VAR: FF vs Shader Performance

OpenGL OpenGL: Advanced Coding
41

Originally posted by mcraighead:
cut out, its too long

i know that in america and some other countries its all about making money and being selfish. i don’t live that way. and i think its a primitive way.

btw, if you read what i wrote above, you would have noticed that i am not for companies to sit on their money. thats about making money as well. that one of you is simply missunderstanding of what i mean.

and we, people who live, we build up companies. why should companies not follow the general rules of live?

the only way to be happy yourself is by making others happy. making myself happy by trying to get something from others doesn’t work, i feel ugly then. thats why all i do is for free, all i work for is for others. sure, i make money at work, sure i have my money and my stuff. but i’m not specially rich, and i don’t need to be. i prefer to have friends, and people that like my stuff, than that i can say: look, we released another round of in fact stupid stuff, but people where fooled by the marketing and we made more money out of it. quite a bunch of companies work that way (not that nvidia fully does, but sometimes they do as well), and such companies should in fact be illegal. just because they are not fair. fairness is the only way to life. be fair. be nice, and be polite.

haven’t seen that much of this from you, matt. instead, you always try to push people onto nvidia-only-support-side. that is not fair, not nice against your competitors. haven’t seen such stupid selfish acting from any others in here than from nvidia dudes.

not that nvidia did not made nice stuff, not that nvidia does not make nice stuff, and not that nvidia will not make more nice stuff. but the general way they act is selfish, monopolistic, and not helping eighter developers nor end users actually.

42

Originally posted by mcraighead:
Nope, my main goal is to make myself happy. It’s quite possible that in order to make myself happy, I will do things that will make other people happy, but that’s not my primary goal.

When nVidia started out its main goal was to make people happy (good technology, good price, etc). Sorry, but that’s the only way it could get such a huge user base. In many cases, companies don’t mind loosing money when they’re just trying to start out. It’s an investment.

Now that nVidia has a very good reputation, that stuff about money being the primary goal is ok (sort of), as long as people keep buying their products (they’re still happy).

So, IMHO, the primary GOALS of any company should be:

  1. Make people happy
  2. Make money

If you achieve (2) without achieving (1) you’re lying to people, because they’re fooled into thinking they’re happy and keep buying stuff.
Of course, if you have a monopoly (as it was the case IMO), people are “forced” into buying and you can get way with (2).

Ever since the R100 came out you’ve been loosing your rightfully earned advantage so, iIt’s more than logical that you should start working out (1) again…

Just my opinion…

43

I’m sorry guys but this is all a load of blue-sky tosh. The goal of business is not to make people happy, it is to make profits. Without profits there can be no expansion or investment in the future. The whole of western social and technological progress is based on this model.

In this particular arena, the goal of the graphics cards manufacturers are exactly the same as the agricultural, heavy industrial and service industries: make money for shareholders. If you have satisfied customers (difference between satisfied and happy I might add) then you are doing something right in my opinion.

There are many businesses that have failed despite having excellent products, purely because their marketing strategies were based on your ideas.

At the end of the day, if a company wants to survive, its useful to be making profits. Thereby, it is easier to raise capital for R&D and the shareholders will still value stocks even when you aren’t making profits, provided your marketing and product line are good. A business that fails to create demand for its products is itself at the mercy of fashion and won’t survive long.

As we are savvy consumers, we can clearly see these marketing tricks - but I wouldn’t say NVIDIA or anyone else is doing anything wrong. Perhaps those of lesser intelligence are fooled into believing the advertising, but most of us, being sophisticated purchasers, are not.

44

Not much that I can reply to without repeating myself, but:

Originally posted by davepermen:
instead, you always try to push people onto nvidia-only-support-side.

I don’t believe I do that. If someone asks, “how can I do this?”, and it so happens that we support some interesting way of doing that, then I’ll offer it as an option.

For example, suppose someone asked how they could get a floating-point texture format or pixel format. I might suggest that NV_float_buffer offers them. Am I supposed to not suggest that? Or suppose that someone asks how to do fast occlusion culling – am I supposed to not suggest NV_occlusion_query?

