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Weekend tech reading: AMD vs. Nvidia - Are they even playing the same game?

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On November 29, 2009, 12:11 PM EST

AMD vs. Nvidia - Are they even playing the same game? In the GPU world there are many flavors, despite the perception that you either get AMD or Nvidia. There is Matrox, WildCat/3D Labs, S3, VIA and a few more. But in the end what you hear the most about are NVIDIA and AMD. These two companies are compared back and forth in a game of favorites that would make a selfish 4 year old proud. Still, can you really compare them in equal terms? TweakTown

Microsoft: Project Natal to replace remote controls The forthcoming Project Natal motion control technology could replace the television remote control in the future, automatically scheduling content according to the people in a room, according to comments made by Xbox Live general manager Marc Whitten. GamesIndustry

Google Chrome OS available for Dell Mini 10V If you've got a Dell Mini 10V netbook, you could be rocking Chrome OS before the evening comes. Liliputing reports that Doug Anson of Dell has cobbled together a workable copy of Chrome OS for the Mini 10V using the source code released earlier this month. He and his team have hacked in all the needed hardware support, and they've put it up on the Internet for free. I4U

Activision says "Call of Duty" series tops $3 billion Activision Blizzard Inc said on Friday its "Call of Duty" video game franchise pushed past the $3 billion mark in global retail sales. Overall, the "Call of Duty" series has sold more than 55 million units since its launch in 2003, Activision said, citing data compiled by NPD Group, Charttrack, GfK and internal company estimates. Reuters

Spot on: 15 years of Warcraft Blizzard game design chief Rob Pardo and lead designer Jeff Kaplan discuss acclaimed fantasy franchise's long history, from Orcs and Humans to the World of Warcraft phenomenon. GameSpot

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User Comments (44)

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ET3D
on November 30, 2009
1:01 AM

Regarding the AMD vs. NVIDIA article, I was really hoping for a more in-depth analysis. There are a lot of differences between the companies (for example, AMD is a CPU/GPU company), the way they tackle the market, their possible future plans. Even the subjects mentioned weren't given any real thought or perspective. For example, paying developers was mentioned but could be given a fuller discussion, the context being that NVIDIA has always been a marketing company foremost. The invent their own standards (CG, CUDA), and they do their best to get as many people to use them. They'd pay universities and developers to use their technologies.

Same for the discussion of physics. The article mentions Havoc, but doesn't mention that Havoc was bought by Intel, obviously making it harder to get the desired cooperation.

I think it's an interesting subject for an in depth article, but that really wasn't it.

Reply

yorro
on November 30, 2009
1:24 AM

Project Natal is great utility, such as remote or voice commands, but not in actual gaming.

Reply

Razerblade
on November 30, 2009
2:29 AM

That was a very interesting read about the AMD vs Nvidia. I didn't realise they were so different in the way they worked. Definitely need to think about which way i will go when i upgrade my computer!

Reply

timljh
on November 30, 2009
7:23 AM

AMD vs NVIDIA is an interesting article to read on but a bit biased in my opinion, do not believe everything you read.

Reply

kaonis92
on November 30, 2009
8:46 AM

I think that nvidia's gpu architecture is better because it's capable of processing any kind of code, amd should revise it's gpu architecture and implement something different similar to nvidia, that way they could save money from paying game developers.

Reply

alexandrionel
on November 30, 2009
8:48 AM

PNagy

Then why does Intels have such a huge market share on the CPU market?

I think that customers purchase based on what they have heard in terms of brand.

Even when on some romanian forums, some kids recomend Intel or Nvidia and their only argument is that ATI or AMD suck. Even if it is obvious for instance when 4850 came that it was even better and much cheaper it still wasn't enough.

@Warcraft

Warcraft 2 was one great game. It kep me busy for hours and hours.

Reply

ColdPreacher
on November 30, 2009
9:44 AM

matchu said:

Kind of sucks how NVIDIA manages to invest so much money into game developing, and AMD is ... well, not =P wouldn't it be better in general for the consumer if everything were standardized and not optimized for one type of card or the other?

Would be excellent but i think a monopoly would occur

Reply

TorturedChaos
on November 30, 2009
10:08 AM

@AMD vs. Nvidia - I have noticed a lot of games I have played recently have the Nvidia Logo show up when they are loading. I don't think I have seen a game with a AMD/ATI logo in a long time.

@15 years of Warcraft - Blizzard puts out some good games. I loved StarCraft, played the hell out of Diablo 2, and play quite a bit of WC3 & the expansion. Now I play WoW and have been for the last 2 years. They just seem to be doing something right with their games.

