3D Vision Surround: NVIDIA’s Eyefinity
During our meeting with NVIDIA, they were also showing off 3D Vision Surround, which was announced at the start of CES at their press conference. 3D Vision Surround is not inherently a GF100 technology, but since it’s being timed for release along-side GF100 cards, we’re going to take a moment to discuss it.
If you’ve seen Matrox’s TripleHead2Go or AMD’s Eyefinity in action, then you know what 3D Vision Surround is. It’s NVIDIA’s implementation of the single large surface concept so that games (and anything else for that matter) can span multiple monitors. With it, gamers can get a more immersive view by being able to surround themselves with monitors so that the game world is projected from more than just a single point in front of them.
NVIDIA tells us that they’ve been sitting on this technology for quite some time but never saw a market for it. With the release of TripleHead2Go and Eyefinity it became apparent to them that this was no longer the case, and they unboxed the technology. Whether this is true or a sudden reaction to Eyefinity is immaterial at the moment, as it’s coming regardless.
This triple-display technology will have two names. When it’s used on its own, NVIDIA is calling it NVIDIA Surround. When it’s used in conjunction with 3D Vision, it’s called 3D Vision Surround. Obviously NVIDIA would like you to use it with 3D Vision to get the full effect (and to require a more powerful GPU) but 3D Vision is by no means required to use it. It is however the key differentiator from AMD, at least until AMD’s own 3D efforts get off the ground.
Regardless of to what degree this is a sudden reaction from NVIDIA over Eyefinity, ultimately this is something that was added late in to the design process. Unlike AMD who designed the Evergreen family around it from the start, NVIDA did not, and as a result they did not give a GF100 the ability to drive more than 2 displays at once. The shipping GF100 cards will have the traditional 2 monitor limit, meaning that gamers will need 2 GF100 cards in SLI to drive 3+ monitors, with the second card needed to provide the 3rd and 4th display outputs. We expect that the next NVIDIA design will include the ability to drive 3+ monitors from a single GPU, as for the moment this limitation precludes any ability to do Surround for cheap.
GTX 280 with 2 display outputs: GF100 won't be any different
As for some good news, as we stated earlier this is not a technology inherent to the GF100. NVIDIA can do it entirely in software and as a result will be backporting this technology to the GT200 (GTX 200 series). The drivers that get released for the GF100 will allow GTX 200 cards to do Surround in the same manner: with 2 cards, you can run a single large surface across 3+ displays. We’ve seen this in action and it works, as NVIDIA was demoing a pair of GTX 285s running in NVIDIA Surround mode in their CES booth.
The big question of course is going to be what this does for performance on both the GF100 and GT200, along with compatibility. That’s something that we’re going to have to wait on the actual hardware for.
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dentatus - Monday, January 18, 2010 - link
Absolutely. Really, the GT200/RV700 generation of DX10 cards was inarguably 'won' (i.e most profitable) for AMD/ATI by cards like the HD4850. But the overall performance crown (i.e highest in-generation performance) was won off the back of the GTX295 for nvidia.But I agree with chizow that nvidia has ultimately been "winning" (the performance crown) each generation since the G80.
chizow - Monday, January 18, 2010 - link
Not sure how you can claim AMD "inarguably" won DX10 with 4850 using profits as a metric. How many times did AMD turn a profit since RV770 launched? Zero. They've posted 12 straight quarters of losses last time I checked. Nvidia otoh has turned a profit in many of those quarters and most recently Q3 09 despite not having the fastest GPU on the market.Also, the fundamental problem people don't seem to understand with regard to AMD and Nvidia die size and product distribution is that they overlap completely different market segments. Again, this simply serves as a referendum in the differences in their business models. You may also notice these differences are pretty similar to what AMD sees from Intel on the CPU side of things....
Nvidia GT200 die go into all high-end and mainstream parts like GTX 295, 285, 275, 260 that sell for much higher prices. AMD RV770 die went into 4870, 4850, and 4830. The latter two parts were competing with Nvidia's much cheaper and smaller G92 and G96 parts. You can clearly see that the comparison between die/wafer sizes isn't a valid one.
AMD has learned from this btw, and this time around it looks like they're using different die for their top tier parts (Cypress) and their lower tier parts (Redwood, Cedar) so that they don't have to sell their high-end die at mainstream prices.
