Interview with Nvidia/Derek Perez

Zardon: How many people work for nvidia?

Derek: With the acquisition of MediaQ – NVIDIA is now well over 1750 employees.

Zardon: What is your position within nvidia?

Derek: I’m the director of public relations at NVIDIA.

Zardon: How long have you worked with nvidia and do you enjoy working for the company?

Derek: I’ve been with the company for over 5 years now.

Zardon: How can you see nvidia’s interactions with the general enthusiast community changing in the future?

Derek: I think you’ll see a couple of things. First of all – we’ve always monitored the community and listened to what they said – but very rarely have we communicated directly with them. So you’ll see more NV people participating in public forums – answering questions and laying to rest rumors and speculation. Also – you’ll see us sponsor more LAN parties, Gamefest, and so on. Doing tutorials, give-aways, sponsorships and more.

Zardon: How much feedback from the enthusiast communities do you think will be accepted and used in driver and/or hardware improvement and development.

Derek: We’ll take all the feedback and do what’s best for the community. Not everything is “do’able” but we will make a concerted effort to deliver the tools, features and performance they need.

Zardon: Do you see non-beta driver releases happening on a faster rate in the future? If so, would these drivers be WHQL certified?

Derek: When we have new performance increases, major bug fixes or new features – we release a driver version. This schedule will continue. Our philosophy is to always release WHQL certified drivers.

Zardon: Any possibility of giving Nvrotate a friendlier interface (e.g hotkey to rotate) so it can be used with pivoting LCD screens which do not include a full version of pivot software.

Derek: If you have suggestions on how to make it more user friendly – send it in.

Zardon: Regarding the issue of new graphic driver installation, some people install over the top of older sets, and some use cleaning software/uninstallation routines prior to installing a new set. What is the official stance on the subject of installation procedures and Drivercleaner software?

Derek: Our official stance is to always…ALWAYS…install new drivers over a cleaned drive. Some of the issues people are seeing with our nForce drivers are occurring simply because they are installing over old drivers. This is bad. Always uninstall old drivers before loading new ones.

Zardon: There has been a lot of negative publicity recently about “optimisations” for Futuremark’s 3dmark2003 which many see as inappropriate. ATI have stated they have removed all of their “optimisations”. Can you explain nvidia’s stance on appropriate benchmarking methods, and do you feel that you got a raw deal on this.

Derek: I don’t think we got a raw deal – what I do think is that these are complex devices (DX9 GPUs) and they take some explaining. In regards to our optimizations strategy, We optimize applications to get the best performance we can and deliver the best experience to the end user. It is common for GPU manufacturers to optimize shaders and code for major applications. For programmable shaders like we have today, there can be substantial differences between optimized and unoptimized code.

We will continue to do application specific performance optimizations and compatibility fixes. We met with Futuremark and discussed the optimizations they questioned. They now have a better understanding of the technology – and I think you’ll see them endorse our methodology.

In addition, we have new, stricter guidelines in place to insure that questionable optimizations do not get introduced in future driver builds. All future optimizations must pass the following checkpoints before it can before checked in to the driver:

An optimization must produce the correct image
An optimization must accelerate more than just a benchmark
An optimization must not contain pre-computed state

Zardon: What is Nvidia’s current involvement with Futuremark? Are you now a full beta partner again?

Derek: As announced on the 12th August – we have rejoined their development program.

Zardon: In the past, nvidia has focused on major steps in its process changes: 0.25u->0.18u->0.15u->0.13u. The next big step is obviously 0.09u, but after the 0.13u debacle at TSMC, and considering IHVS wish to continue a rapid evolution of the transistor count, could it be that in the future nvidia would choose to do more minor steps, such as 0.14u to 0.11u?

Derek: First of all – I wouldn’t call the .13um process a “debacle”. I would call it difficult and a learning experience – and those experiences will help us to move forward in the evolution of these GPUs. Of course there are minor steps we can take, ie: going to .11um or .14um…but the next big step is to move to .09um process – and we look forward in doing so in time.

Zardon: Is is possible to make faster videocard with 2 or 3 core chips like 3dfx did? Apart from higher costs, can you detail the pros and cons with multi core GFX cards?

Derek: Its always possible – I’m not sure its cost effective anymore though.

