you can use AGP cards on a PCI express motherboard!

Bearing in mind this bridge chip will make the NV40 et al interface with the AGP on your motherboard, I fail to see how performance could be faster than an AGP card could manage!

ATI, on the other hand is producing two versions of their new GPUs one of which will go on an AGP card and one which will go on PCI express cards.

Hokay? :)

Yes...a bridge chip is just a chip on the PCB in between the GPU and the interface (PCIe/AGP) to translate the signals to AGP/PCIe (depending on the GPU). Doing the PCIe-AGP Bridge will allow NVidia to hold off introducing a native PCIe chip for a while. But you cannot put a PCIe video card into an AGP slot and vice versa. Will not happen, they are two physically different connectors.

ATI on the other hand is developing its next-gen GPUs (high end anyway) to be PCIe native right out of the box. Meaning the 420 will use a PCI-AGP Bridge for AGP systems and will just use its native PCIe support for PCIe systems.

[sxotty]

Actually according to ATI their first PCE-E will be the R370 or something which isn't the r420-23....

[Lezmaka]

Originally posted by $E Mun$
ATI on the other hand is developing its next-gen GPUs (high end anyway) to be PCIe native right out of the box. Meaning the 420 will use a PCI-AGP Bridge for AGP systems and will just use its native PCIe support for PCIe systems.

That's not correct. ATI won't use a bridge at all.

R420 is AGP and R423 is PCI-E.

[Razor04]

Originally posted by Malfunction
The bridge will provide an improved performance over native AGP8x. It's not going to shatter the AGP8x performance, it will improve it. My understanding is the PCI-X bus is more efficient. That efficiency will translate in to better performance than AGP8x. I don't see how a more efficient bus translate into marketing. ATi is so confident in PCI-X that it will not offer a bridge.

Nvidia's bridge will benefit the early PCI-X adopters greatly. PCI-X/AGP bridge will support the entire line of FX GPU's. Kudo's to Nvidia for providing that option to people who have just purchased 5950's/5900's/5700's. :thumbsup:

Peace,

:afro:
You do realize that the card itself would be native AGP...and that it would have a bridge chip on it that translates AGP into PCI-E and that the physical interface would be different. My point is that a card that is natively AGP can't suddenly become faster than AGP by the addition of a bridge chip. Yes PCI-E is more efficient...but those efficiency improvements can't be passed along if the card requires a translation from PCI-E to AGP (Bridge Chip) or if it is natively AGP (card that needs a bridge).

I think a bridge chip is a fine solution to the low end and mainstream market, but for the high end it isn't. And with regards to it being faster...that is just plain marketing hype being spread by NV. If we learned anything from the whole NV3X debacle it is to not trust anything before it has been independently reviewed. I personally am going to wait to make my final judgement on the card after it is out in the market. Same for ATI's new card...although the chances of me going back to NV are pretty much none after all the crap NV has pulled over the last year.

[Malfunction]

Originally posted by Razor04
You do realize that the card itself would be native AGP...and that it would have a bridge chip on it that translates AGP into PCI-E and that the physical interface would be different. My point is that a card that is natively AGP can't suddenly become faster than AGP by the addition of a bridge chip. Yes PCI-E is more efficient...but those efficiency improvements can't be passed along if the card requires a translation from PCI-E to AGP (Bridge Chip) or if it is natively AGP (card that needs a bridge).

I think a bridge chip is a fine solution to the low end and mainstream market, but for the high end it isn't. And with regards to it being faster...that is just plain marketing hype being spread by NV. If we learned anything from the whole NV3X debacle it is to not trust anything before it has been independently reviewed. I personally am going to wait to make my final judgement on the card after it is out in the market. Same for ATI's new card...although the chances of me going back to NV are pretty much none after all the crap NV has pulled over the last year.

I hear ya, and almost agree with ya. I also understand your feelings towards nVidia as well too. I think that if a bridge chip is something they were going to offer, it would completely impress the hell out of me. :) I hope they would, even though others preach it won't. That's fine, I will still enjoy their products regardless of how they perform in DX9 right now. When games come out later that take advantage of what DX9 is capable of, I will buy something around that time. The DX9 ability must improve as the games that have come out already claiming DX9 are not too impressive to me imho.

If half the games I enjoy require the best DX9 ability that a card can offer, then I will get one. Till DX9 games that push DX9 spec at least close to it's potential come out and dominate the market, I feel I am pretty safe by taking the position that I am taking. The FPS reduction is not going to take away from the experience of a high quality game for me. I will still enjoy playing with my buds regardless of if my videocard is the market leader for that time.

Thanks for your honesty and candor, it is appreciated.

Peace,

:afro:

[nobie]

In the past, faster versions of AGP have not produced a tangible speed increase outside of synthetic tests. If this is the case with PCI-express, it will hardly matter if the bridge chip is a bottleneck or not. I think their will be more important issues, and PCI-express will start out as basically just a bullet-point feature.

[|JuiceZ|]

Originally posted by nobie
In the past, faster versions of AGP have not produced a tangible speed increase outside of synthetic tests. If this is the case with PCI-express, it will hardly matter if the bridge chip is a bottleneck or not. I think their will be more important issues, and PCI-express will start out as basically just a bullet-point feature.

Sadly I think you're right, I mean there's barely any "real-time" apps/games that push the AGP8x spec.