Topic: Praying for AMD/ATi (2900XT launched) is tough.

[Pugnate]

In one day the C2D processors turned the market on its head. I've never heard of a line of processors make everything obsolete in the blink of an eye. That's what happened when Intel decided to work its ass off for once, and sneak up on AMD. Meanwhile AMD had turned into Intel... arrogant and releasing products with minute improvements. Suddenly they were behind and did what they do best... cut prices. Everything was slashed in half and AMD hoped that their upcoming quadcore set up would even things out. However Intel had gone into this round with a battle plan. They released their own quadcores before AMD, and their quadcore line was able to use the same RAM and motherboards as the P4 line.

Meanwhile AMD were trying to juice an outdated piece of technology. Their quadcores ran much hotter and used a lot more power without yielding anything near just performance. Worse was their decision to force new motherboards and RAM.

Even in the Athlon 64 days, it was the biggest absurdity going with AMD. Some processors were 754 pins, some were 939 and some were 940! This meant that three processors from one series required different motherboards. When AMD switched to AM2, they again forced new motherboards. With AMD quadcores it was again the same story... new motherboards!

Intel has been offering the option to use the same motherboard since the P4 days, and most of those can support Intel quadcores with a bios update.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, AMD bought ATi.

It all seemed like a good acquisition, because ATi was supposed to release a heavy hitter in November, the R600. The R600 (2900XT) was supposed to be a much more advanced version  of the Xbox 360 GPU. According to leaked benchies, the R600 was supposed to be the biggest thing since the Radeon 9700.

Meanwhile Nvidia hadn't been leaking any news, and everyone assumed the new GeForce was going to lag behind. Turned out the 8800 was extremely powerful, and shocked everyone. There was plenty of credit to Nvidia for successfully keeping the beast under wraps. It was launched in October, and lots of people waited to see what ATi was coming up with.

For some reason ATi delayed the R600 even though everyone expected it to be amazing. People blamed AMD for messing things up with the acquisition and unnecessarily delaying the launch. That was November...

The R600 finally came in the form of the 2900XT yesterday after a delay of seven months. Apparently everyone has found it to be a real disappointment. It can't beat the 8800GTX and only matches the 8800GTS. It scores heavily in 3Dmark, so it could be a driver issue. But at $400 it is currently performing at the level of the 8800 640MB GTS, which is going for $50 less. Though that's more because the 8800GTS has been out for a while.

Here is Anandtech's take:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2988

Apparently, the first spin of R600 silicon could only communicate over the debugging interface. While the upside is that the chip wasn't totally dead, this is not a good problem to have. We also overheard that a later revision of the hardware suffered from fragments getting stuck in pixel shaders. We even overheard one conversation where someone jokingly remarked that AMD should design hardware but leave the execution to NVIDIA.

In a wild bout of pure speculation on our part, we would have to guess about one other problem that popped up during R600's creation. It seems to us that AMD was unable to get their MSAA hardware to work properly and was forced to use shader hardware to handle MSAA rather than go back for yet another silicon revision. Please know that this is not a confirmed fact, but just an educated guess.

In another unique move, there is no high end part in AMD's R600 lineup. The Radeon HD 2900 XT is the highest end graphics card in the lineup and it's priced at $399. While we appreciate AMD's intent to keep prices in check, the justification is what we have an issue with. According to AMD, it loses money on high end parts which is why we won't see anything more expensive than the 2900 XT this time around. The real story is that AMD would lose money on a high end part if it wasn't competitive, which is why we feel that there's nothing more expensive than the 2900 XT. It's not a huge deal because the number of people buying > $399 graphics cards is limited, but before we've started the review AMD is already giving up ground to NVIDIA, which isn't a good sign.

Power Performance

Power efficiency is where the Radeon HD 2900 XT really falls short; while performance is similar to NVIDIA's 8800 GTS, power consumption is significantly greater. The 2900 XT draws even more power than the 8800 GTX under load

All of this has taken its toll, and last quarter AMD announced losses of $611 million dollars. That's pretty huge for the company and rumor is that its in some strife. It is releasing its Barcelona processor very soon, which according to leaked benchies is quite amazing. Let's see if it can get AMD out of this hole:

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9718202-7.html

AMD lays off 430 amid heavy losses
Posted by Tom Krazit

Faced with an urgent need to cut costs, Advanced Micro Devices laid off 430 workers on Wednesday as it looks to get back on track.

AMD had hinted that layoffs were coming when it acquired ATI Technologies last year, but it has also been struggling in the first half of this year with its main processor business. An ongoing price war with Intel and Intel's renewed competitive position--combined with AMD's own supply chain missteps--have led to heavy losses. AMD was forced to take out $2.2 billion in notes to keep the lights on as it awaits the launch of quad-core server and desktop processors later this year that it thinks will erase the advantage Intel has with its own quad-core processors.

