NVIDIA Graphics Cards - dying out?

[JustinR]

Hey everybody,

I've been noticing through out these past few months that a lot of laptops (particularly Dell and HP) don't have nVidia graphics cards anymore just ATI - and if you really want an nVidia you have to get the highest of high-end laptops to find one (like Dell's Alienware m17X or HP's Pavillion dv8t series) I'm not sure about other major manufactures, but I see this as a pretty big down because nVidia offers great, although proprietary, linux drivers for there cards, while ATI is barely catching up.

Its pretty annoying actually, especially having to lookup an ATI card to see if it's compatible with Ubuntu.

Sooo, anybody know why nVidia cards seem to be disappearing?

[betrunkenaffe]

price.

[JustinR]

price.

Can they really be that expensive?? I always though nVidia was the greatest but too expensive to be put back into mainstream computers (especially laptops)?

[AllRadioisDead]

Not sure, it's a shame.
After moving to Ubuntu, I sold my old HD4850 and upgraded to a GTS250.
I've never looked back, and I've never had a problem with it.

[betrunkenaffe]

If you are trying to provide a graphics card (other than intel) in a computer but keep the cost down for a midrange, 40+ bucks can be a big difference.

Nvidia will be back in the midrange laptops eventually.

[3rdalbum]

Nvidia and ATI were pretty close in the last generation of graphics cards. For this current generation (ATI 5000 series and Nvidia 400 series), ATI's cards are faster, cheaper, more energy efficient and run cooler.

That doesn't mean that Nvidia is "dying out", only that they've got a lot of work ahead of them to produce some GPUs as good as ATI's in time for this current generation, or to try and catch up to next generation's products.

Unfortunately for Linux users it is extremely limiting - you can either have a graphics card that runs cool but has buggy drivers and extremely locked-up potential; or you can have a space heater installed in your PC.

[aeiah]

id just go with intel or the ION platform for now

[Lucifer The Dark]

Laptops are a developmental dead-end, nVidia are aiming for high end desktop machines instead, now that CUDA is being adopted by the 3D crowd you'll see ATI die off instead.

[McRat]

My laptop has nVidia 230m with CUDA, it was made in Feb. HP dv8. It's a POS though. It benchmarks pretty high for a notebook, with 6.4 Win7 rating when it's not doing foul deeds or just shutting down.

Not sure if Windows is reporting it right, but it appears to use 3 GB of RAM off the motherboard. That's a bit silly. Not even workstation cards uses 4 GB (3+1)

I also built a cheap clone that had ATI integrated 4290 graphics in it, and WOW. That rips too for a built in video.

[Redache]

Laptops are a developmental dead-end, nVidia are aiming for high end desktop machines instead, now that CUDA is being adopted by the 3D crowd you'll see ATI die off instead.

Laptops are not a development dead-end, there's always room for more power efficient GPU's. ATI also have OpenCL and Nvidia may end up licensing CUDA to other manufacturers(doubtful though it may be). Look at the GTX460, that proves that Nvidia still care about the mainstream since it's the place where every company makes the most money. They'd have to be stupid to focus on the high end.

I have an HD4870 and it works perfectly with the FOSS Radeon HD drivers so I wouldn't discount ATI just yet. I would rather have good Open Source Drivers over amazing Proprietary drivers any day.

The reason Nvidia aren't found in a lot of these laptops is partly due to the license for Nforce essentially being killed by Intel for the core i line and the aging/high cost of a lot of Nvidia's Discreet mobile GPU's. ATI are just cheaper and more power efficient in this space. Nvidia will catch up at some point, it's just the solution they have for power efficient graphics in the core i space is pretty expensive (google Nvidia Optimus if you want to know more).