Has ATI passed its prime already?

[Anonymous]

So ATI users get two really good driver releases that only begin to untap the potential of their 8500's, making them actually competitive with NVIDIA's stuff.

Now we get Catalyst, a supposed improvement. So far this is what I know:

*No One Lives Forever games run WORSE with all sorts of artifacts.
*Ditto for Aliens vs Predator 2 or any other Lithtech game.
*NWN has issues.
*Grand Theft Auto 3 has major fog problems, the patch that was released by ATI to fix it refuses to install correctly on my computer.

The minute I have the funds to do so I am buying a new card. NOLF is one of my favorite games on the PC of all time, but I want it to run well. CRY.

[Xaroc]

Until ATI dedicates the resources that Nvidia does to driver development they will never be truely competative. I had a choice between a GeForce 4 MX and Radeon 7500 when buying a laptop and I am so glad I chose the GF4 MX. Despite the fact it is crap next to a real GF4 or even GF3 it at least has great drivers and runs everything flawlessly.

[Jason Becker]

I've had very few problems with my 8500, outside of some texture flashing problems in MOHAA. I don't think their up to Nvidia's but its still a vast improvement over 6 months ago. I don't regret getting my 8500 at all.

[Anonymous]

To veer the subject momentarily to another one of Nvidia's whipping children, is anyone going to buy one of those nifty-sounding new Matrox cards as previewed in a recent issue of Computer Games?

http://www.matrox.com/mga/media_center/press_rel/2002/parhelia_board.cfm

Sounds cool as shit, but if the developer support isn't there... who knows.

[Anonymous]

Yeah I get those artifacts in MOH:AA too. Damnation.

[Lando]

I will never buy another ATI product for as long as I live.

Nvidia or Matrox or ANYONE else.

My experience with the Radeon was enough to teach me that.

I tried numerous drivers, had to tweak each game individually, and generally drove myself crazy. I finally dumped the card for a GeForce and have never regretted it.

[Xaroc]

To veer the subject momentarily to another one of Nvidia's whipping children, is anyone going to buy one of those nifty-sounding new Matrox cards as previewed in a recent issue of Computer Games?

http://www.matrox.com/mga/media_center/press_rel/2002/parhelia_board.cfm

Sounds cool as shit, but if the developer support isn't there... who knows.

I used to be a big Matrox fanboi back in the days of the Matrox Millenium and Quake 1. I looked at the review on Anand and this new card looks slow except in a couple of very edge cases (1024x768 + high AA). I am hoping they can crank up the clock and fix some of the other performance issues with the card for the 2nd version. If they can get within 10% of Nvidia with better image quality

Here is the link (http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1645&p=1) for that Anand performance review.

[Anonymous]

Postively despise ATI and will never buy another card from then again... not unless they seriously change their attitude about customer support.

I got an ATI TV Wonder PCI board for Xmas, and it constantly freezes up on my system. ATI's last driver release for it were the "beta" drivers, which were released in July of 2001. They haven't released "final" drivers yet, even though 12 friggin' months have passed since the "beta" drivers were released.

Total bullshit. ATI has lost this customer, and it's their own friggin' fault.

[Sean Tudor]

Total bullshit. ATI has lost this customer, and it's their own friggin' fault.

I really don't understand why anyone even considers still buying ATI or Matrox cards for gaming. Even the latest Matrox Parhelion is slow compared to the latest GeForce4 range.

Price isn't an issue anymore - the GF4 Ti4200 is very attractively priced.

Plus we all know ATI's woeful driver update history.

Maybe people just like a challenge and make it hard for themselves by buying Matrox and ATI ? :roll:

[Jason Cross]

Matrox's Parhelia is definitely not worth the price. There are some things to really like about it, but the speed isn't there (part of that is driver optimization for sure, part is clock speed) and a few of the features just aren't quite ready for prime time yet.

I'll say this: Matrox's software for changing all your video card settings (like refresh rate, color and monitor calibration, anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering options, vsync, etc.) runs CIRCLES around everyone else's. None of that crappy "six levels deep in your display properties, with fourteen tabs, and dozens of obscure lists and checkboxes" crap. It's something mortals can use. They deserve all credit for it.

