The Wall Street Journal-20080128-AMD Graphics Card May Test Nvidia

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AMD Graphics Card May Test Nvidia

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Chip makers are shifting strategies to get the next leap in graphics performance, including techniques that Advanced Micro Devices Inc. hopes to use to leapfrog rival Nvidia Corp.

The companies have long raced to increase the speed of graphics chips, which are used to generate three-dimensional effects and manage video in computer games and other applications. Those chips are often sold on add-in cards.

Now AMD, which entered the field through its purchase of ATI Technologies, plans to push performance even higher by incorporating two of its latest chips on a single graphics card. The company, which has fallen behind Nvidia lately in high-end personal-computer graphics, says a series of benchmark tests suggest the new ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 card is the clear speed leader.

And, at a suggested retail price of $449, the new product is considerably less expensive than Nvidia's fastest offering, the GeForce 8800 Ultra, whose high-end models can cost as much as $699.

The latest AMD product "gets a big thumbs up from me," says Jon Peddie, a market researcher in Tiburon, Calif., who has been testing the new card.

Doubling up on graphics chips isn't really a new concept. Though some products have been tried in the past with two chips on a single card, a more common technique is to install two single-chip cards in a system.

But two cards typically only increase performance by about 50%, Mr. Peddie estimates. By contrast, his tests suggest the new AMD card is about 70% faster than a card with a single graphics chip.

But Mr. Peddie is quick to note that Nvidia is likely to soon announce its own dual-chip card, so any performance leadership by AMD may not last long. Nvidia executives don't dispute that suggestion, though they contend the new AMD card only catches up with Nvidia's own top speed.

"It's a high-end product but we don't see it as a game-changing product," said Jeff Fisher, an Nvidia senior vice president in charge of its graphics-chip unit.

Meanwhile, the two companies are also using a new strategy to make low-end computers much better at playing games. Such systems don't typically have separate graphics cards, but use specialized circuitry that is incorporated into other accessory chips on the main circuit board of a PC -- a capability called integrated graphics.

Now, the companies are developing low-end cards that work cooperatively with the built-in graphics circuitry to increase performance. Up to now, installing a graphics card usually disabled the integrated graphics in a computer.

Besides the new high-end card, AMD, of Sunnyvale, Calif., last week announced a low-end model called the ATI Radeon HD 3400 GPU. Priced at $49 to $65, it can be used with the graphics features in other AMD chips to provide what the company calls hybrid graphics. The combination can allow low-end computers to play sophisticated games that didn't work well on such systems, AMD executives say.

Nvidia, of Santa Clara, Calif., discussed a similar approach it calls HybridPower at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month. The new approach makes it possible to cut down on power usage by using the integrated graphics circuitry alone when greater performance isn't needed for games, Nvidia says.