Okay, so this is kinda bugging me lately. Are Radeon and ATI synonymous? Same with Geforce and nVidia? I never really understood this.

How about when a company produces both brands? For example, XFX is a manufacturer of both Geforce and Radeon cards. What's the difference? So, is it because motherboards ONLY use either Radeon or Geforce? Does nVidia own XFX or the other way around? I'm so confused.

ATI makes the Radeon chipset, nVidia makes the Geforce chipset. It's their brands.
Companies like XFX, Bgtech, EVGA, VisionTek manufacture the cards to sell.
In easiest words?

IP is correct, I think. I'm not sure if Sapphire, XFX et al actually manufacture the cards or if AMD/nVidia simply act as OEMs to the former, allowing them to sell GPUs under their own brand name.

That's exactly how it works Will.

Some manufacturers are specific to each company and others work for both. XFX for example was strictly NV until the HD4000 series.

I'm pretty sure the companies do make their own boards for the graphics cards (though based on designs from the GPU makers). The companies that make the graphics cards ultimately decide what will go on them, including what brands of components they put on them and whether they will be putting over-spec parts on some cards (for example, faster ram than a certain reference model requires to run at its default speed).

put simply, GeForce and Radeon are simply NVIDIA's and ATI's line of GAMING graphic cards. Yes, that means that NVIDIA and ATI make graphic cards that ARE NOT meant for gaming. rather, they're meant for running professional programs such as autoCAD. fyi, their respective lines are Quadro and FireGL(i could be wrong about the second one).

what is important to understand is that the cards you buy aren't all made by nvidia/ati. what IS made is the big square chip(GPU) in the center of rectangular card. keep in mind that there are many, many other components on the board other than the GPU. nvidia/ati DESIGNS the board and MAKES* AND DESIGNS the GPU; Nvidia/ati DO NOT make the board.

then who does make the board? its their AIB(add-in-board - i could be wrong about this acronym too) partners.

what happens is that the AIB partners buy the GPU from Nvidia/ATI and they also receive a 'blueprint' of how the rest of the board should look like - this is called the reference board. now, the AIB partner can simply follow the reference design to save on engineering design costs(which they always do) and just simply buy the parts and put them where the reference design states they should go. hwoever, AIB partners will often put their customize the designs to make the GPU work better.

in the end, you're not technically buying from NVIDIA/ATI, you buying from their AIB partners.

ps, AIB partners aren't owned, they're just partners. the AIB save on having to design their own processors(this is a MONUMENTAL amount of work), and NVIDIA/ATI save the cost of having to make all the boards and custom designs.

*this is not entirely true, neither ATI nor NVIDIA have fabs(factories that make microprocessors - these things are VERY micro). instead, they DESIGN the chip and simply contract TSMC to make it for them.


pss i really hope that post was understandable...

Amazingly informative post, Sauce. Nothing I didn't know, but definitely things I was too lazy to type.

Sauceover, that was like perfect. Thank you, kind sir.

Oh yeah, thanks everybody else too XD I was just too lazy to put any additional research into the info you gave me. I just wanted to comprehend everything through a single post.

Hmm, my question (sort of related) is how do these companies keep coming out with better and better graphics cards each year? Do they just continue to engineer them better every year somehow?

As an addon to this, what is the difference between say a 9800 GT and a 9800 GTX? I have a 9800 GT and a friend of mine at one point said something along the lines of, "Oh man, should have gone for the GTX instead." I figured it was, at most, a minor upgrade so I didn't pay attention to it.

The companies' capability to make better and faster cards usually relies on the level of precision available in the manufacturing process. Usually however, the companies will release a broad range of GPUs covering different performance and budget requirements.

A couple of years ago CPUs/GPUs entered the realms of nanotechnology when their manufacturing process went down to 95nm precision. It is now down to 45nm but they are going to have trouble shrinking it down much more, due to the way materials behave differently at such small sizes. I think they are going to have to develop some other way of improving them in the near future.

perceived performance comes in one flavour. actual performance comes in two.

before i get started, what you need to understand is that the hotter a microprocessor is, the slower it works. the reason is twofold: firstly, for whatever laws of physics, heat somehow interrupts the integrity of an electrical signal(which all aspects on electronics rely on) and rendering it useless and unable to perform 'work'(imagine tripping every other step you made - you wouldn't get very far, very fast now would you?). secondly, the transistors and electronic pathways get physically damaged by heat. in an efffort to make their parts last, designers will make their parts perform SLOWER(this is called throttling) as they hit certain temperature thresholds. when they perform slower, they produce less heat(its a negative feedback loop for you biology people ).

performance comes as a result of architectural designs. the first thing you should know is that exact details of microprocessor architectural are FAR BEYOND my head...you need to be damn smart and damn well educated to understand it. basically, this decides the amount of transistors used in a chip and HOW they are used in the chip. the first thing you need to understand is that GPUs and CPUs are VERY different beasts. the GPU has many, many copies of the exact same hardware inside of it, whereas the CPU has only one of each type of hardware, but those are much larger and very quick and 'powerful.' basically, compare it to this: i could use 1200 labourers to build a dirt bridge to cross a river, or i could use a team composed of a lumberjack, a range-sighter, and a surpervisor to figure out that i could simply jsut chop down a large tree which would gain me access to the other side. hopefully, that helps you see how the chips are built inside. the sum of the internal specialized components, and the interface(largely determined by the internal components) to things such as memory compose the architecture. the optimization, or sometimes complete overhaul, of the architecture(through error-and-trial and application of theoretical concepts) produces the performance increase from generation to generation.