Another example: as of right now, I’d suggest that you use VAR to transfer vertex data efficiently. What else am I supposed to suggest you use on NVIDIA hardware, after all? But when the ARB extension for similar functionality becomes available, I will actually recommend that you do not use VAR, because I’m fairly confident that the ARB extension will be better than VAR. (Not that it’s difficult to create a better extension than VAR – I’d even say that ATI_vao is overall better-designed than VAR.)

To suggest that I don’t care about standards is downright silly. In fact, I’ve devoted a significant amount of my time to providing feedback to the ARB on a wide variety of extensions and features, and I’m even chairing an ARB working group, right now. Furthermore, I spend a nontrivial amount of my time on this message board, offering advice on a wide variety of topics to OpenGL developers.

If I didn’t care about OpenGL, I would be doing none of those things.

If I didn’t care about standards, I would be doing none of those things.

If all I cared about in the world was how much money NVIDIA made, I probably wouldn’t spend nearly as much time on those things.

So could you please refrain from making accusations of this sort? They simply don’t match up to the facts, and in fact I find them somewhat offensive.

  • Matt
45

Matt:

I don’t know you personally. But I think you are great supporting us in this forums and being sincere in your opinions . I also appreciate that you are not like other ‘developer relations’ or similar people that when they hear something they don’t like, they don’t appear again or they don’t answer you never again.

I don’t agree with you in some of the things you say but this is something I think is good. We don’t have the same ideas and we can continue talking. That’s great.

I liked to hear your opinion about what this guy (a really good guy that were working on nVidia) said about using vertex programs instead ff pipeline.

I will like to have more people from hw companies that participate regularly on this forums, with their own opinions, instead just appear occasionally to defend their hardware.

I agree with t0y, companies are usually started by people that are happy doing things that make other people happy. But when companies grows up, marketing departments becomes bigger and manages the biggest amounts of money from the company. Then, they begin to take bigger responsibilities and begins to thinks they knows exactly what people wants. They think that those engineers that had made the company successful are just stupid people that don’t understand their good ideas. And then, they begin to throw big amounts of different products with confusing names: 7500, 7700, 8500, 9000, 9500, 2MX, 2GTS, 3Ti, 4MX, 4Ti, … that nobody understand, for creating a wide range of prices. And the products with a good price are something I will never recommend to any friend.

I currently have stocks from nVidia and ATI, and really, I don’t like any of them. And there are many factors why shareholders don’t like the shares of a company. Most of them doesn’t know the companies or what the company do. Sometimes you see a company loosing money and their stocks getting better. It is very important the feeling of the people, and many brokers or investors are interested in what people thinks. And then, with this information, this people generate a flow of opinion. And some opinions, like people thinks that this product is going to be release late, it will be not as good as should be, the company is taking strange decisions and confusing people are more important than the quarterly financial reports. This ones are sometimes the excuse or where some investors make stupid questions to show their disconformities.

Yes, for business, money is all. That’s true. But you should know that money is not the profit of the company one year. The money is the value in which you can sell the company. And usually making people happy and having the biggest market is what you want.

46

Originally posted by mcraighead:
[b] That’s a rather unusual arrangement, allowing researchers to freeload off the university facilities…

When I was at the graphics lab at MIT, I had to sign an agreement granting MIT exclusive rights to all inventions made using lab facilities.

MIT makes a lot of money off such arrangements. If you want to form a spinoff company, you have to work out an arrangement with MIT – say, you’d get rights to use your lab inventions in the spinoff, and MIT would get a fairly significant share in your company.

  • Matt[/b]

Yes, I know it’s a quite unusual arrangement, with its plus and minus. The plus is of course that it certainly entices researchers to Sweden. The minus is of course that universities have to live on their governmental funding and nothing else. I think there are some new laws on the way that’s supposed to balance it a little more. Researchers will still own most of the rights, but the universities will get a piece of the cake too.

