cM :: MORLEY|DIGITAL

Intel’s tick-tock strategy kicks butt.  First, a new architecture.  Follow that up with a tweak and then wash, rinse, repeat.  It started with the launch of Core 2 in the summer of 2006 (tock.)  They followed up with the “tick” late last year with the move to a 45nm process.  Now here comes the first follow up “tock” and it’s a doozy.  I think they should consider renaming their process “beat you into submission and then kick you when you’re down.”  The Core i7’s got some wicked fast processing power and it brings to the table features that, while have been used by AMD for a while now, serve to propel Intel’s new chip into the stratosphere.  Without going too far into it, the key features are: integrated triple-channel memory controller, monolithic quad-core, QPI (Intel’s answer to AMD’s HyperTransport), and the return of HyperThreading.  

Of course, with all these changes, a new chipset is in order.  Enter Intel’s X58.  That’s it.  Nothing from NVIDIA, and no mainstream variant from Intel.  The integrated memory controller and increased pin count make the new Core i7 understandably incompatible with previous platforms.

The interesting thing is that the X58 chipset, without the need for an integrated memory controller, is not as expensive to make as its predecessor.  In batch pricing the cost of an X58 chip is $52.  The X48 is $70.  In comparison, the mainstream, CrossFire-capable P45 chipset for today’s Core 2 lineup is $40.  

So now we have an affordable, performance-oriented chipset that is significantly cheaper that its predecessor, a completely new CPU core that starts under $300 in batches of 1000, so this should be a game changer, right?  

It’s not that black and white.  Intel’s venerable Core 2 lineup is still good.  VERY good in fact.  I’d argue that for most of the market, Core 2 is not only enough computing power, but more than some even need.  Heck, for gamers, we’re still GPU bound.  And Intel’s able to pump Core 2 chips out like crazy and at a healthy profit.  So why kill off a good thing?  If there were P and G variant 5x chipsets, allowing for motherboard manufacturers to make products for different price brands, OEMs would en masse run towards Core i7.  But as it stands all motherboards in the channel are full ATX, high-end parts that start around $249 and run north of $300!  And keep in mind you need to buy three sticks of DDR3 memory as well!  This puts it squarely in the 5% DIY and Enthusiast crowd.

Of course, Intel has plans to introduce lower cost chipsets and Core i7 variants that include integrated graphics and support for dual instead of triple channel memory.  But those are a ways off.  Intel, in the interim, plans on keeping Core 2 around for a while.  And for good reason.  It’s a great product, serves the mainstream market well, and allows them to amortize the cost of it for a bit longer.

So keep in mind that, while totally melt-your-face-off fast the Core i7 is, you can still find awesome deals on great Intel Core 2 hardware that will keep you and your wallet happy for quite a while.  (It sure is good to be a DIY guy right now, though.)

free video player & free video platform
video player, online video, video tools
flv player - video editor - video pluginvideo blog + wordpress plugin + video remix

I gotta tell you what, on the heels of AMD annoucing they’ve sold 2,000,000 Radeon HD 4800 series graphics cards, this video is not only hysterical, but indicates a more confident AMD/ATI - a company that is having a personality disorder right now with their lopsided strengths in the CPU/GPU market.

This video, however, makes digs at NVIDIA in ways that only geeks understand.  Hinting at manufacturing processes and defaults, memory speeds, etc.  The reference to the X58 is dubious as NVIDIA has said publicly that they will certify BIOSs for native X58 SLI support without requiring motherboard manufacturers to license MCP 200 chips - that’s only necessary if you want maximum bandwidth on multiple x16 slots.  But like I’ve said, the value of multiple graphics cards these days are dubious at best.

These “viral” videos are great fun to watch.  But it’s preaching to the choir.  It’s not going to prompt consumer behavior.  It’s not going to drive consumers to ditch NVIDIA and go ATI.  And if your branding campaign only creates awareness and doesn’t deliver to the bottom line, you win a big bag of fail.

A good example of similar marketing that is successful would be the Apple I’m a Mac commercials.  They aren’t successful because they are funny or witty.  They are successful because they communicate the simple premise that Macs are fun, easy, and reliable, and PCs are boring, bloated, and broken.  Of course, I would argue that most I’m a Mac commercials are down right lies at worst, and I chuckle every time I watch them on my ultra-reliable, uber-cool Vista Media Center PC with digital cable tuners.  But the point is that Apple has effectively convinced a large segment of the mainstream market the fundamental idea that Mac = good and PC = bad.  Republicans and Democrats do this all the time.

free video player & free video platform
video player, online video, video tools
flv player - video editor - video pluginvideo blog + wordpress plugin + video remix

But Apple is beginning to lose focus.  While the G4saurus video is cute and funny to people like me and most of you who read this blog, it’s really just AMD/ATI’s engineering group giving NVIDIA’s engineering group the metaphorical finger through their marketing department.  Apple has done basically the same thing with their latest I’m a Mac commercial - their marketing department is giving Microsoft’s marketing department the metaphorical finger after Microsoft’s relatively successful, relevant, and above all positive  response to the I’m a Mac commercials.  Of course you know I’m talking about the commercials where people from all walks of life state they are a PC and they are all different.  It’s simple, it’s relevant, and it’s positive.  It doesn’t stoop to Apple’s level and I think they’re quite enjoyable.  But it doesn’t prompt consumer action.  That’s where Mojave comes in.  Just check it out for yourself, I don’t need to expound upon it here.

