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Soleron on 04 May 2011
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ssj12 said:
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What mobos do most enthusiasts buy? Top-end. And I'm sure most AMD enthusiasts would use Nvidia as most bitch and complain that AMD's GPUs suck for folding@home. And F@H that is important for a lot of gamers.

Edit: Then again, I don't see why anyone cares about AMD anymore. They are being heavily beaten by Intel, and Nvidia has entered the CPU market with their CPUs benching faster than a Core 2 Duo.

And then there is this: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2011/05/04/intel-announce-3d-tri-gate-transistors/1

AMD is behind in technology and performance. All AMD does is beat Nvidia in price, which if Nvidia cuts prices AMD is screwed.

I think your perspective is skewed. Sure, SLI matters to a lot of people. So does 3D Vision, F@h and PhysX. But that number is dwarfed by the number of people who don't care what they buy and buy the cheapest Dell box. And in a marketshare survey, they vastly outnumber the enthusiasts. In revenue, or maybe market importance, the enthusiasts are much more influential. I think we'll have to agree to differ on this point.

But:

- Nvidia's CPU is fail. How many actual products is it being used in? It's a generic ARM core that other vendors are doing better, delivering on promises of 1080p playback that Nvidia missed. Also the benchmark Nvidia used for that figure was rigged, they used an outdated version of gcc with optimisations disabled to run the C2D bench. Legitimate testing involves using the same test setup for both products at least. If we're talking about the future, then x86 fusion that Intel and AMD have will squeeze Nvidia's low-end market significantly.

- They are being beaten by Intel right now, yes. But even in their worst time ever, right before BD arrives, they are making a decent profit. They could live in this situation for a long time before being screwed. Neither of us know where BD will end up, and I happen to be optimistic.

- OK, Intel wins on process tech. They will have 22nm three years before AMD last I saw. However the initial Ivy Bridges are only 4 core, and it'll be 2H 2012 before Intel has 22nm products fighting BD. So AMD will have some time to shine if BD is good enough. By the way AMD (GF/IBM) also have that transistor tech, only they call it FinFET.

- Isn't AMD ahead in graphics at the moment? 6990 > GTX 590 and using a lot less silicon area? It is AMD who have pricing power as they have greater margins on their products. If AMD cut prices Nvidia would be pushed into the red on the GF110 die. 28nm is doubtful for this year so we are stuck in this AMD-favoured market for a while.

 

I'm not saying AMD has a lead in anything. But they are hardly screwed.

In the super long term Nvidia either needs x86 compatibility or bet on ARM domination (which I find unlikely).