Stas - Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - link
[quote]Not sure how you can claim AMD "inarguably" won DX10 with 4850 using profits as a metric. How many times did AMD turn a profit since RV770 launched? Zero. They've posted 12 straight quarters of losses last time I checked. Nvidia otoh has turned a profit in many of those quarters and most recently Q3 09 despite not having the fastest GPU on the market. [/quote]AMD also makes CPUs... they also lost market due to Intel's high end domination... they lost money on ATI... If it wasn't for success of the HD4000 series, AMD would've been in deep shit. Just think before you post.
Calin - Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - link
Hard to make a profit paying the rates of a 5 billion credit - but if you want to take it this way (total profits), why wouldn't we take total income?AMD/ATI:
PERIOD ENDING 26-Sep-09 27-Jun-09 28-Mar-09 27-Dec-08
Total Revenue 1,396,000 1,184,000 1,177,000 1,227,000
Cost of Revenue 811,000 743,000 666,000 1,112,000
Gross Profit 585,000 441,000 511,000 115,000
NVidia
PERIOD ENDING 25-Oct-09 26-Jul-09 26-Apr-09 25-Jan-09
Total Revenue 903,206 776,520 664,231 481,140
Cost of Revenue 511,423 619,797 474,535 339,474
Gross Profit 391,783 156,723 189,696 141,666
Not looking so good for the "winner of the generation", though. As for the die size and product distribution, all I'm looking at is the retail video card offer, and every price bracket I choose have both NVidia and AMD in it.
knutjb - Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - link
You missed my point. I wasn't talking about AMD as a whole I was talking about ATI as a division within AMD. If a company bleeds that much and still survives some part of the company must be making some money and that is the ATI division. ATI is making money. Your macro numbers mean zip.The model ATI is using is putting out competitive cards from a company, AMD, that is bleeding badly. What generation card is easier to sell the new and improved one with more features, useful or not, or the last generation chip?
beck2448 - Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - link
Those numbers are ludicrous. AMD hasn't made a profit in years. ATI's revenue is about 30% of Nvidia's.knutjb - Monday, January 18, 2010 - link
ATI is what has been floating AMD with its profits. ATI has decided to make smaller incremental developmental steps that lower end production costs.Nvidia takes a long time to create a monolithic monster that required massive amounts of capital to develop. They will not recoup this investment off gamers alone because most don't have that much cash to put one of those cards in their machines. It is needed for marketing so they can push lower level cards implying superiority, real or not, they are a heavy marketing company. This chip is directed at their GPU server market and that is where they hope to make their money hoping it can do both really well.
ATI on the other hand by making smaller steps, but at a higher cycle of product development, have focused on the performance/mainstream market. With lower development costs they can turn out new cards that payback development costs back quicker allowing them to put that capital back into new products. Look at the 4890 and 4870. They both share similar architecture but the 4890 is a more refined chip. It was a product that allowed ATI to keep Nvidia reacting to ATI's products.
Nvidia's marketing requires them to have the fastest card on the market. ATI isn't trying to keep the absolute performance crown but hold onto the price/performance crown. Every time they put out a slightly faster card it forces Nvidia to respond. Nvidia recieves lower profits from having to drop card prices. I don't think this chip will be able to function on the 8800 model because AMD/ATI is now on stronger financial footing than they have been in the past couple years and Nvidia being late to market is helping ATI line their pockets cash. The 5000 series is just marginally better, but is better than Nvidia's current offerings.
Will Nvidia release just a single high end card or several tiers of cards to compete across the board? I don't think one card will really help the bottom line over the longer term.
StormyParis - Monday, January 18, 2010 - link
I'm not sure what "winning" means, nor, really what a generation is.you can win on highest performance, highest marketshare, highest profit, best engineering...
a generation may also be adirectX iteration, a chip release cycle (in which case, each manufacturer has its own), a fiscal year...
Anyhoo, I don't really care, as long as i'm regularly getting better, cheaper cards. I'll happily switch back to nVidia
chizow - Monday, January 18, 2010 - link
I clearly defined what I considered a generation, historically the rest of the metrics measured over time (market share, mind share, profits, value-add features, game support) tend to follow suit.For someone like you that doesn't care about who's winning a generation it should be simple enough, buy whatever is best that suits your price:performance requirements when you're ready to buy.
For those who want to make an informed decision once every 12-16 months per generation to avoid those niggling uncertanties and any potential buyer's remorse, they would certainly want to consider both IHV's offerings before making that decision.
Ahmed0 - Monday, January 18, 2010 - link
How can you "win" if your product isnt intended for a meaningful number of customers. Im sure ATi could pull out the biggest, most expensive, hottest and fastest card in the world as well but theres a reason why they dont.Really, the performance crown isnt anything special. The title goes from hand to hand all the time.