AMD, Nvidia graphics chip designs diverge

UPDATE: On Monday, Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia are launching graphics chips based on distinctly different design philosophies.

Nvidia chips are big and powerful

(Credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia's GTX 280 and GTX 260 are designed to deliver the biggest performance bang per chip. A so-called "monolithic" approach packs 1.4 billion transistors and 240 processing cores onto one piece of silicon.

(See Peter Glaskowsky's review of the GTX 280.)

AMD's modular approach tends toward less is more: smaller, less power-hungry chips that can be strung together to achieve higher performance. The company plans to implement this strategy with the HD 4850 and HD 4870 graphics processing units (GPUs) that are being introduced on Monday. (See "Notes" below.)

This design philosophy is based on the same multicore strategy now employed by AMD (and Intel) for the CPU, the main PC processor. Instead of making one chip bigger and faster, AMD boosts performance by stringing together multiple chips. This approach also allows a chipmaker to avoid the time and expense of designing separate processors for the midrange and very-high-end segments.

(Clarification: In the case of a CPU, a core refers to a "scalar" x86 processor core found, for example, in a quad-core Intel or AMD chip. The GPU core is a "parallel processing core." GPUs these days typically contain hundreds of these cores.)

"The beauty of this design is that it's scalable. You can put one or two (chips) on a board," said Matt Skynner, vice president of marketing at AMD's Graphics Products Group.

In the midrange segment ($200 to $300) AMD uses a single chip--for example, an HD 4870. At the high-end ($500 and above), it adds another chip to scale up to better performance. This dual-chip design--code-named the R700--will be marketed as the 4870 X2.

On the other hand, Nvidia says its emphasis on a single, very-high-performance chip is necessary to keep it out front. "At the high end, there is no prize for second place," Ujesh Desai, general manager for GeForce products at Nvidia, said in an interview with Nanotech: The Circuits Blog last month.

(Nvidia also offers multichip designs, but it puts each chip on a separate board, while AMD puts two chips on one board.)

And Nvidia is trying to raise the bar with GTX 280. "We're rendering about 3 million triangles per frame," Curtis Beason, an engineer at Nvidia, said last month at an event where Nvidia previewed the GTX 280 chip.

AMD targets smaller chips that can be strung together to get better performance. AMD chip on left, Nvidia chip on right.

(Credit: AMD)

"With (the previous-generation) GeForce 8800, what we achieved is a very photorealistic character. Very detailed skin. But it was a single character," Jason Paul, the GeForce product manager, said at the Nvidia event last month. "With GTX 200 what we're moving to is multiple highly realistic characters."

Nvidia is also boasting that a dual-core GTX 280 can convert a high-definition movie into iPod video format in 35 minutes, compared to about five hours for a quad-core CPU system with low-end integrated graphics.

Hewlett-Packard's Voodoo unit will be one of the first to adopt the new Nvidia GPUs. "We are excited to be one of the first companies in the world to offer the technology in the new Exhilaration Edition of the...HP Blackbird 002," said Rahul Sood, chief technology officer, HP Voodoo Business Unit.

Notes: updated 6/16, 12:10 PM:

--AMD 4800 series processors will be available starting next week at Besy Buy, according to AMD VP Rick Bergman, speaking Monday at an AMD event. "In just a little over a week from today. You'll be able to walk into a Best Buy and buy this chip (4800 series) on a graphics board for about $200. A teraflop for $200," Bergman said. He added that systems will also be available from Falcon Northwest, Velocity Micro, and ibuypower. "We're also introducing a system that can take four of these boards," he said. "That's almost five teraflops of performance in a personal computer."

--Both AMD and Nvidia say their GPUs can achieve about one teraflops (trillion floating point operations per second) of performance.

--Nvidia's GeForce GTX 280 will retail for $649 and be available on graphics boards starting Tuesday. The GeForce GTX 260 will be priced at $399, with availability slated for June 26.

[catbutt5]

Nvidia's Ujesh Desai says "At the high end, there is no prize for second place,"

Wow, that sure is wishful thinking.
Here's a simple analogy showing his error in logic:
Say you're going to buy one of two three-story houses, essentially identical except one is two feet taller but carries a 25% premium in price. 99% of time people even high-end buyers will choose the one that is cheaper.
That's the prize for second place.

