AMD: David Kirk is full of it
A war of words might have already started so don't go anywhere and we'll give you front row seats!
A sufficiently inflated Ian McNaughton, Head of Product and Platform Marketing for EMEAI sat down with us and told us straight what he thought about the recent comments made in an interview bit-tech recently published with Nvidia's Chief Scientist.
"David Kirk is full of **it", said Ian, pointing at my notebook, "You can write that one down".
Between Ian and Jon Carvill, Senior Manager, Public Relations for AMD EMEAI, we were told we'd be receiving a special bit-tech branded "soon to be released" GPU product for us to take to Nvision to give to Nvidia. Both were no doubt keen to make Dr. Kirk take back his words after the following comment
“AMD has been declining because it hasn’t built a competitive graphics architecture for almost two years now—ever since the AMD/ATI merger. "
Although we must protest if we're expected to put said product into his pipe for smoking - San Francisco doesn't tolerate that kind of behaviour.
Nvidia has a $200 million GPU problem and is frustrating its partners with the handling of the GeForce GTX 280/260 price cuts. On top of that, Nvidia's nForce chipsets are still causing headaches for the Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers. Now this "soon to be released" graphics product from the ATI should be very competitive and may tip the boat quite heavily against the Green Giant.
What will Nvidia have to say in a few weeks at the Nvision event in Santa Clara? We can't wait to find out, so don't go anywhere because we'll give you front row seats!
Is Ian right? Should we offer Dr. Kirk a strong dose of laxatives to ease his congestion? Or are they just big words from an overstretched pair of giants? (AMD and ATI, not Ian and John). Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
Addendum 4th August 2008: AMD contacted bit-tech to state that while the sentiment is correct, the way in which it was conveyed was not exactly how it intended. In an official statement, AMD has told bit-tech that:
"We refute David Kirk's comments and think that his opinion is wrong".
AMD have agreed to conduct an in-depth interview at a later date with bit-tech to voice its opposition to Dr. Kirks claims and explain how exactly it intends its future to shape out.
Previous Article
21 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyI'm not a big fan of either company but at least Nvidia still makes high end GPUs rather than smacking together two GPUs, wastefully mirroring two pools of GDDR5 RAM and calling it a day. If you're going to rely on multi GPU for the high end at least put some effort into it.
@bowman I realise that making an X2 product is kind of a cheap way of doing the high end, but I would rather buy one card than two with a decent mobo with crossfire support. If you end up with good performance for cheaper what does it matter the technique used?
I'm a bit fed up with Nvidia, I have an nvida mobo and graphics card, but I can tell you that when I come to upgrading I will be going for an Intel board and ATI graphics card.
The point is that in FPS-counting tests and benchmarks multi-GPU might look enticing, but in the real world it's far from that nice. Driver support is critical (and we all know how good both our major GPU players are at their drivers), syncing between the cards is still far from optimal.. I haven't tried a multi-GPU setup in a while but the stuttering caused by syncing problems are, apparently, still around. I'm definitely not going to go near multi-GPU until they actually come up with something clever to avoid all these issues.
It's not that it's 'cheap', I don't care, Intel did a dual-die quad and it obliterates AMD's 'native' solution, the problem is that the same can't be said for graphics. The GPUs are not integrated on the same level at all.
Anyway AMD/ATI speaks of the 4870 as mid-range*... a dual-midrange is not top-range for me.
Xir
*pretty powerfull for a mid range if you ask me though ;-)
i have actually used crossfireX and found it to be fair superior to SLI, as for support i never have a problem with it, don't know where you live.
We have to respect NDA's :)
You know what it is anyway.
Also - It seems some people are taking this news far too seriously, please read it as tongue in cheek. It seems I made the lines too close to read between in places or people will only read what they want to see.
Where did he say you were an nvidia fan?
Now I'm not a fan of multiGPU setups but the problems you describe are limited and if you want maximum performance where cost is no object then SLI/xfire are king. I wouldn't buy into them because I'm not running at resolutions that warrant it, but some people are and they like these products. I can't fault AMD or nvidia for making a product for which there is demand.
I know what you mean, 100% scaling in some games is disgraceful...
They're far from perfect, but come on, don't make out that they basically barely work and scale badly across the board.
Even if the 4870X2 scales 'badly', 40-50%, it would still make it quite a faster than a GTX280, plus the 1GB RAM, and the supposed new method of dealing with the RAM and load between the cores, don't write them off until they're out and we see what they can really do.
That is funny. I have been reading benchmarks on the latest cards for years. I have never heard of this stuttering occurring in any of the latest multiGPU tests. I know some games do not scale. That does suck. But the games which do generally scale pretty well. And the majority of games scale
Hurm not sure if I do, everyone in this thread seems to be leaning towards the 4870 X2, there is also a 4850 X2 and the RV870 DX11 Card coming out Q2/3 2009 :)
i agree on SLI/CF, not a big fan of either solution
however i don't see any problem with how AMD are going about their GPUs, it works out quite well for me
the high-end is pretty much pointless, its for dick waving and fps = life in that area, so microstuttering isnt that big a deal
and why waste more time and money than you need to for such a small market such as the £400 graphics card market
i'd rather have awesome price/performance cards like the 4850 and 4870 than overpriced benchmark topping junk like the 280, 9800gx2 or 4870 X2 :)
Also an official AMD comment has been inserted too.
/fix
As to winning me back to the big Double A, well, when budget comes up again to replace my gamers video, it will depend on Bit-tech reviews, and current pricing.
right if you say so =p but thanks for the correction :)
ya there headquarters in Santa Clara, I drive by there all the time and the event is in San Jose which is like 10-15min from their HQ
http://www.nvision2008.com/event-overview.cfm
Main page -> Fallout 3, Crysis twice, Mercs 2 and Red Alert 3. Murdering potentially thousands of people and in the case of fallout 3 "There is total free reign here and over the course of the game youll be able to dabble in everything from cannibalism to indiscriminate genocide."
All this and you can't even allude to a swear word? With the two asterisks the title was humorus, removed it reads as even conservative for an episode of the Heaven and Earth show :(
Can you change it back as I do not like you not alluding to swearing