As for ATI - I've had many heated discussions with them about their drivers and software over the last year. Honestly, they're listening. They're doing something about it. They've devoted a *LOT* more resources to fixing things. They've made commitments to more driver releases, which I guess is good, but I'd rather them have ONE driver release that just freakin' works right all the time. :wink:

Improvements are great and all that, we would all prefer something that doesn't need or have room for improvement, right?

Catalyst is like of like Office for video software. It's updates to their media player, remote control software, and so on. And drivers, of course. And yes, the drivers still have some problems.

But they *ARE* aware of the need to do a lot better, and they *ARE* listening. It's a drastic change of attitude from the days of the Rage Fury and original Radeon.

The best thing you can do if you have an ATI card is submit their Driver Feedback form.
http://apps.ati.com/driverfeedback/

They're serious enough about listening to that feedback that they've centered a contest around it with some pretty nice prizes:
http://www.ati.com/playati/contests/catalyst/prizes.html

[Jason Cross]

Speaking of video cards, this is interesting. I'm surprised the tech websites haven't gotten all over this yet:

http://www.tridentmicro.com/press/2002/pr020415.html

Trident is re-entering the desktop market, after like a six year absence.

That XP4 chip is very small, very low-power, and very cheap. They expect the fastest XP4 chip (the "T3") to have 128MB cards retailing for $99.

And they expect performance to be no slouch. We're talking high clock speeds, full DirectX 8.1 features in hardware, and they claim they'll deliver 80% of a GF4 Ti 4600's performance in that $99 part.

[Stroker Ace]

Remember the Kyro II?

It was gonna be cool as well.... and eventually it did come out with a price/performance ration comparable to the geforce2 mx.

since then, nvidia has released 965133546 new cards, all of them named GeForce 4, and I haven't heard anything from PowerVR since. (correct me if i'm wrong, there may well be a kyro 3 in the works)

Speaking of GeForce 4s, I know a guy who recently bought a computer, "pre-modded" with windows, fans, lights, etc. He also got a GeForce 4, which he is quite proud of... but I checked when he wasn't looking, and it's a GeForce 4 MX. Which is less exciting than a GeForce 3.

...I guess that was a pointless diatribe on my part...

[Anonymous]

Yeah, gotta love the weaniness of the GeForce4 MX, especially after Steve Jobs touted the G4 as the second coming at MacWorld, but then all their systems ended up getting G4 MX's. Hah!

If ATI releases a friggin driver for my TV Wonder PCI that works, I might reconsider, but for now, screw 'em. I even checked the date... my "beta" driver was released on July 5, 2001. That is just 3 days short of an entire friggin' calendar year. There is absolutely no excuse for that.

[Jason Becker]

"Plus we all know ATI's woeful driver update history. "

This is a tired and outdated myth. Read anything recent form a respectable site and you will see praise for ATI driver support now. The 8500 is a very good card. Off and its not just speed. Excellent 2D AND 3D image quality. The best DVD playback around. Its a very good all around card.

[wumpus]

This is a tired and outdated myth. Read anything recent form a respectable site and you will see praise for ATI driver support now
Did you actually read the first message in this thread? These are problems TODAY with games RIGHT NOW using the LATEST DRIVERS.

I do not recommend ATI unless you rarely play games. Even back in the days of the Voodoo2 and TNT, nVidia drivers were quite good-- nVidia has always had a first class driver team. And ATI never will, in my opinion.

[Bub, Andrew]

FWIW
I'm also abandoning my ATI card. The list of games the current drivers deal with, poorly, has grown too long. I've got a GeForce 4 4600 VIVO coming later this week.

[Anonymous]

It's obvious the card is solid, those two driver releases that weren't crap were really awesome. Its the driver releases that suck.

[Jason Becker]

"Did you actually read the first message in this thread? These are problems TODAY with games RIGHT NOW using the LATEST DRIVERS. "


There's always problems with games using ANY drivers. I can go to Nvidia boards and find people having problems....amazing huh. Any respectable HW site will say how good the drivers have gotten.


"I do not recommend ATI unless you rarely play games."


Plain ignorance.


But I guess I could be missing something, but for some strange reason JK II, UT, Q3A, Freedom Force, Empire Earth, Dungeon Siege, Morrowind, Serious Sam, Diablo II all run just fine on my 8500. Ohh and the newest 102 drivers have fixed the crashing problem for many in NWN.

Nope I think I'll just go back to the plain ignrance thing again...

