On the contrary, I think it is Nvidia who is the scared one. Both AMD and Intel are in monumentally better places than Nvidia, despite what current markets look like. CUDA came about because Nvidia saw that they were fucked in the grand scheme of things. CUDA is not the unified solution that will kill the CPU. It currently does jack shit. By the time there' s any sort of relevant general awareness and willingness for CUDA, Larrabee will be well upon us.

Intel has Larrabee. AMD has Fusion or some such thing. Larrabee ultimately has the advantage in that it' s based entirely off x86 architecture, and I' m sure Fusion is very similar too. Developers won' t need to learn a new language or program for a specific API. It greatly simplifies things. Intel have far more resources than Nvidia and they' ll be able to push Larrabee far more effectively than CUDA.

And once Larrabee has a foothold, it will undoubtedly smash Nvidia into oblivion.

I think Intel has a little more to lose than Nvidia when it comes to general purpose computing. That' s what I meant when I said Intel is scared. I know Nvidia is in for a tough fight. We can see hostility between the Intel and Nvidia execs a lot these days. It seems that whenever one side has a statement to make the other will almost instantely refute it. It almost looks personal.

Larrabee is a many simple core cpu with GPU and cpu instructions. It' s going to be great for certain applications but total shit as a graphics card. An addon with integrated performance. I believe Intel plans to integrate Larrabee in certain chipstes to replace their conventional integrated solution. No serious gamer will want to replace ATI or Nvidia with that. Nvidia is guarrenteed to have way more market penetration with it' s conventional GPU line over Larrabee. I don' t see Larrabee as a threat to Nvidia' s direction with its GPGPU because Nvidia is going to sell their GPUs anyways. However CUDA does need to be adopted as you said. Nvidia knows this. That' s why they have offered Universities huge grants in order to support courses teaching CUDA. Larrabee is good for non gamers that want to accelerate parallel applications.

AMDs fusion is literally a CPU with a real GPU glued together. This will be big for laptops and smaller devices. With fusion you can hit a level of performance with a relatively low TDP by combining the GPU and CPU. It' s a neat idea because you avoid latencies associated with the gpu and cpu comunicating through the PCIE bus. Fusion is not a high end part, it' s designed towards energy and economic efficiency. I' m fairly certain this will be a very successful part for AMD.

In other words all three Intel, Nvidia and AMD have different solutions for different problems.

If Larrabee can be added and work along with an Nvidia or ATI GPU, then it might be interesting for guys like us. Larrabee could support the GPU and CPU by doing stuff like physics or ray tracing. As well as support the CPU in heavilly threaded applications. However if Intel expects us to replace our high end GPUs with that inferior junk, it just won' t happen.

As for CUDA not having fuck all. That' s not true. The GTX 280 and even lesser GPUs are already desroying Intels best CPUs in any application it can run. I' m not talking about 5% faster. More like 20 times faster in things like encoding. It' s really exciting stuff.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home.aspx#

It' s only a matter of time before we see applications with CUDA support. An Nvidia GPU has the potential to be so much faster than any CPU that competition between applications should promote support for CUDA.

The GTX 280 has dropped from 650$ to 455$ (425$ with MIR) at NCIX, the GTX 260 also dropped in price. Competition is a bitch eh Nvidia? But that' s starting to look like a good deal. If it wasn' t for the fact that I think Nvidia is about to shrink the 200 series to 55nm in the fall, I might have jumped on this. The 8800GTX is a good card but it struggles at my monitors resolution with certain games. Mass Effect in particular, I' d love to play it at 1920x1200 maxed.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=30530&vpn=01G%2DP3%2D1280%2DAR&manufacture=eVGA

Meanwhile ATI has partially lifted their NDA on the HD 4870X2. Basically it' s now the most powerful card on the market (or it will be out soon). ATI has both price/performance and the performance crown. The card is essentially two HD 4870s on the same PCB and not surprisingly it performs very close to two HD 4870s in crossfire.