[i_am_still_wade]

Most people are not going to be able to afford the upper end graphics. People have less disposable income, not more. Plus, high transistor counts means more energy and more heat. With energy costs going up, the ultra-high-end products look less and less appealing. Efficiency and reasonable price is the way to go. The only #1 that matters is #1 in sales not #1 in performance.

[renGek]

catbutt5, you're incorrect. This chip is aimed at the hard core gamers who will pay just about anything for the best graphics. Its all bragging rights when you're in warcraft. And in situations like that, when you get a card that is the runner up to the champ, you mind as well get the cheapo card because thats how the rest of the gamers will think of you...the runner up.

Its not all that different from the extremely wealthy. They're not going to buy an infiniti (even though its a great car and a luxury class and gives you the bang for the buck). They're going to buy the best bmw that they have to offer even though its $30K more. Because its all about the prestige.

[oxtail01]

Totally off base! All vendors will need to depend on volume sales to make profits. Game makers need to produce products that will run on largest user base (including on systems that MOST people can afford). Depnding on a niche market in a competive business is not going to do it especially when AMD and Intel is after the same piece of the pie.

[NottaMacGuy]

"Its all bragging rights when you're in warcraft."

Honestly, if anyone pays top dollar for the best graphics card on the market just to play Warcraft, they need to seriously seek medical help and should be embarrased to brag about it. That game is a graphical antique and plans fine on even the low end cards.

[Shagate]

I understand the concept of MultiCore CPUs, and the author does a good job of explaining it to the average person in the article. What they don't cover though is what they mean when they say that NVIDIAs chip will have 240 processing cores. If it's not MultiCore, then what the heck does that actually mean?

[attack11]

Shagate, the gpu features vector processing units for simd programming. It's not actual cores, in the cpu sense. It's a different style of programming.

[i_made_this]

These level cards really are such a tiny market. Not just gamers, But rich-as-hell gamers. I wonder, what good is a game so advanced that it's not fully playable on any existing advanced GPU(2) rig? The only one I think that I've played in that catagory was Crysis, which I played in my usual system config of 2 x 8500 GTs in SLI - it was just fine - actually, for me, the only limitation was playing it on an 1440 × 900 @ 60 Hz HP monitor which reported an ability to transpose any original game or movie program sizing to their vertical 900 pixel rate anway. Welll... In any event, the "public" buys their rigs pre-configured mostly from HP and Dell. This last round of Xmas 2007 releases, neither company offered a SLI or Crossfire set-up pre-configured to Jane & John Q Public in their "new computer price range of $500 slim up to $1,500 fully loaded." I don't get this cos both could easily afford to do so - particularly, a Spider set-up with 2 x Crossfire 3000 series on AMD's new 9000 series quad core CPUs which HP could make a healthy profit selling at a SRP of around $1,000 - $1,250. NVIDIA doesn't want to acknowledge their 8000 series anymore but that - and lower - is what most of their customers actually have. Next selling season, NVIDIA can acknowledge that they really do know this real world PC market does exist and maybe work with HP to add a pair of low-end 8000 series or low-end 7000 series cards in SLI on an HP unit with a SRP in the same range as the Crossifre. I know NVIDIA'd look down their nose at Jane & John Q Public but they do all the home pc/laptop buying in the USA. And they ain't gonna put too many $2,000+ Voodoo/Blackbird rigs on their MasterCards. But now they don't have to get superior graphics!

[Rob imhoff]

Does this offer any advantages whatsoever with editing HD video? If not, what is the optimum performance of video card needed for HD video editing? Thanks.

[Swankenstein]

Who cares what your friends think about your graphics card? The industry leap frogs itself so often that at times a current Gen budget card will better a 3 generation old Premium card. Unless you want to buy a new premium card every generation, someone is going to have one better than you.

ATi have done something incredibly smart. They have priced the entry fee for the generation proportionately to the length of the generation's lifespan. What's more, they have made it an incredibly affordable option to stay in the game, by buying a duplicate card several months later at a reduced cost.

Ask anyone who paid top dollar for their 9800GX2 how they feel about Nvidia now....