My point is, while AMD has delivered the funniest viral video I’ve seen in this business, they need to come up with an effective campaign that not only creates awareness, but brings more customers to the table.  And that means they need a successful Phenom II launch, stay focused on the platform story, and continue to keep the channel happy.  Wait, where’d marketing fit into all that?  ;-)

free video player & free video platform
video player, online video, video tools
flv player - video editor - video pluginvideo blog + wordpress plugin + video remix

The days of needing multiple graphics cards in your PC are officially over. While game engines have become more complex, and Crysis still confounds most people’s PCs, the fact is that we have reached a pixel density plateau when it comes to monitor sizes and the GPU battle grounds are being fought at 1680×1050 resolutions or lower¹. And the simple fact of the matter is that at that resolution nearly every game on the planet can be enjoyed by the mainstream gamer utilizing a single graphics card. The hardware side of the gaming industry has gotten that good.

But don’t tell that to AMD or NVIDIA or even Intel. Don’t tell that to the system builders, but would somebody please tell that to the tech journalists? The fact is that multi-card technology, not multiple GPUs on the same PCB, allows chipset manufacturers to stratify their offerings (read: charge more money), promising more performance and more “expandability” – but costing you more money.  The fact is that these technologies are aimed squarely at the 5% uber-enthusiast market and system builders who need to win synthetic benchmarks by 3% in order to pay their salaries that month. 

Expandability or upgradeability are the buzz words that these companies use to lure you to their higher end chipsets. They want you to think you need a second or third graphics card. But most effectively, they communicate to you that you are buying “future expandability” that will “future-proof” your PC. And they’ve effectively brainwashed the mainstream tech media into believing the same thing. It’s hard to find a review of a gaming system that doesn’t include the ability to add a second graphics card where the reviewer doesn’t “ding” the builder for it. 

But nobody has ever really studied the usage patterns and buying behaviors of customers who purchase multi-video card capable motherboards and SLI or CrossFire capable graphics cards. It is that question that intrigues me, and it is simple logic that leads me to the conclusion I have written in the opening sentence of this post. 

The main problem is, if you aren’t gaming at XHD resolutions that 24”+ monitors support, spending money on two high end graphics cards is a complete waste of money, and buying two mid-range graphics cards is pointless as a single high-end card that may feature two of the same GPU on one PCB can easily meet or beat it for around the same combined price. Factor in the total cost of ownership of forgoing a more expensive chipset designed for multi-video card support, and you really need to make sure you’re spending your money the right way.

Additionally, if you’ve spent your money on an XHD monitor, and only have a budget left over for a single high end graphics card, never mind the fact that you perhaps bought an unbalanced configuration, but the odds of a better single card solution being available by the time you can afford that second card are high. Why do you think EVGA offers a 90-day trade-up program? It’s essentially an insurance policy against the age-old truism that your system is obsolete the day you buy it. 

Don’t take my word for it. Kyle and Brent at [H]ard|OCP have been shoving the term “real world benchmarks” in our faces for so many years now that every piss-ant rag on the internet and in print uses the terminology without really understanding what it means. But if you really look at what [H] video card reviews show, you’ll find that at 1680×1050 resolutions and lower, my premise holds. From there it’s a simple matter of adding up the total cost of ownership to reach the playable settings (meaning a smooth gaming experience.) So be sure that you aren’t blindly buying a dual or triple-graphics capable motherboard for $200-$300 when a significantly cheaper, and perhaps a bit more boring, solution will suffice, allowing you to spend more money on a powerful, single video card that will better serve your needs. 

1. Source: Valve Steam Hardware survey, November 2008. 96% of players have resolutions set to 1680×1050 or lower. Sample size: ~1.7 million users.

Fair warning – I’m going to ramble through a few topics here, so please bear with me.

PhysX is the Lazarus of the PC industry after Aegia was acquired by NVIDIA last year.  However, the usefulness of a dedicated piece of hardware to accelerate physics has been debated more and more since its introduction in mid-2006, particularly in light of rival software -solution Havok’s successful install base and support amongst developers.  Demonstrations I saw at Quakecon 2005 showed an impressive array of hundreds of boxes colliding and splintering or water “realistically” flowing down uneven terrain.  Cool, but not worth $250.  So NVIDIA is ditching the dedicated hardware solution and is apply the awesome brute strength of their GPUs, along with CUDA, to enable PhysX processing on the GPU.  However, the fact that recently released NVIDIA demos basically demonstrated the same old water effect accelerated by CUDA-driven PhysX technology gives me pause, especially after seeing little real-world application of PhysX that truly impacts game play, not just accelerate physics “effects.”

