Looking back at the two giants of the discrete graphics card market, AMD and NVIDIA, one can’t help get at least a bit nostalgic over some of the GPUs we’ve seen come and go. There has been a constant battle between the two to see who can make the most powerful graphics circuit on the market, until about a year ago. Then AMD decided that R600 would be the last of its kind. Any succeeding series of graphics card would have a complete focus on satisfying the mainstream consumers, and for the enthusiasts and high-end users AMD would instead deliver multi-GPU solutions. NVIDIA on the other hand, has continued working the same way it always has.
The transition from building high-end chips and scaling down to focusing on the mainstream has come at a cost for AMD as it has been trailing NVIDIA in performance over last year. AMD reduced prices to stay competitive and it was partly successful. NVIDIA had trouble getting enough chips out for its higher-end graphics card, while AMD was able to produce a lot more. Economically speaking, AMD was able to drag NVIDIA down with them. It’s been a tough year for both parties, but things are looking up.
Now that we’re closing in on the next generation of GPUs, we’re in for a treat. Both ATI and NVIDIA have reached the third and perhaps final stage of its development cycles, meaning that the products we’re about to see, are the ones that they have been building for all along. Even if the previous generations of GPUs may have been impressive in their own ways, they were also the foundation for what is about to come.
For AMD it means that the compromised RV6xx cores will be upgraded and finally allowed to bloom. AMD is all about satisfying the mainstream consumer and we’re quite certain that they will be satisfied with RV770. For NVIDIA, it means that they can finally roll out what will be the single most powerful GPU known to man, by quite a margin. Something they’ve been aiming to do since the launch of G80. It’s big, its hot, but man can it produce pixels. At the same time, NVIDIA is shrinking its current lineup to make it more cost-efficient.
Three weeks to go and then you will see for yourself.
