ATI and Nvidia launch competing GPUs

 

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Posted on 16 Jun 2008 at 12:29

Battling for market share, ATI and Nvidia are launching their competing GPUs. Nvidia is rolling out its GTX 200 series, which include the GTX 260 and GTX 280. Meanwhile, ATI is introducing the Radeon HD 4850, Radeon 4870 and its new 'ultra high end' chip, currently codenamed the R700.

The new launches see Nvidia and ATI scrapping it out for the market leading position, while Intel lays down its plans, eager to get in on the action with its own GPUs expected late 2009.

"Nvidia has been king of the hill, but now we're at a juncture point," said Jon Peddie, president of market research firm Jon Peddie Research. "And it's a juncture point because ATI has taken a totally different approach in the development of their latest chip and Nvidia has taken a really aggressive approach in the development of their chip."

Nvidia is hoping that by building the world's biggest graphics chip with 1.4 billion transistors, it can please the most demanding video game enthusiasts, then over time roll out that technology to different segments of the graphics market.

ATI, a subsidiary of AMD, whose GTX 200 series chip has "significantly less than 1 billion transistors", according to Peddie, targets the mid-range of the market and then stacks up the chips in a single package to boost performance to the highest levels.

"This is one big step in getting us back in the gamer and enthusiast markets," said Rick Bergman, AMD's graphics products group head, claiming that the size of the ATI chip is less than half that of Nvidia's.

"I think the industry is going to say, 'Hey, these guys are back in the game,'" he added. "You're going to see a nice market share swing (back to ATI) in notebooks and desktops with these products," he predicted.

David Kirk, chief scientist for Nvidia, said the GeForce GTX 200 chips incorporate complex physics calculations to realistically depict, for example, hailstones and windblown leaves in video games, and incorporate a more realistic portrayal of physics in video games.

"We've gotten to a point where everything in the scene in a video game is moving," he said. "GPU computing is really going to start impacting consumer applications."

Nvidia's new chips are available now in retail stores. The three different versions of ATI's chips go on sale in the next week, with the highest-end version available in about eight weeks.

Author: Dawinderpal Sahota