[Xaroc]

There's always problems with games using ANY drivers. I can go to Nvidia boards and find people having problems....amazing huh. Any respectable HW site will say how good the drivers have gotten.


True but with Nvidia you have a plethora of drivers to choose from. Chances are you can find one that will work well in every game. With ATI drivers from what I understand there are big tradeoffs because they are not released anywhere near as frequently.

-- Xaroc

[Anonymous]

'ignrance' rocks.

[Jason Becker]

"Chances are you can find one that will work well in every game."

ALthough ATI has been releasing regular drivers every cpl of weeks too(make that the so called 'leaked' drivers that Nvida made famous), I don't always see that as a positive. But if you want you can find sites with a whole list of past drivers from ATI too. There are also the popular Omega drivers that are a possible choice too. I won't argue that Nvidia's drivers arn't the best(they still are) but ATI has improved theirs immensly. They arn't the same as the ones from the old Rage Pro and early Radeon days.

The people that just assume they still suck like they did with the Rage Pro and just repeat the sme over and over on boards is why I put the ignorance statement out, because it is.

[mtkafka]

I miss the days of Voodoo, when the Voodoo 2 (and 3) was king and all was well and played ok.

BTW my first TNT was as bad as some people are saying there Radeon 8500's are now (in supporting games that is) .... so in that respect ATI ain't dead yet, just needs to keep up. And Carmack supposedly says that the Radeon 8500 is a good card (except for the drivers!). Somehow I like it that Carmack is actually trying to get some competition going with the video card manufacturers. I like choices in video cards. I dont like that Nvidia is king. But oh well, who cares?!?

BTW the Voodoo 5 rule'd! Iseem to have more 'issues' with my Geforce 4 than the Voodoo 5 in its heyday circa 2000.

etc

[Jason Becker]

3Dfx was great. Great cards and drivers. Hate to see a good company get downed by shitty management.

[Anonymous]

I want to add that I have been using a Radeon 8500 for quite a while now and can report no problems with any of the games that I play. In fact, if you owned a NVidia card and played F1 2001 when it was first released, your card didn't work with F1 2001 (or at least not without many problems) and it worked fine with the 8500.

I was a long time NVidia card user and decided to give ATI a shot. Haven't regretted it one bit. Driver support is pretty good now. I've enjoyed the experience so much that I'll be purchasing another ATI card when the next new technology is released. Not only are the cards pretty good, but the multimedia software that ships with it is excellent. Maybe I've been lucky and not played the specific games where the Radeon doesn't work in them, but for sports gaming it has the best bang for the buck ratio.

Chris

[Aleck]

I have just finally given up on ATI.

I don't have one of the 8500 cards, but the hoopla around those cards reminds me of the quotes that circulated around the time of the Radeon -- this card was at least as fast as NVidia's best, etc. etc.

For the record, I have a Rage 128, Radeon 32DDR, Radeon 64DDR VIVO, and TV Wonder PCI. All of them are fine. However, the drivers do leave a *lot* to be desired. I've found that, for example, every time there's a new release of Counter-Strike, I need to wait for an ATI fix, since ATI's drivers aren't well supported. While this may be a Counter-Strike problem, it's a problem that doesn't happen with NVidia cards (or even my old Voodoo2's, which still work just fine) and their implementations of DirectX or OpenGL.

I will say that ATI's driver support was getting better until Catalyst. Catalyst has been, in my experience, a huge step backwards -- something which makes me sad. Is it drivers or hardware that holds ATI back? I don't know, but I do know that their drivers have been and remain buggy, with occasional all-out BSODs, frequent artifacts, and the like. Combine that with NVidia's dramatically improved 2D quality, and, well...

After having NVidia-free systems for years (ever since Canopus exited the US market), my new box has a GF4 ti4400 -- and I haven't had a problem with a single game since. A somewhat amazing experience, since that hasn't been true of any ATI card I've owned.

I feel a little dirty -- I really want ATI to have competitive solutions, if only to ensure prices stay low -- but I can't in good conscience recommend them to friends.

[Derek Smart [3000AD]]

Maybe I've been lucky and not played the specific games where the Radeon doesn't work in them, but for sports gaming it has the best bang for the buck ratio.
Chris

Right there is the reason you don't have any complaints.