47

Originally posted by mcraighead:
<large post>

I certainly agree that a company sitting on an assload of money and doing nothing with it are doing something wrong too, at least so long as the expressed purpose and goals of the company is to give return to the shareholder. But is should also be possible to found companies on other purposes. There’s a company here close to the university called Bokis which is based on the idea of NOT making a profit and rather just offer students literature as cheap as possible. The shareholders are of course aware of this, and even though the company has a close to zero return to the shareholders I would argue that it’s certainly not dysfunctional and in fact are quite successful given that they’ve fulfilled their goals and pretty much every student buy their books from them.

Anyway, “doing whatever maximizes the profit” should include a minimum of questionable or unethical acts such as spreading FUD or selling products at a loss in order to force less funded competitors off the market etc.

With that said, I do value you all people from nVidia/ATi/3dlabs etc who contribute on this forum and I don’t think anyone is doing more anticompetive stuff than I expect them to do.

Anyway, Happy holidays all, and cya in the next year

48

to matt.

sorry to sounded offensive. i’m quite dissapointed in what nvidia went to, and i still think they moved away partially from making good, compliant, nice to use, working products to marketing hyping foolish over colored useless stuff, incompatible to the rest.

partially only, of course but the movement is (not only imho) there.

you made quite some good stuff, and are quite “useful” in here (sorry for the word, somehow it sounds stupid ). you do a good job, and help much.

so you suggest NV_oq, NV_var, NV_whatever. that should ring your bells. nvidia could as well have designed ARB_oq, ARB_var, ARB_whatever right from the beginning. oq is on ati cards available as well, look at dx9. there you have it everywhere. ARB_var should have been there since the geforce1, and it still isn’t. ARB_whatever does never come sometimes. i don’t see why…

NV_rc (1,1_1), NV_ts (1,2,3) never have a chance to come to the ARB, they are too way-off opengl designed. that shows the hw exposing that is somehow crazy done, way-off logical design ways (dunno how much agree, but the pixelshader capability in the gf3/gf4 is sort of a hack, and espencially the “dependend texture accesses” are simply foolish. its a fixed setting, you can choose between some… thats what i mean with marketing hype and fooling of your own people).

i understand you that you have to suggest people NV_ exts everywhere, as nearly no ARB_ equivalent does exist. but thats your companies fault partially as well, imho. you designed it, so you should design it for the standart.

then, one day, you do an ext, and try to get it into the standard. its called ARB_vp. and look there, you still suggest everyone to use NV_vp. ARB_vp is much nicer to use from the syntax, and contrary to the NV_vp available on other hw than yours.

yes you can suggest NV exts. but you should suggest the ARB way as well.

but anyways, first of all you don’t care about me, you never made much money with me anyways… so its all okay

i wish you a nice christmas and good luck next year with the gfFX launch. i really hope you stop that extension mess. design hw fitting to the standards, not try to design the whole world around your card.

btw, to robbo.
if you think money is all that counts, you’re a VERY poor person. business does not need money as primary goal. its providing some good product. if that is NOT the primary goal, you get stuff like win98 and similar. released just to have it released, bugfree? why… they will buy it anyways.

49

Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can,
No ATI or NVidia, a brotherhood of silicAN.
Imagine all the people, coding for today - whahoo woahoo,
You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one,
I hope some day you will join us, and the world can render in DX9.1.

Happy christmas everyone…thank you and good night.

50

is there a link (greatly simplified of course)
which ppl on this forum - profit above all else?
which ppl on this forum - support d3d?
why are there bugger all d3d tutorials made by anyone outside ms.
eg gl tuts outnumber d3d tuts 15:1 (d3d changing with each release is only partly responsible)

bugger cristmas some of us have gotta go out + maximize profits.
to leave u all with the refrain of a song i wrote a few years ago called ‘the meaning of life’

the meaning of life is to f…
to f… until u lose your mind
youve gottas love everyone in sight
youve gotta do it until u go blind
and with any luck there will be an afterlife
but until that day comes along youre just gonna keep on moaning and sighing

51

Originally posted by zed:
which ppl on this forum - profit above all else?
which ppl on this forum - support d3d?

i don’t profit
i use dx9 and gl1.4

52

You’re still at school, dave. Nought but a child.

Zed, you’re no John Lennon, are you?