secondly, performance comes as a result of transistor shrinking(each size is referred to as a 'process' - such as the 40nm process). why does this make things run faster? i'll admit, i don't understand all the nuances, but one huge factor is the fact that smaller transistors require less power to run and therefore produce less heat(refer to the above blurb on heat), allowing it to run at higher speeds without the penalties a larger process would face. moving on, like i said, i'm not* entirely sure about this, but i believe smaller transistors can fir closer together, meaning that the electronic signal has a shorter distance to travel before it can 'get to work.'

thirdly, the PERCEIVED performance increase. this has NOTHING to do with design in the slightest. its entirely an effort to milk the most out of the customer(okay, i'm being VERY har dhere, but from the perspective of the customer, its exactly what is happening)...i'm talking about harvesting. what is harvesting? well, we need to go back to the beginning(AGAIN). remember that i said microprocessors were very small things? turns out that small things are very hard to make. so hard in fact, that getting 50% of the chips you;re making actually come out and work perfectly is a fairly acceptable yield. what about the chips that come out wrong? the thing is, even though that the chip may not work properly, it may still work in some degree. alright....so the chip only runs at half-speed, i can't use it as my top-of-the-line product, obviously. what do i do? i HARVEST it and sell it as a lower tier product even though it was originally meant to be a top-tier product. now, through the combination of top-tier products and middle-tier products, i can sell 85% of each batch. thats a HUGE bonus and can mean a successful generation of products or a financial flop. its hard to understand, but i'll give you a few examples below. anyways, how is this a 'rip-off' to the consumer? you know that GTX 260 you just bought? well, its just a HARVESTED GTX 280...YET, when you go buy a GTX 280, you're paying a premium, even though NVIDIA can still make a profit if it sold it at GTX 260 prices.

exmaples of harvested products:
HD 4850 is a harvested HD 4870(theres a little more to the story... a hd 4850 uses a different, slower type of memory than the hd 4870)
GTX 260 is a harvested GTX 280

HOWEVER, a HD 4870 is NOT a harvested HD4890. the 4890 uses a slightly modified version of the RV770 core(it uses the RV790 core).

ps, a little bit of the info could be wrong....i'm fairly intoxicated atm.


EDIT:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3469

you should read that....its an article about the development behind the RV770. the GPU(not the card...its important to keep that distinction) that wrecked havoc with NVIDIA this generation. as a general note, i recommend reading the articles written by ANAND himself if you want to know more about hardware...he's a great writer and knows his shit.

ps, i'm not related to Anandtech in anyway, i just like their articles. i hope this doesn't seem like i'm advertising.

EDIT2:

also, you should know that when you shrink the transistors in a given architecture, you generally must REDESIGN the architecture to be use the smaller transistors. generally, this doesn't SEEM to be much of a problem. HOWEVER, for the gt200(or w/e it is called...i've heard so many different names this generation for nvidia), NVIDIA successfully shrunk it from 65nm(or something rather) to 55nm. ALTHOUGH, when they tried to shrink it down to 40nm....to put it simply...it was a CLUSTERFUCK. no 40nm gt200 parts(at least, last time i checked) are released or planned. for those interested, it was the second blow to NVIDIA this generation. it meant that NVIDIA couldn't improve yields*, NOR could it release a proper gtx 200 part for laptops**.

*i didn't explain this above, so i'll explain it here. chips are made on a ROUND piece of silicon(called a wafer). the circle is then cut up into a grid(the pieces on the edge - not square/rectangular - are useless). the smaller your process, the smaller your die will be(if you want it to be, sometimes you'll keep it the same size and just stuff the extra space with more transistors), meaning that you will fit more onto a given wafer...with the end result of earning more profit.

**the gt200 core simply produces too much heat to be used a laptop chassis. you may say that you've seen gtx260m parts out there, HOWEVER, in reality, they're actually G92 cards. ps, nvidia has gotten alot of crap about this...its ANOTHER renaming for them, lol.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Aug 28 2009, 8:55 pm by Sauceover.

What happened to those biochips they were developing? Last i heard they couldn't keep then stable but that was a year or two ago. *runs off to ask google*

Google says they aren't biochips. I forget the name though. If I remember correctly, the advantage was they were multistate 'transistors' .

Ugh can't find them. I guess they didn't work out or I woulda heard.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 28 2009, 10:28 am by zany_001.

biochips? no clue what you're talking about. technolgies like that are in the 15+ years spectrum.

the new frontier is quantum computing...although it more than likely won't be used for home users...or even most businesses.

Holy crap, Sauce, that was extremely thorough. Thanks for posting all that, it really cleared some things up for me (and my future graphic card purchases).

Sauce covered harvesting, but not binning. I'll do it though.

Binning is a process any chip goes through, both CPUs and GPUs are tested by their manufacs for the lowest voltage they can operate their stock frequency at stably. This is the chips VID. They also calculate the temperature at which it does this. This is what makes an E5200 a 5200 instead of a 5300 or 5400 ect. because the only thing being changed is the frequency at which the chip is run (Or the multiplier but thats CPU only.). So when a G92 core (One of their most popular.) that was going to be a 8000 series card got binned, its VID and temp would determine if it would be a GT or GTX. This is why theoretically, the price premium you pay for a 8800GTX or E8600 might be worth it because the chip may have a very nice VID and temp to be overclocked with.

In short, not all chips are created equal.

That being said, conversely, we know that in general with extra cooling, lower CPUs (E7200) can match or beat their more expensive higher binned brother's stock frequency (E7500, note these are just examples.) without voltage becoming an issue until we really start pushing. When overclocking on air it is unlikely that voltage will ever become a problem before temperature does. This is also why the HD4830, HD4770, and HD4890 are considered such great values: Because they OC very far when compared to other GPUs. (4890s are known for reaching 1GHz core frequency, which is nothing to sneeze at.)

For more info, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 28 2009, 1:54 pm by Excalibur.