I could list the number of broken things in the ATI drivers (I'm on the dev program, being a developer and all) but it would be one helluva long post.

Here are a few *blatant* bugs - even in the current public and dev-only Catalyst driver set.


Fog is broken universally. But instead of actually fixing it, they release a GTA3 specific patch. Which, e.g. simmers won't know about if their game uses table fog. In fact, by default, there is no entry for table fog in the registry. Which is probably why the GTA3 patch (which is really just a replacement of two DLL files (from an older driver set!!) in the SYSTEM32 folder (heh) doesn't seem to install for some. To enable this, you have to either do it yourself (try telling that to John Doe) or use a utility such as Rage3DTweak to actually enable table fog. This then sets the value in the registry. Reboot required. Why? because the driver cannot do an active state reset while live. The solid state memory must be made of plastacine or chewing gum.

Until they actually realized that the GTA3 fix worked on other games (such as mine, thanks to my informing them of this little known fact), I had to manually disable table fog in the registry in order to prevent rendering artifacts in the game.

Specular lighting is flat out broken. In fact, not only does the damn driver go ahead and apply spec to unlit polys, it throws in an arbitrary value which also fucks up the model's material properties. The result? Some rainbow colored models with specular lighting on.

To see what a properly specular lit scene looks like, take a look at the 35 shots (http://www.gamescreenshots.com/smallthumbs.asp?category=PC&game_id=690) from Battlecruiser Generations (www.3000ad.com/products/bcg.shtml) which I'm going to be releasing later today. Courtesy of the glorious nVidia GF4 Ti4600 of course. :wink:

Due to a pretty nasty driver bug going back almost *one* year now, you have to add specific ZBIAS settings all over my games' graphics kernel in order to prevent the dreaded Z fighting....which of course, it not apparent on any other card driver. Not even the Kyro-II. Oh, did I mention that you then have to do an ATI chipset check in order to do this effectively?

W-buffer is flat out busted. They break this one with every other driver release. In fact, with W-buffer enabled (which my games need due to the humongous world and model sizes), you can't do any line drawing ops with the W buffer active. Why? because the damn driver is explicitly setting Z buffer during such ops....even though you've already set W buffer as active. No way around it.

[Anonymous]

All I'll add to this is something that Carmack put in a recent .plan update... he said that if he's writing code and testing it on ATI drivers and it fucks up, the mistake's on ATI's part. But if he's writing code and testing it on Nvidia drivers and it fucks up, then he made a mistake.

Today is the full year anniversary of the release of ATI's "beta" Windows 2000 drivers for the TV Wonder PCI that I received for Xmas. I can't use the TV Wonder, because it constantly freezes and I have to reboot. 365 days later, I still don't have "final" drivers. Screw you ATI.

[Anonymous]

"I miss the days of Voodoo, when the Voodoo 2 (and 3) was king and all was well and played ok."

I don't miss the days of games which only ran on Voodoo cards, like Elder Scrolls: Redjack.

Direct X has saved us from that, i guess.

[Desslock]

>I don't miss the days of games which only ran on Voodoo cards, like Elder Scrolls: Redjack

Redguard. Yeah, I was in such Morrowind craze that I was thinking of booting that one up again, when I remembered that. A bunch of other great games too: Independence War 1 and the expansion, Myth 1, Red Baron 3d.

[Dave Long]

Redguard would probably run pretty well non-accelerated on a high end PC today though. 3D acceleration is nice and all, but it doesn't make or break a lot of older games since you can run at high resolution without acceleration and have a similar experience.

--Dave

[Desslock]

>but it doesn't make or break a lot of older games since you can run at high resolution without acceleration and have a similar experience

Only when higher resolutions are offered. None of Myth 1, Independence War, or Wing Commander Prophecy (another glide game) support variable resolutions. I can't remember if Redguard does.

[Derek Smart [3000AD]]

All I'll add to this is something that Carmack put in a recent .plan update... he said that if he's writing code and testing it on ATI drivers and it fucks up, the mistake's on ATI's part. But if he's writing code and testing it on Nvidia drivers and it fucks up, then he made a mistake.

And he's damn right

And as if by cue, I got this from ATI today



Derek,

I've added this information to a bug report on specular problems with the 8500. We've encountered a few specular problems over the past month so maybe this will help with the investigations and fixes. Thanks for providing the extra detail there about the FVF and renderstates. Did you mention having a sample setup for this problem as well? or is that for another problem you mentioned?

