Key Product Differentiators

The GPU has evolved beyond its role as just a 3D gaming card. GPUs are the foundation of visual computing, providing amazing graphics, massively parallel compute capability, powerful image and video processing, and enablement of rich new display technologies. While the GPU’s role in the future will continue to expand, today we can see NVIDIA PhysX and CUDA technology spearheading pervasive visual computing.

Users should expect to get more out of their GPU over the lifetime of ownership, as will occur with increasing PhysX and CUDA adoption. This is especially true for a high-end GPU, which is a substantial investment for the end user. When comparing to the HD 4870 X2, we would like you to consider the following key advantages provided by NVIDIA GPUs:

1. NVIDIA PhysX Technology - PhysX running on NVIDIA GPUs is radically changing the gaming experience, and many more PhysX titles are shipping soon. Content is available now and more is coming very soon. You should compare 3DMark Vantage and PhysX applications running PhysX on the GPU for NVIDIA boards versus running PhysX on the CPU for ATI.
    
   At this point in time, only 3DMark Vantage, Warmonger and three specially-enhanced maps in Unreal Tournament 3 support NVIDIA PhysX, and try as you may, you just cannot play 3DMark Vantage...

2. NVIDIA CUDA Technology - All of the 80 million plus GeForce 8 Series and higher GPUs in the field are CUDA-enabled, essentially giving you two different personalities with each GPU - graphics and compute.
    
   The latest CUDA-enabled Badaboom beta software is available today from Elemental Technology. Badaboom uses CUDA and the massively parallel processors available in NVIDIA’s GPUs to transcode video at high quality and fast speeds. By moving this task to the GPU, Badaboom allows users to continue using their CPU for tasks that they would normally not be able to do during a CPU-based video transcode, such as e-mail or surfing the web.
    
   Unfortunately, like most CUDA-based software, Badaboom will come at a significant price premium. The massive increase in rendering speed would be useful for commercial users but it is unlikely to benefit home users. NVIDIA really has to get CUDA support out into mainstream applications before it will really take off.

3. SLI Technology - The number of games that scale in performance with NVIDIA SLI technology has always been greater than ATI Crossfire. SLI drivers are more stable, and SLI is the largest multi-GPU gaming ecosystem, with over 600 SLI-ready games and over 650 SLI-ready certified hardware devices. We’ve seen various reviews describe scalability and compatibility problems with ATI 4-way Crossfire technology, while NVIDIA 3-way SLI provides a more compatible and reliable high performance upgrade path using nForce motherboards.
    
   That's going to be a really tough sell, with CrossFire X technology in every current Intel 4-Series motherboard and all future Intel motherboards. Now that Intel is involved, CrossFire driver stability will soon cease to be an issue. For certain, there will be more CrossFire motherboards than SLI motherboards, thanks to NVIDIA's policy of restricting SLI to their own chipsets. The only exception is the Intel Skulltrail motherboard. As Intel's chipsets are far superior to NVIDIA's, it's no surprise that most Intel Core 2 users continue to purchase Intel motherboards.

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