Reply

Kibaruk
on November 30, 2009
10:32 AM

The nvidia/ati article was vague and not entirely arbitrary, most of the comments went towards calling the writer an nvidia fanboy, I surely didn't find it any useful, the comments on the other hand on that webpage were a lot more coherent.

Warcraft and World of Warcraft sure are two sorts of games entirely different, I just wished Warcraft had a bigger development team instead of going full into World of Warcraft (Am a vet in there and the game is surely screwd as today, it's sucking big time). Hope SC2 comes out soon to fill that strategy whole they left, SC has put up enough there.

Reply

swilllx2p
on November 30, 2009
10:37 AM

Nvidia/ATI was completely biased IMO. As other have stated It could have been and I expected it to be a great article breaking down the two. Instead it was a biased pile of crap

Reply

jrronimo
on November 30, 2009
10:38 AM

Interesting article on ATI vs. nVidia. They're definitely still playing the same game on some levels -- they both put out consumer and workstation graphics cards. nVidia just does some of the crazier, high-end stuff.

Interesting things to think about, though.

Reply

AbsolutGaloot
on November 30, 2009
11:50 AM

I have been a longtime fan of ATI cards, and really am interested to see if AMD follows through with the cpu and (quality) gpu on the same board concept that they've mentioned. That, or the new Hydra technology that's in development that'll let you use multiple cards simultaneously and get the best of both worlds

http://lucidlogix.com/index.html

Reply

wcbert
on November 30, 2009
11:57 AM

To make 3 Billion dollars on a video games is amazing. I wonder what they are investing in to keep the profit flowing in?

Reply

Richy2k9
on November 30, 2009
1:34 PM

hello ...

i'm mostly nVidia over AMD, yet can still be satisfied with some ATI GFX card

Project Natal would make fiction become reality .. hehe! nice move MS!

COD sales is normal for such a good franchise, just hope they do realize that it all start because they have good developers & in the end good customers, so if one part fail, bye bye Activision!

cheers!

Reply

MVL
on November 30, 2009
6:38 PM

I'd like a simple recommendations by experts;

I use 3ds Max and some CAD applications, while wasting most my free time replaying the great atomic bomb scene in Fallout 3... so therefore I stick to Gaming cards for now (mainly because of the cheaper price of gaming cards)...

So which is the better compromise in the "desktop range" for getting the best out of Gaming and Graphics applications in a single package... AMD or nVidia?

Reply

vangrat
on November 30, 2009
11:04 PM

AMD vs NVIDIA...that was a garbage article wow..the writer needs to clearly remove their lips from the buttocks of NVIDIA. The whole article was nothing but AMD bashing. Heck AMD currently have the top end running GPU on the market right now and have Five, yes FIVE next gen gpus on the market at the moment, 3 of which smoke the best of of NVIDIA have to offer. Yes the article was about what the two organisations focus on, physics processing is lacking on the AMD GPU for the simple reason that PhysX is not an open standard and as such is not supported by AMD. However AMD are leaning more towards the HAVOC engine which is supported by both AMD/ATI and Intel. This will mean most likely acceleration on both AMD/ATI GPU/CPUs and Intel CPU/GPUs...really people it can't get much better then that

Reply

tengeta
on November 30, 2009
11:58 PM

AMD was behind for a while, but they managed to close the gap up mostly... problem is every time Nvidia gets popular, it stays that way for a while.

Reply

dellz
on December 1, 2009
9:55 AM

1.Well in my opinion AMD vs NVIDIA gpus can be compared , because in th end the run the same games etc.

2.Not really interested , i have never been a console gamer and probably never will be (pc all the way) :P

3.Im not sure that Google Chrome OS is something to get exited about , but if it comes out BIG i mean like if it can be on par with Windows or Linux then i will look into it for sure

4.Well Call of duty is probably the most played fps francsise at the moment

5.Im a big fan on warcraft , tho i started playing warcraft from Warcraft 3 ROC and im still playing Warcraft 3 TFT (custom maps like DotA and Castle Fight) would love to see a true sequel to Warcraft 3 not a nother geek game like Wow (im not a wow hater but i dont like that it killed Warcraft as a strategy game)

Reply

Heretic
on December 1, 2009
1:22 PM

Well, World of Warcraft has had a good run and I've heard they're losing money on the game now. Maybe it's time they finally put down WoW and put out games like Starcraft 2 finally. Or Diablo 3.

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