It all started when I stumbled upon a very interesting blog post from an HP/Voodoo engineer on their NextBench community forum.  It was interesting in a couple of ways.  The first thing that jumped out at me was the fact that the engineer solely ran tests using FutureMark’s Vantage PC benchmarking software.  One of the tests in the benchmarking suite includes dedicated tests to measure the physics processing capabilities of a PC.  It’s similar to the CPU test in 3D Mark 06 where 3D acceleration was taken out of the picture and software rendering was used to render a 3D scene.  Of course it ran in the 1-4 frames per second range, but then again it wasn’t intended to demonstrate a real world scenario, just remove all other variables from the test as much as possible.  The same goes with the physics test in Vantage.  However, NVIDIA has released drivers that enable the GPU to process physics calculations instead of the CPU which show a remarkable increase in performance on that test.  On July 21^st of this year, FutureMark began to remove GPU PhysX scores from its Hall of Fame, citing that its physics test was meant solely to test the processing power of the CPU and clearly stated that a GPU or a driver could not affect the score.  Now if you want to submit to FutureMark’s Hall of Fame, you must submit with a WHQL driver and not install NVIDIA’s PhysX acceleration software.  I would presume that if PhysX-enabled games were more widespread that FutureMark would have a tougher time convincing the general public that NVIDIA’s use of their GPUs to accelerate PhysX was some sort of cheating, or even violation of the “spirit” of the rules.  Because the fact of the matter is that a GPU’s stream processors are going to be busy banging out wicked 3D graphics and there definitely needs to be more study on how that affects its ability to accelerate PhysX in the real world.  Perhaps this generation’s hardware is powerful enough, perhaps not.  But that just goes back to the type of people that would be interested in shelling out about $1000 in NVIDIA products (which NVIDIA would love-more on that later) just to get physics accelerated effects.  I say effects because to date there has been no significant title that has a compelling reason to add PhysX hardware at additional cost to the user to enable a better gaming experience.  NVIDIA adding PhysX support to GPUs that people are already buying or already have is a good play because there’s a very large install base of 8 and 9-series NVIDIA GPUs-at least when it comes to the mainstream.  This is a good and bold strategy.  But developers aren’t developing games for the 5% enthusiast space that is even interested in GPU enabled PhysX, much less those who can afford it where it seems to be most effective: high-end (read: expensive) multi-GPU solutions.  Developers want to reach the broadest audience possible.  And that’s the key, because according our friendly HP/Voodoo engineer; the widely popular and mainstream 8600GTS was a sore replacement for a CPU when it came to accelerating PhysX in FutureMark’s Vantage.  Perhaps if the 8600GTS were a secondary GPU in the system would it make sense.  But that again goes back to the argument for or against buying dedicated hardware for physics processing, which is what Aegia started out doing. 

I didn’t make it pasts the graphs in the engineer’s post showing the performance deltas before stopping to think about how I would write this article.  Going back to it, I realized I failed to read the last paragraph, which really put the whole thing in perspective for me, which brings me to the other thing I found interesting in the post.
I realized the whole affair was a condensed course of logic to get to get to the conclusion NVIDIA has come to and spent a considerable amount of effort in marketing and PR: that the GPU is slowly making the CPU irrelevant and will possibly replace it in some way someday.  It’s the whole “balanced computing” campaign in a nutshell.  The bottom line is that NVIDIA wants you to spend more money on their products than on a CPU.  That explained why in that blog post the synthetic nature of Vantage vs. the rest of the real world was topically glossed over, and no reference was made to the fact that the Vantage scores were basically irrelevant today in at least FutureMark’s eyes. 

Of course, none of this necessarily invalidates NVIDIA’s points on a balanced computing experience.  There are many compelling reasons today to pay attention to your GPU budget just as closely as your CPU budget: we truly are in the Age of Visual Computing.  I believe that the premise is a good one, and something that some of us in the industry do every day – deliver the performance that a customer wants that is tailored their needs.  And if that means making sure they spend more on a GPU, or more on a CPU, that’s what we try to deliver.

Not to get off on a tangent, but to hopefully wrap up this post, I wish that NVIDIA would spend their PR budget in regards to their balanced PC campaign in the retail space.  It’s always been disheartening to see how specifications are spun to an unsuspecting public and how the big box boys are dictating to the PC manufacturers what should or shouldn’t be included in a BOM.  Honestly, I think NVIDIA could do the mainstream a great service by focusing on retail buyers.   And they don’t even have to talk about PhysX to make a compelling story when PCs are being sold with 6GB of RAM and integrated graphics!  Yeah, that’s the ticket.  Leave the 900 pound gorilla – Intel – alone, and go after those pesky memory manufacturers!