Zardon: The nforce chipsets have been a massive nvidia success story, do you have any other plans to expand further into the industry away from graphics, for example perhaps manufacturing stand alone sound cards using the soundstorm technology?

Derek: nForce has been a huge success for NVIDIA, we’re happy with the progress and the momentum that we’ve seen with AMD. We’re always looking at new markets and ways to extend our technology, whether it be networking, audio, or graphics. Stay tuned.

Zardon: This question came from a good friend of mine Paola Martella, the creator of the opengl benchmark Glexcess : “Do you plan to support opengl v2.0 features on nv30 or nv35 gpus in the near future, even through software emulation?”

Derek: When the OpenGL ARB announced the spec for v.2.0 – then we will support it just like we’ve been the first to support all of the previous versions of OpenGL on our way to what the industry calls the best OpenGL support in the industry.

Zardon: Will you ever re-add the option to force quality (trilinear etc) settings for AA/AF?

Derek: Yes we will – we hope to do so in a future driver rev.

Zardon: When will we see the first driver which follows the new ”optimizations standards” that nVidia has set up for themselves?

Derek: They should be hitting the market this week – stay tuned.

Zardon: There have been recent comments by the developers of Half Life 2 that all graphics cards will have concerns when Anti-Aliasing is enabled, ATI cards such as 9500, 9600, 9700 and 9800 will be able to use FSAA with a work-around, what are nvidia doing to resolve this issue for their hardware?

Derek: As HL2 is not yet shipping, nothing is set in stone. Our engineers continue to work closely with the HL2 development team and the reason we do this, not just with Valve but with many leading developers, is to ensure that any issues discovered in the coding process can be addressed, ensuring the final product looks great and plays great on our hardware.

Zardon: There have been several retracted postings of the N-Force chipset drivers (e.g. 2.41 and 2.41) due to concerns with performance. The drivers currently on the nvidia site are 2.03, what are nvidias plans for the N-force chipset drivers? And will there be plans to step up production of these drivers? The situation is quite unsatisfactory right now.

Derek: Yes – we are well aware of the community’s displeasure with our nForce drivers. I think nForce users will find that the latest version for download addresses and fixes many of the issues and bugs. Just remember – clean your drive before you install.

Zardon: Any plans involving PCI express you can tell us about?

Derek: Like all other major industry shifts – NVIDIA will be right there to support it. This is no different with PCI express – we will have a full family of products to support PCI express when its ready next year.

Zardon: Is there any validity to the claims made by the INQ that nVidias PS2.0 part of the detonators is faulty at the minute?

Derek: No – this is not true.

Zardon: Will nVidia launch some sort of “integrated” personal cinema in the foreseeable future. (As in TV-Tuner and Video In support on board)?

Derek: Right now – NVIDIA has its Personal Cinema family of products – which are great for watching TV on your PC, DVD playback, time shifting and more. You’ll also see the company put more support and features toward Microsoft’s Media Center initiative - which we’re really excited about). So, NVIDIA will continue to deliver great video solutions.

Zardon: What kind of integrated graphics can we expect in the future. Pretty much all solutions up to now quite frankly suck even for the “average joe” when it comes to performance.

Derek: As we all know – integrated graphics lag behind standalone graphics. And to be quite honest – I don’t think you’ll ever see it catch up. And if you look at the difference – I’m not sure why anyone would want to use integrated graphics. The image quality and performance can’t match up to anything you can get in a desktop GPU.

Zardon: The 5900 ultra has gone some way in redressing the negative experiences with the 5800 ultra, are you happy with the way this card has been received?

Derek: The GeForce FX 5900 series has been wonderful for us – we couldn’t be happier with it. It’s won a number of awards and most of the reviews have been great. I’ve been using one for about 5 months now (one of the perks of working here…) and it rocks.

Zardon: Nvidias recent actions seem to be showing a major shift in company strategy, which can only be seen as a good thing, is this a result of new management or simply just new “thinking”, and can you detail any other plans you have in furthering your support to the end user community?

Derek: Simply put – this is a new way of working and interacting with the enthusiast community. There are a lot of details in the works – more online chats, Q&A’s, forum support and more.

Zardon: Anything else you would like to say to our members and visitors?

Derek: Thanks for reading and supporting Driver Heaven. If you have any questions – please don’t hesitate to ask.