AMD unveils Hybrid CrossFire Nvidia acquires Mental Ray Nvidia launches triple SLI ATI overvalued, expected losses for AMD

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AMD unveils Hybrid CrossFire   Posted on 13/12/2007 at 22:28 by Nicolas

	Legit Review was able to attend a demonstration of Hybrid CrossFire which was officially announced yesterday by AMD during its Financial Analyst Day. The platform was composed of a Radeon HD 3450 (RV620) and motherboard equipped with a 780G (RS780) chipset. With Unreal Tournament 3 in 1280x1024, the activation of Hybrid CrossFire allowed going from 33.67 to 43.68 images per second or a gain of 30%. However, there was especially an increased minimum framerate as performances went from 65 to 83% of images rendered at more than 30 FPS. Of course, we will gladly take this but it doesn’t transform a $49 card (or $59 in the case of the Radeon HD 3470) into a high powered model. Also, the more powerful the graphic card, the gain becomes proportionally smaller. On the other hand, such a configuration can support up to 4 screens (2+2) which is a definite advantage in some domains. Note that the motherboard used in this test had dedicated memory for the graphic processor integrated to the chipset. The size of this local frame buffer (by the way called SidePort) varies between 16 MB and 128 MB. Its frequency was not given and we only know that it is relayed to the IGP by a 32 bit bus. It allows increasing the 780G’s 3D performances from 5 to 10%; however, we will have to see in practice if motherboard manufacturers will find it useful given the added cost.

Nvidia acquires Mental Ray   Posted on 13/12/2007 at 17:39 by Nicolas

	It’s now official. Nvidia has just acquired the German company mental images which developed the 3D rendering software Mental Ray. This was used in the Matrix Reloaded, Star Wars: Episode II and The Hulk but is especially used by Maya, XSI, 3D Studio Max, Houdini and even SolidWorks software. In short, it’s an industry standard in this area. Nvidia says that it wants to leave its new subsidiary a degree of autonomy for day to day operations; however it will be interesting to see what future approach the Californian giant will take given that it has offered for several years now a GPU hardware accelerated rendering software called Gelato.

Nvidia launches triple SLI   Posted on 13/12/2007 at 15:12 by Damien

	After a delay of several weeks, Nvidia has now made 3-way or triple SLI available extending SLI management to 3 graphic cards. For it to function, three identical graphic cards are needed each with two SLI connectors. This means that this technology is limited to the GeForce 8800 GTX and Ultra which are however at the end of their product lives while the recent GeForce 8800 GT and GTS 512 MB are incompatible. As for the chipset, an nForce 680i or nForce 780i will be required, the latter will be launched in a few days. While waiting to carry out a complete test, we quickly ran 1, 2 and 3 GeForce 8800 Ultras in Company of Heroes in 1920x1200 and then in 2560x1600 in DirectX 10 and with classic 4x antialiasing activated. Our first observation is that triple SLI functions signifying we are far from quad-SLI which didn’t work and was then abandoned by Nvidia. After this, results are significant and proof that its implementation is efficient. Of course, the interest of triple SLI will only show itself in gaming conditions that require enormous GPU power. It’s more of an extreme solution to an extreme problem, Crysis being the first that comes to mind. We did not use this game to illustrate this announcement because it needs a patch to properly use multi-GPU systems, which isn’t yet available. Check back next week for a complete test.

ATI overvalued, expected losses for AMD   Posted on 13/12/2007 at 13:05 by Nicolas - source: divers

	AMD has indicated in documents destined to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the watch dog for American stock markets, that the goodwill value (know-how, name, and potential) listed in the acquisition of ATI at $3.2 billion should be reevaluated to be lower. Clearly, this signifies that AMD admits having paid an excessive price for ATI ($5.4 billion), goodwill here being defined as the difference between the price and net assets. Beyond the words and the implicit recognition of what now appears as an error, this especially has a consequence in adding additional costs from a strictly accounting point of view. Even if this doesn’t change anything in terms of the company’s cash situation, it has an impact on financial results and therefore its growing losses. Finally, in an interview granted to CNBC Europe, Hector Ruiz, the firm’s CEO, clearly made it understood that he wouldn’t pass the baton to Dirk Meyer, the current Chief Operating Officer, before 2009 at the earliest.