The job cuts represent 2.6 percent of the company's workforce. The San Jose Mercury News reported that 40 of the jobs come from AMD's Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters as well as a nearby Santa Clara facility acquired along with ATI. An additional 50 jobs have been axed at the former ATI headquarters in Markham, Ontario, while 80 jobs are now gone in Austin, Texas, where AMD has a sizable presence.

AMD swings to $611m loss
800-pound gorilla Intel provides the vine
By Austin Modine in Mountain View → More by this author
Published Thursday 19th April 2007 22:32 GMT
Click here to receive articles like this in your inbox

AMD is reporting today a first-quarter loss of $611m amid a price-war to hold market share won back from rival Intel. The loss is larger than analysts expected, and AMD chief financial officer Robert Rivet calls the performance "disappointing and unacceptable".

The net $611m loss compares with a Q1 '06 profit of $185m.
Click here to find out more!

AMD first quarter sales fell to $1.23bn, down from $1.33bn last year, in line with AMD forecasts earlier this month.

AMD attributes the loss to significantly lower microprocessor shipments, lower average selling prices and low-margin Q1 ATI operations. The company said server and desktop chip shipments and revenues declined significantly, while mobile chip unit shipments and revenue increased significantly.

The company expects revenue for the second quarter to be "flat to slightly up".

AMD continues to struggle against market leader Intel and its new line-up of chips that has made AMD's momentum hit a brick wall. Yesterday Intel reported a $1.61bn profit for Q1, with $8.94bn in sales (1 per cent down from last year.) ®

[Quemaqua]

I wish them the best.  I hate Intel and have never been particularly fond of nvidia since they killed 3DFX, the only graphics hardware company I ever liked.

[Pugnate]

3Dfx to this day had the best anti aliasing.

[Quemaqua]

Not to mention the best graphics api.  Glide kicked the shit out of D3D and OpenGL in almost all respects.  It was nearly as good looking as D3D almost always, better than OpenGL, and ran at blazing speeds compared to both.  Not to mention they had the best driver support I've ever seen, and their cards ran almost any old, unsupported game you threw at them without having to dick around with it.  IMO, losing 3DFX set the computer graphics industry back *years* in those respects.

[Xessive]

I kinda miss my Voodoo5..

[scottws]

So how did 3dfx end up failing anyway?  I mean I remember that nVidia had the faster processor, but the visual acuity was far worse.

[Xessive]

I think nVidia just went ahead and bought 3dfx out.

[beo]

yeah, they did. but by the time the voodoo5 was out, so was the geforce2 - which thoroughly kicked it's ass. the only reason glide looked better and ran faster in certain games, was because the engines those games ran on were specifically programmed with glide in mind. if you looked at the quake 2/3 engine games (which had perfectly good glide support) they ran *much* faster in opengl with a geforce 2, than in glide with a voodoo 5.

glide was a proprietary format that no-one else could use, but because of the popularity and market share of 3dfx, developers were obliged to create games with glide in mind. this put 3dfx in a position where they didn't need to create products that were  competitive, due to the fact that no other hardware developers could use glide (and that glide was the primary api game devs were catering for). they had, in effect, created a monopoly. it didn't matter to a lot of devs that 20% of gamers could run a game 50% faster if they'd programmed the game in opengl - they had to cater for the masses.

once the geforce series of cards got under way, and showed what could be done with a card with real horsepower and a different api, everyone started to switch. and i'm glad. proprietary api formats are anti competitive.

[Pugnate]

3DFX went down the hill with the Voodoo3.

While Nvidia was releasing top of the line cards like the GeForce 2, 3DFX was releasing bloated power hungry cards that just weren't doing it.

The worst mistake was the Voodoo5 because stubbornly 3DFX chose to go with PCI instead of AGP. While the benefits of PCIe over AGP aren't as apparent, AGP was a massive difference over PCI.

[Quemaqua]

Say what you like, I don't buy a lick of it.  I was a very satisfied 3DFX customer, and I've never been happy with nVidia stuff, ever.  It's passable, but my 3DFX cards were exceptional, especially where support was concerned.  I had a Voodoo5, and I'll tell you, pretty much the only people I ever hear complain about them are people who never owned one.  The thing was a rock and lasted me well beyond what I expected.  The only reason I replaced it is because games stopped supporting it.  The thing continued to perform beyond my expectations years after I bought it, running games at great speeds that I thought it wouldn't be able to handle, and I rarely ever had a problem with it even after official driver support stopped.  Sorry, but nobody has ever lived up to that.

[Xessive]

Say what you like, I don't buy a lick of it.  I was a very satisfied 3DFX customer, and I've never been happy with nVidia stuff, ever.  It's passable, but my 3DFX cards were exceptional, especially where support was concerned.  I had a Voodoo5, and I'll tell you, pretty much the only people I ever hear complain about them are people who never owned one.  The thing was a rock and lasted me well beyond what I expected.  The only reason I replaced it is because games stopped supporting it.  The thing continued to perform beyond my expectations years after I bought it, running games at great speeds that I thought it wouldn't be able to handle, and I rarely ever had a problem with it even after official driver support stopped.  Sorry, but nobody has ever lived up to that.

