News NVIDIA will continue to dominate the high-end

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/08/02/nvidia_high-end_dominance/

 

so true. ATi is going to have to pull something pretty special out of the bag to avoid being seriously stomped by NVidia for the foreseeable future. I, like many, am still reserving judgment on R520, but the longer they leave it the higher they need to raise the bar to meet expectations. NVidia set the stakes pretty high with the 7800 GTX - I don't think anyone expected (a) the performance one of those (let alone a pair in SLI) beasties can deliver, or (b) the level of availability NVidia has managed to achieve right from launch. ATi has been caught with its pants down and unless they get R520 fixed soon then the battle for the new generation of graphics cards could well be won before it even begins.

 

I have to say I was shocked at how Nvidia made the 7800GTX available on the day of the launch. That truely impressed the hell out of myself.

 

There will either have to be a great groundbreaking technology (which I doubt), or it's going to be the next big installment of directx that ATi will finally come out on top again. NVidia has just owned the DX9 series, and ATi will get the breather to come up with the big whatever-the-hell-DX10-is-called card.

Far from curtains for ATi, but at this point, is there all that much sense in continuing to fight this round? I mean, some people will still buy ATi cards, it's almost not worth trying to introduce a high-end DX9 part this late in the game. There's just going to be so much time wasted on development and production of a substandard product that could be spent on innovation to make the next round that much more powerful.

 

ATI dominated DirectX 9.0 for a long long time - until NV40 came out. Then it was a case of ATI delivering faster hardware, but NVIDIA delivering more interesting products with more features while not being much slower than the competing ATI parts.