53

I think you guys just demonstrated what goes on in the minds of different individuals in a company. A lot of you are speaking from the point of view of do-gooders which is understable.

Let’s put things in perspective :

while(1)
{
idea;
R & D;
mass production;
marketing;
shipment;
sales;
}

Cant start up without money, and cant continue doing anything without money.

Talk about symbiotic relations

54

Originally posted by knackered:
[b]You’re still at school, dave. Nought but a child.

Zed, you’re no John Lennon, are you?[/b]

nope, i’m not at school. just partially… i’m working, and i’m currently at my company. so i’m actually not working but surfing, but i’m just there for the case something could **** up currently (i live too far away to be at home in case of some alarm )

55

I just think you ALL make too much noise for something that is not so important. Its a matter of CULTURE… american an influenced cultures ARE profit based…many uncontamined cultures are NOT. Everyone should be able to choose its side by its own… not to start a WAR about what is right or wrong.

I live in a country that was SMASHED and DESTROYED by Captalist and selfish way of seeing the world from certain countries. By myself I agree with Humus and folks, and I hope someday the humanity will evolve to a less stupid main objective. But util them it dos not worth to start such discussions ( you know that NO ONE will change its mind because of that). Just live in peace… and Merry Christmas!

56

Originally posted by OldMan:
[b]I just think you ALL make too much noise for something that is not so important. Its a matter of CULTURE… american an influenced cultures ARE profit based…many uncontamined cultures are NOT. Everyone should be able to choose its side by its own… not to start a WAR about what is right or wrong.

I live in a country that was SMASHED and DESTROYED by Captalist and selfish way of seeing the world from certain countries. By myself I agree with Humus and folks, and I hope someday the humanity will evolve to a less stupid main objective. But util them it dos not worth to start such discussions ( you know that NO ONE will change its mind because of that). Just live in peace… and Merry Christmas![/b]

Merry Christmas you, too.

57

But util them it dos not worth to start such discussions ( you know that NO ONE will change its mind because of that). Just live in peace… and Merry Christmas!

ITs all very well saying you wish companies would aim for the common good instead of profit, but at the end of the day, where does the wages come from that pays the workers? IF the workers dont get paid, they leave, and find employment that does pay them.

Just cos theres a few companies where the employees are happy to work for a pittance, doesn’t mean everyone should.

What if nvidia turned round to its employees and said, “Right, our main aim is to make ppl happy, and not make profit. Oh and you all have to have an 80% pay cut otherwise we’ll be bankrupt.” Prety much everyone would be outa there…

If ppl want companies to work for the common good, they need to have the financial ability to do so. A company on the rocks aint gonna do **** for no-one. Its about time you lot got off your moral-backsides and realised in the real-world you need money to do well in buisness. Else you go bankrupt or your employees walk out.

Flame on!

Nutty

58

I can’t believe we’re having a debate about whether capitalism is a good or a bad thing in almost 2003. It’s not just america that attaches such importance to the accumulation of profit, it’s quite a few other countries too, y’know - including the former soviet union.
Capitalism respects no religion, no culture and no idealism. It’s a fact. It’s a fact born out of natural instincts, evident throughout nature. It’s survival of the fittest, with some social responsibility bolted on the side.

59

Matt has contributed a lot of good stuff right here in front of your nose, and at other places a little farther away but still very relevant to the overall cause of this OpenGL thingy we all tend to love from time to time. As have cass and pbrown.

Accusing NVIDIA generally and Matt in particular of being misleading here is just silly. Outright silly and unappreciative.

Oh well, merry christmas y’all.

60

Originally posted by Nutty:
b but at the end of the day, where does the wages come from that pays the workers? [/b]

Not from the profits. Profits are calculated after all that stuff.

Anyway, I just want to say that my only disagreement with Matt’s posts was about “money is the primary goal”.

I was personally impressed with the commitment that nVidia has shown in supporting these forums. Even if they show preference for their products/extensions.

It’s something that I’ve seen from other companies (ATi, 3DLabs) but they’re clearly behind in this department.

Enjoy Christmas everyone! And let’s hope for an all new year of 2003 with ARB_VAO/ARB_VAR!