I concur!

[Pugnate]

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20070516PD217.html

Barcelona chip delayed from June to August it looks like! Very very bad news from AMD.

[Jedi]

Screw AMD I've never been a fan and I see little reason to like them.
Intel has FINALY got their act together and are producing CPUS that aren't power hungry but perform well (and far better) AND they don't all cost a fortune. At the end of the day I'm a consumer that's what I care about.

Edit:
That's AMD not 3DFX

[Pugnate]

Come on, the only reason Intel had motivation to get their act together was because of AMD.

[Cobra951]

Exactly.  I welcome AMD, and I hope this trouncing by Intel doesn't make them go away.  Intel will have a monopoly again, and you know what that means.  Small improvements in CPUs for years, for a ton of cash.

[Xessive]

Exactly.  I welcome AMD, and I hope this trouncing by Intel doesn't make them go away.  Intel will have a monopoly again, and you know what that means.  Small improvements in CPUs for years, for a ton of cash.

haha The Core Quadro 4.0 GHz comes, then the Core Quadro EXTREME 4.01 GHz!! With a slogan like "It's technically FASTER!!"

[Pugnate]

Here come some lawsuits against AMD.

[Quemaqua]

That's not good.  What the hell are these guys doing?  In the situation they're in, you act carefully, not pull stupid stunts like this.  Ugh.

[Pugnate]

To follow up on those potential lawsuits, here is an interesting article from Anandtech regarding the lack of claimed UVD capability.

Anandtech's view of the UVD debacle

Final Words

For now, we are left with reports that there is no physical UVD hardware in R600. But is this really the case, or was UVD hardware included but broken (reminiscent of the problems NVIDIA had with PureVideo on the 6800 line)? If the physical hardware simply isn't present, the way things have gone seem to indicate that AMD's own staff didn't understand exactly what was going on. For journalists to miss something like this is one thing, but channel partners printing boxes with non-existent features on them is entirely different.

This is more than a little troublesome, but we are awaiting a response from AMD on all the issues we've presented here today. We were hoping to have their response to include here at publication, but we will absolutely update this article when we do hear from AMD.

So where do we stand now? Well, board partners who've already printed boxes with UVD labels and retailers who list UVD as a feature of the HD 2900 XT will need to go back and revise their materials. This is certain to cause plenty of headaches with everyone involved in the making, marketing, retailing, and purchasing of the HD 2900 XT. Journalists have had to go back and correct articles to reflect the lack of UVD support in R600, and everyone is looking to AMD and wondering just what that was all about.

While we might not really think UVD is necessary in a high-end graphics card, just as full video decode might be overkill in an 8800 part, many have lamented the fact that their high-end graphics hardware supports last years video decode feature set. This is true even on G80 hardware where the technology lag makes sense due to the extra development time NVIDIA had with G84/G86. Honestly, for us, the issue is not the lack of the feature; it's the way in which this situation blossomed.

From the beginning, at press briefings, AMD could have grouped R600 with X1000 and separated it from the rest of the R6xx lineup. They had no problems pointing out the differences between G80/G7x and G84/G86. After the fact, with almost every article indicating that UVD was in HD 2900 XT, AMD corrected no one. It took people asking direct questions to start to get real answers. But we still don't feel like we've got the whole story.

With our go-to man for graphics at AMD, Will Willis, having quit shortly after the R600 launch, and most of the other PR people we used to work with from ATI already absent, we have been a little worried about the situation. Losing Will will certainly be a blow for AMD PR, as he was by far the most helpful guy around. Having a key member of the PR team depart just after a launch like this also doesn't feel good. Hopefully, the replacement AMD finds for Will can fill his shoes, and hopefully we will get some answers soon.

We are left with the feeling that AMD wanted this to be ambiguous for as long as possible (whether this is true or not). The reasoning for this is are certainly not attractive, and range from blatant deception (i.e. suggest there's at least one feature on HD 2900 that you couldn't get from 8800 GTS/GTX) to a last minute problem with UVD on R600 that kept them from enabling it. But without answers from AMD, we just can't know what really went on in their minds while all this was going down.

I find it amazing that Anandtech are writing such speculative material. Very unlike them. Anyway I don't think AMD were being purposely ambiguous. I am sure they knew they couldn't get away with it. I'd put it down to incompetence.

Still, I agree. What the hell are these guys doing?

[Cobra951]

In the absence of facts the press will speculate.  And they should.  They're saying "here are the possibilities, and we'll keep you posted as the facts come in".  I don't think Anandtech is irresponsible here, trying to spread nasty rumors.  They know what is broken, but not to what extent, or with what causes.  No official source has filled in the blanks, so they're putting out what they know with those blanks.

[Pugnate]

You are right of course. I've just never seen Anandtech do it.

Anyway could be more bad news for AMD. AMD apparently having trouble with Barcelona's core frequency.

[MysterD]

For those 3DFX gamers, did 3DFX have any games that were Voodoo card exclusive and GLIDE Exclusive???