I do want to add that they [ATI driver dev team] HAVE come a long way from where they were - but they still have aways to go before they can truly redeem themselves. As I've said (http://www.3000ad.com/archives/soapbox_102501.shtml) before, the ATI Radeon part (esp on the 8500) is freaking good, if only they could get more experienced driver developers. :roll:

[Brad Grenz]

It's a real shame too, cause ATI's chip designers seem to have their shit together.

[Anonymous]

It will be interesting to see how R300/NV30 play out, as ATi will be building on previous (8500) drivers, while nVidia will likely have to start fresh.

[wumpus]

The R300 is supposed to be the next great thing. When Carmack says it's fast, it's fast.

[xahlt]

It's a real shame too, cause ATI's chip designers seem to have their shit together.

That's true, but they have to have their shit together for several generations of chips, each highly competitive with Nvidia in raw speed, supported features, driver support and cost to challenge. That's what Nvidia has (with high cost being their biggest issue).

I agree that this next generation will go a long way to determining whether ATI is going to reclaim a solid share.

[Desslock]

>The R300 is supposed to be the next great thing. When Carmack says it's fast, it's fast

Are his comments available in an online plan update? Whattdidhesay?

[wumpus]

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1101

[Jason Cross]

The R300 is supposed to be the next great thing. When Carmack says it's fast, it's fast.

Carmack also did not have access to NV30, which had not even taped out yet as of E3.

R300 will surely be first, but NV30 will be within 60 days of its release and, for all intents and purposes, will be R300's main competition.

[wumpus]

I keep hearing NV30 won't be out until next year. Certainly anecdotal evidence indicates that this card is well behind ATI in the production process. But we'll see. This wouldn't be the first time ATI has screwed themselves out of an opportunity.

[DavidCPA]

From Tom's Hardware,

Uber-card :twisted:
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/02q3/020718/index.html

Budget Card :P
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/02q3/0207181/index.html

Looks like ATI has been spending some time in the lab lately. If the drivers can match the specs of the technology, ATI is going in the right direction.

-DavidCPA

[Jason Becker]

Some initial articles from Anandtech and others have come out on the Radeon 9700. The benchmarks were done in a strange way, but the intitial results are impressive.

[Jason Cross]

ATI has made good "metal" for a long time now. Their software is what typically needs help.

It's not a news flash to anyone that the new $400 video card is going to be much faster and have more features than the $400 video card released half a year ago. And the next $400 card will be even faster and have more features! :shock:

As for NV30's release date: I hear conflicting things. The "analysts" and rumor mills, both of which have the annoying habit of revising what they said and claiming "you heard it here first!", say it might not be out until next year. Or November. They can't make up their mind.

NVIDIA insists that it will launch with DirectX 9. Last I heard, that was going to be officially released in October.

I would guess, and this is just a guess, that we'll see a "launch" like this one (a month ahead of availability) in September, and cards in small volumes in Oct. Which puts ATI roughly 60 days ahead of NVIDIA.

Even if it's Nov., it's not the monumental lead that ATI makes it out to be. If the Radeon 9700 is in August, that's only 90 days ahead of Nov. It's a head start to be sure, but it's not like missing an entire product cycle.

[Jason Cross]

By the way, the site is totally hammered right now, but when you get a chance, download the large versions of these demo movies:
http://www.ati.com/developer/demos/r9000.html

Shows off what some of the fancy new floating-point pixel formats and stuff can do.

[Brad Grenz]

I'd be surprized if the NV30 didn't slip to early next year. And even when it does arrive, its superiority to the Radeon 9700 isn't exactly a foregone conclusion. The R300 runs on a 256 bit DDR memory bus and nVidia's next generation has a 128 bit one. And ATI can refresh their product pretty quickly with a higher clocked .13 micron version with much faster RAM (higher frequency DDR, or DDR-II which the GPU also supports).

The 9000 seems like a non-starter, though. You can get a faster 8500/8500LE for less than the 9000 will retail.

Brad Grenz

[Jason Cross]

I'd be surprized if the NV30 didn't slip to early next year. And even when it does arrive, its superiority to the Radeon 9700 isn't exactly a foregone conclusion. The R300 runs on a 256 bit DDR memory bus and nVidia's next generation has a 128 bit one.