The three main advantages of this card over two HD 4870s is the fact that it' s cheaper to get one HD 4870X2 over two HD 4870s. It uses less power than two HD 4870s in Crossfire. The HD 4870X2 has 1024MB X2 RAM, while the HD 4870 in crossfire only has 512MB effective.

The disadvantages are that it runs fucking hot and it approaches the limit of what the 6 pin, 8 pin and PCIE can draw in terms of power. Meaning there isn' t much room for overclocking.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3354

Nvidia are doing something strange

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/14/nvidia_sli_nehalem_chips/

Yeah I love price wars. I' d say Nvidia may be breaking even for the amount they' ve dropped to. I' ve read a couple of previews of the 4870 X2 and it sure is a beast. Once the early drivers are soughted out there' s no doubt it' ll be the most powerful. What' s the RRP for a 4870X2 anyway? $499?

As for SLI on Nehalem, it will be possible but due to licensing problems and the requirement to add a secondary nForce 200 chip onto the motherboards, it will no doubt be insanely expensive.

Apparently Intel basically told Nvidia they weren' t giving Nvidia a license for Nehelam. Twisting Nvidias arm to get SLI must have been their goal.

Preliminary Benchmarks:

Anandtech' s Benchamark

Age of Conan 2560x1600 4xAA/16xAF
$499 4870 X2 : 44.8
$499 GT280 : 22.7

Crysis 1920x1200
$499 4870 X2 : 39.1
$499 GT280 : 34.3

Oblivion 2560x1600 4xAA 16xAF
$499 4870 X2 : 50.3
$499 GT280 : 36.8

Grid 2560x1600 4xAA
$499 4870 X2 : 84.2
$499 GT280 : 40.6

Techreport' s Benchmark

Half life 2 episode 2 2560x1600 4xAA/16xAF
$499 4870 X2 : 84.6
$499 GT280 : 65.5

Quake War 2560x1600 4xAA/16xAF
$499 4870 X2 : 100.2
$499 GT280 : 74.2 /

Crysis 1920x1200
$499 4870 X2 : 24.8 average /17 min
$499 GT280 : 20.3 average /17 min

Race Driver 4xAA 1920x1200
$499 4870 X2 : 111.9 average / 77.0 min
$499 GT280 : 67.6 average / 56.0 min

Driver Heaven' s Benchmark

Call of Duty 4 - 2560x1200 4xAA 16xAF
$499 4870 X2 : 90 average / 49 min
$499 XFX GT280 XXX : 65 average / 33 min


World in conflict - 2560x1200 4xAA 16xAF
$499 4870 X2 : 61 average / 47 min
$499 XFX GT280 XXX : 44 average / 38 min

HL 2 Episode 2 2560x1600 8xAA
$499 4870 X2 : 110 average / 30 min
$499 XFX GT280 XXX : 69 average / 29 min

Ouch. It doubles the GTX280 in some games. Both cards still suck at Crysis for some reason, suggesting maybe the engine really is fundamentally broken. That would explain why they' ve stopped updating it and are concentrating on the newer version in Warhead.

I've seen a few benchmarks and I don't like how the minimum fps can be low for the HD 4870X2, some games don't like the card.  For the price it performs extrmely well, even if it costs more than the GTX 280 which has dropped in price considerable since launch.  Looking at the max fps it looks amazing, but if the minimum FPS is low it won't matter how high the max is.  That and the fact that it produces a lot of heat is the reason I'll be avoiding it.  My computer has been crashing while playing games and I believe it's the heat.  My videocard is cooking my motherboard it seems.

Anyways, I'm waiting for the GT200b or GTX 290 (55nm refresh).  It should arrive by September.  At the same time I'll go 64 bit Vista so I can have all my ram.

UnluckyOne

Ouch. It doubles the GTX280 in some games. Both cards still suck at Crysis for some reason, suggesting maybe the engine really is fundamentally broken. That would explain why they' ve stopped updating it and are concentrating on the newer version in Warhead.

can I say I told you so?

