Guru3D.com
  • HOME
  • NEWS
    • Channels
    • Archive
  • DOWNLOADS
    • New Downloads
    • Categories
    • Archive
  • GAME REVIEWS
  • ARTICLES
    • Rig of the Month
    • Join ROTM
    • PC Buyers Guide
    • Guru3D VGA Charts
    • Editorials
    • Dated content
  • HARDWARE REVIEWS
    • Videocards
    • Processors
    • Audio
    • Motherboards
    • Memory and Flash
    • SSD Storage
    • Chassis
    • Media Players
    • Power Supply
    • Laptop and Mobile
    • Smartphone
    • Networking
    • Keyboard Mouse
    • Cooling
    • Search articles
    • Knowledgebase
    • More Categories
  • FORUMS
  • NEWSLETTER
  • CONTACT

New Reviews
Intel Core i5 11400F processor review
Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro SL 3600 MHz 32GB review
ASRock Z590 Extreme review
Gigabyte Radeon RX 6700 XT Gaming OC review
Corsair K70 RGB TKL keyboard review
Corsair RM650x (2021) power supply review
be quiet! Silent Loop 2 280mm review
Corsair K55 RGB PRO XT keyboard review
Guru3D Rig of the Month - March 2021
Intel Core i9-11900K processor review

New Downloads
NVIDIA Unreal Engine 4 RTX & DLSS Demo
Intel HD graphics Driver Download Version: DCH 27.20.100.9466
CPU-Z download v1.96
GeForce 466.11 WHQL driver download
Guru3D RTSS Rivatuner Statistics Server Download 7.3.2 Beta 2
MSI Afterburner 4.6.4 Beta 2 Download
HWiNFO Download v7.02
Corsair Utility Engine Download (iCUE) Download v4.9.350
Quake II RTX Download 1.5.0
GeForce 465.89 WHQL driver download


New Forum Topics
GeForce 466.11 WHQL driver download & discussion Review: Intel Core i5 11400F processor RTX 3060 with 470.05 not hashrate restricted Is it normal for Zen 2 all-core to max out at 4 GHz? My 3900X in games seems to top out there MSI Oculux NX G253R G-Sync gaming LCD has a 360Hz refresh rate Confirmed: GeForce RTX 3080 Ti with 12GB Gets Spotted in Transit Acer EI491CRG9 49-inch MiniLED curved display G-SYNC 240Hz true 1ms HDR2000 AMD Epyc 7763 CPUs break Cinebench world record, crushes Intel Xeon in performance modded windows xp 368.81 drivers to support SLI for cards after the GTX 660 ? Windows: Line-Based vs. Message Signaled-Based Interrupts. MSI tool.




Guru3D.com » News » AMD: 'Huge, monolithic' chips not our style

AMD: 'Huge, monolithic' chips not our style

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 05/27/2008 02:43 PM | source: | 0 comment(s)
Guru3D.com ImageAn interesting story on news.com today. I'll do the blunt copy/paste here as it's really interesting to see this article in it's entire original form. Advanced Micro Devices' ATI graphics chip unit doesn't want to build "huge" chips like rival Nvidia, an executive says.

But an Nvidia exec says smaller isn't always better or more efficient. Such statements will help define how the two chip giants do battle at the high end of the graphics chip market in the coming years.

One of the largest graphics chips yet will be Nvidia's upcoming high-end GTX 280. This is the kind of chip that high-end gaming enthusiasts crave. But great performance often means a large transistor count. And the GTX 280 is expected to have both.

AMD, of course, also intends to deliver extreme graphics technology with its upcoming X2, a follow-on to the current 3870 X2 series. And AMD wants to be clear: its strategy is fundamentally different than Nvidia's.

"We took two chips and put it on one board (X2). By doing that we have a smaller chip that is much more power efficient," said Matt Skynner, vice president of marketing for the graphics products group at AMD.

"We believe this is a much stronger strategy than going for a huge, monolithic chip that is very expensive and eats a lot of power and really can only be used for a small portion of the market," he said. "Scaling that large chip down into the performance segment doesn't make sense--because of the power and because of the size."

Skynner said that AMD tries to design GPUs (graphics processing units) for the mainstream segment of the market, then ratchet up performance by adding GPUs rather than designing one large, very-high-performance chip.

Guru3D.com ImageNvidia's "strategy is to design for the highest performance at all cost. And we believe designing for the sweet spot and then leveraging for the extreme enthusiast market with multiple GPUs is the preferred approach," Skynner said.

This applies to memory too. AMD thinks support for technologies like GDDR5 memory is another way to deliver good performance at a reasonable cost. "You don't need a huge chip with a huge data path to get the bandwidth. You can utilize a technology like GDDR5 to get that bandwidth," Skynner said.

Nvidia tends to favor very-fast, single-chip solutions. Nvidia, of course, has a different take on why it chooses to develop big, fast chips.

"If you take two chips and put them together, you then have to add a bridge chip that allows the two chips to talk to each other...And you can't gang the memory together," said Ujesh Desai, general manager for GeForce products at Nvidia.

"So when you add it all up, you now have the power of two GPUs, the power of the bridge chip, and the power that all of that additional memory consumes. That's why it's too simplistic of an argument to say that two smaller chips is always more efficient."

Desai takes this argument a bit further. "They don't have the money to invest in high-end GPUs anymore. At the high end, there is no prize for second place. If you're going to invest a half-billion dollars--which is what it takes to develop a new enthusiast-level GPU--you have to know you're going to win. You either do it to win, or you don't invest the money."







« Solar iPods in the Future · AMD: 'Huge, monolithic' chips not our style · BFG launches Power Supply Website »


Guru3D.com © 2021