There's no reason the NV30 should slip to next year. The .13 micron process isn't that troublesome: in fact, ATI is supposed to have a .13 micron product before the end of the year. And they both use TSMC as their fab.

And the NV30 won't have a 128bit memory interface. I don't know who told you that.

What, you think ATI is the only one going to support DDR-II?

Do you think they'll be first to market with it?

[Brad Grenz]

nVidia kept telling people they won't be moving to a 256 bit bus for the NV30. Have you heard anything definite to the contrary?

[mtkafka]

Is it possible that despite the Nvidia hold on 3d gaming the past few years that ATI really is the more solid company? I mean, Xbox is not doing too well (which uses Nvidia) and is the motherboard doing any better? ... actually I dont know what the hell I'm saying. I just like it that ATI is keeping up with nvidia. Plus they're Canadian. And Canadians are cool as Vanilla Ice. :lol:

etc

[Jason Becker]

" I mean, Xbox is not doing too well (which uses Nvidia"

So what? The Xbox is a MS product. Nvidia is just a supplier for some of the parts for it.

[wumpus]

================================================== ================
Battlefield 1942(tm) Single player Demo 1.0
Read Me File
June 18, 2002
================================================== ================

================================================== ================
System Requirements
================================================== ================

Minimum:
800 MHz CPU
256 Megabytes of RAM
3D accelerated GeForce 32 MB or equivalent with HTL
(Hardware Transform & Lightning) and 24-bit z-buffer
400 MB of free hard drive space
16X Speed CD-ROM/DVD-ROM
MS compatible mouse
DirectX 8 Compatible Sound Card

Required Operating Systems:
Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows XP or Windows 2000
Note that Windows 95 is not supported.

GeForce compatible cards will be supported and should work.
If you do have such a card and experience problems please
report type of card and drivers used.

These are known to have issues:
------------------------------------------------------------------

3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 AGP 64MB 3dfx Voodoo 5

3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 PCI 64MB 3dfx Voodoo 5

ATI Radeon AGP 64MB ATI Radeon

ATI Radeon AGP 32MB ATI Radeon

ATI Radeon 7500 AGP 64MB ATI Radeon 7500

Matrox Millennium G450 AGP 32MB Matrox G450

Matrox Millennium G550 AGP 32MB Matrox G550

S3 Savage 2000 AGP 32MB S3 Savage 2000

SiS 315 AGP 32MB SiS 315

Trident Blade XP AGP 32MB Trident Blade T64
------------------------------------------------------------------
Cards that are not GeForce compatible will not be supported!

[Brad Grenz]

No mention of the 8500 and up in that list.

But wtf is with this:

Cards that are not GeForce compatible will not be supported!

GeForce compatible? What does that even mean? I bet a big nVidia logo appears when you start this game... Are we back to DOS and Soundblaster? GeForce compatible...

[Jason Becker]

"GeForce compatible? What does that even mean?"

That their lazy.

[Supertanker]

Well, I've got a nVidia card (a shiny new Ti4200 for my birthday), but that doesn't stop the BF demo from rearranging my desktop icons every time I run it. I'm guessing it sets the resolution to 640x480 at some point, which bunches everything into the upper left corner. Grrr - stop BFing my desktop BF!

Is the new ATI part the same mystery part they used for the E3 Doom 3 demo? Have I mentioned recently that Doom 3 will suck? Or was it blow?

[Brad Grenz]

Yeah, Doom 3 was demoing on R300 (Radeon 9700) hardware.

[DTG]

This story from this week's Business Week seems relevent to this thread - sorry I've posted the whole thing, but I think you have to be a paying subscriber to access their web site so I can't link to it:



Nvidia: Dodging a Hail of Bullets

In the shoot-'em-up business of graphics chips, Nvidia Corp. (NVDA ) has rocketed from obscurity in just four years to become the fastest gunslinger in town. To the delight of gamers worldwide, the company has consistently delivered technology that brings dazzling, movielike digital graphics to computers and game consoles. That helped Nvidia rank as the best-performing stock in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index last year, with its shares up 308%, to $66.90.