I take it you have all heard that M$ intend on releasing DX11 in the very near future, so dig deep for the new graphics cards boys and girls.

Supposedly many DX11 features will work on DX10 cards.

Indeed that is the idea but how many times has m$ said that to the gaming public and then we have had to shell out for a new GPU?

DX 11 isn't too significant though.  I won't rush out to buy the first wave of DX11 cards unless the hardware is special.  Most of the changes are just optimizations.   Propably stuff that MS intended on releasing with DX10 in the first place.

I've ordered a pair of 1GB XFX GTX 280 XXX's and a Blackmagic Intensity Pro HD capture card so i can grab HD video from PS3/360 games.

I've ordered a pair of 1GB XFX GTX 280 XXX's and a Blackmagic Intensity Pro HD capture card so i can grab HD video from PS3/360 games.

Fucking EH!

I've been looking at different HD capture cards for a while now and the Intensity pro was recommended by a guy i work with. The 720p footage i plan on capturing should be about the same kind of quality that you'll find on Gamersyde or Gametrailers. Plus, it also means i can do direct feed screengrabs. I intend on doing some of my own video reviews and demo walkthrough etc... should be pretty cool.
As for the 280's, ...even though i probably don't need to upgrade from my OC Ultra just yet, ...the itch has become unbearable. I was looking at getting a pair of 4870's fairly seriously because they scale so well and represent the best value for money, but since NVIDIA dropped the price of the new GTX's i figured it was worth paying nore for the extra performance. I don't know how much i'll benefit from having pre-overclocked cards this time. My Ultra maybe got and additional 10-15% over stock cards so i dunno what it'll be like for a pair of GTX 280's in SLI.
I would have gone 3 way SLI, but my motherboard doesn't support it. That's going to be my next port of call i think. The motherboard will need replacing before the processor... although i'll likely do them both at the same time.
The one thing i do keep wondering about is whether i need to make the jump to a 64-bit operating system. I'm still running 32-bit Vista. When i upgrade my motherboard i'll buy faster RAM, but in the meantime, would it be worth going up to 64-bit Vista and 8GB RAM???
Agent, what are your plans for upgrading??? Are you going to go with ATI???

4 gig is the new minimum, get vista64

I agree, I wouldn't use more than two 2GB sticks though.  Having more than two sticks in certain motherboards can cause issues.

Intel's new CPU architecture Nehalem (officially named Core i7) will released soon in Q4.  It has a built in memory controller so it's limited to one type of ram, Core i7 will use DDR3 exclusively.  The neat thing is that it has it's ram set up in three channels instead of the traditional two channels.  So we'll be able to have 6GB+ of RAM. 

The point is, I wouldn't invest in DDR2, even though it's cheap.

I won't jump on Core i7 though, I don't plan on changing my motherboard until USB 3.0 and PCIE-X16 3 are both released.  I was thinking of getting a quad Penryn to tide me over.  I think I fried my E8400, I had to go back to stock clocks.  All of Intels CPUs have dropped in price lately, some considerably.  The Q9550 with a 8.5 multi is now at $350ish (was around 600$) and theres a new Q9650 (not to be confused with the Qx9650) that's more or less the same except with a new better stepping and a locked multi at 9 (630$). 

 

I ended up buying one HD 4870, haven't had a chance to try it out yet but it should get the job done, honestly my 8800 gtx still got the job done but I felt the urge to upgrade videocard, I was gonna get the x2 but blah, I too will need a new motherboard, cpu and ram soon probably by next year and there isn't a game I play that one 4870 cant handle.

Still trucking with my 8800GTX.  I was going to buy the so called GTX290 but it seems that Nvidia made a new plan.  The latest rumor is that they'll have the successor to the GTX260 @ 55nm released at the end of the year and the successor to the GTX280 @ 40nm released at Q1 '09.  Meh, I'm not impressed with the GTX 280 or anything on the market at the moment so I'll wait and see.