Now, however, the Santa Clara (Calif.) company is dodging a hail of bullets engraved with its name. PC sales are stagnating. Competition from rivals such as ATI Technologies Inc. (ATYT ) and Intel Corp. (INTC ) is intensifying. Manufacturing problems are threatening to delay Nvidia's next-generation chip. Just to top things off, the Securities & Exchange Commission is digging into the company's accounting practices. No wonder Nvidia stock is down 68%, to $21 this year. "For the first time in a long time, Nvidia is being challenged," says analyst Joseph Osha of Merrill Lynch & Co.

Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang is trying to beat back the challenges. As sales slow in the company's core desktop-PC market, he's pushing into new markets, including graphics chips for high-end notebooks and such low-end products as set-top boxes. On July 16, Nvidia released a new set of chips aimed at low-end PCs and set-top boxes. And Huang is striving to make sure Nvidia's next-generation chip, code-named NV30, hits the market later this year, right on time. "We're gaining traction in every single market we're serving," Huang says.

Still, Nvidia's problems look like they're going to get worse before they get better. The company is having a tough time penetrating the new markets it has targeted. In low-end graphics chips, for example, Intel is pricing so aggressively that it is expected to grab 40% of the market by mid-2003, up from 17% now. Worse, ATI introduced its new Radeon graphics chip on July 17, and industry analysts say it's a step ahead of Nvidia's current top-line GeForce4 chip in speed and graphics quality. Losing its title as the performance king in graphics chips will probably cause a slowdown in Nvidia's sales growth this year. Merrill Lynch's Osha estimates Nvidia's revenues will rise 54%, to $2.1 billion, in the fiscal year ending in January, with net income of $275 million. That's a hefty retreat from last year's 87% revenue growth.

How Nvidia fares in the long term will depend on the NV30. If the company can get the chip out in volume later this year, Nvidia will recover its performance advantage over ATI and should do well next year. If, however, the NV30 is delayed several months, the company's fortunes could spiral downward. Its profits could fall, forcing cuts in critical research and development. "It's going to be a tremendous squeaker, and in this business, you don't like squeakers," says Osha, one of six analysts who recently downgraded the company's stock. For the fiscal year ending in January of 2004, Osha predicts revenues will climb only 7%.

Why the squeaker? In trying to outperform ATI's new chip, analysts and rivals say Nvidia was several weeks late in sending its design specifications to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSM ), its manufacturing partner. Complicating matters, TSMC is having problems with the new process Nvidia is switching to for its high-power chip. Nvidia is working on the problems, but it won't guarantee full production volumes for the holiday shopping season.

The sudden pessimism is a far cry from last year's glory days, when Nvidia was enjoying the gamer's equivalent of a bonus round. Last fall, Nvidia's shares rose on expectations of a strong launch for Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox, because it supplies graphics chips for the game player. In the latest quarter, Xbox accounted for 22% of Nvidia's revenues. But Xbox also marked the starting point of the company's troubles. In November, 11 company engineers were charged by the SEC with trading on knowledge of the Xbox deal before it was formally announced. Nvidia says some employees were fired, but a spokesman declined to say how many were fired and what disciplinary action, if any, was taken against others.

During that investigation, the SEC uncovered the potential accounting troubles. The commission is looking into whether the company double-booked revenues and improperly accounted for reserves. To preempt any SEC action, Nvidia restated its financials, boosting profits by $1.3 million, and removed its chief financial officer, Christine B. Hoberg. Hoberg, who is expected to take another position with the company, could not be reached for comment. The SEC inquiry is still open.

For now, Nvidia has a little breathing room. The expense and engineering expertise required to develop new chips are stiff barriers for potential new entrants. But to beat back reinvigorated rivals, Nvidia must restore its focus on the high-end markets that elevated the company to its previous heights. Otherwise, Nvidia will find its pistol empty in the most important shootout of its life.

[Anonymous]

Yes, Doom3 ran on the ATI hardware at E3, but Carmack himself stated that Nvidia didn't have its next-generation hardware ready, so the sheer fact that it was running on ATI hardware isn't a total endorsement of ATI over Nvidia, it's just that ATI had it's hardware available at the time and Nvidia didn't.

No one knows what would have happened if Nvidia had its part ready at the time. He may have demoed with both, or ran with Nvidia's only. All this says is what we've known all along, ATI had 2-4 month lead on the next-generation hardware at the moment, and that translated into them being ready for E3 and Nvidia not.