The RV770 Story: Documenting ATI's Road to Success
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 2, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
It took Derek and I six thousand, four hundred and sixty one words to review the Radeon HD 4850 and 4870. At this point I’m at 7,788 and all I’ve done is document the gravity of the decision that lead to the RV770.
There’s a lot of work that goes into all of these products we review, both good and bad. These engineers put their life’s work into every last design they complete, both the good ones and the bad ones. To live in the minds of ATI’s engineers as the first R600 reviews were hitting the web is something I would pay anything to avoid.
The life of a chip architect can be quite difficult, to work on something for three years only to have a few poor decisions make it the web’s punching bag is beyond rough. If I screw up a review I can always try to do better next week, if a chip designer contributes to a billion transistor GPU that’s a failure in the market, he/she won’t have another chance to succeed for several months if not a couple of years. I wonder if these chip companies offer counseling as a part of their benefits packages.
There are thousands of stories behind every chip launch, good or bad, most of them never get told. Part of it is that we’re spending so much time praising or berating the product that we rarely have time to offer the backstory. There’s also the issue with most companies being unwilling to disclose information, for any chip company to give me the level of detail that Carrell offered was a big deal, for that chip company to be ATI/AMD is impressive.
We all have these folks to thank, the engineers I met with and the many more that I didn’t. NVIDIA may not have been happiest with the efforts of the RV770 team, but we all benefitted. If you ended up buying a Radeon HD 4800 or derivative, you already know why you’re thankful. If you ended up buying something green, you most likely paid a much lower price than you would have.
It’s often said that competition is good for the market, but rarely do we have such a clear example of it as what happened after the RV770 launch. Cards that used to cost $300 now cost $200, a brand new GPU that was priced at $400 all of the sudden became reasonable at $300. The consumer won; the RV770 team targeted the Performance segment and did a bang up job of addressing its needs.
And it all started because a few guys were willing to shake things up back in 2005.
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yourwhiteshadow - Thursday, December 4, 2008 - link
absolutely brilliant. i've always read anandtech instead of tomshardware because of objective reviews. i was reading an intel review, and people were questioning the objectivity of anandtech. while some might could look at this as praising ATI/AMD, i would definitely say this was a very objective view of what happened. seriously, one of the BEST articles i've read since the 4850/4870 review.kevyeoh - Thursday, December 4, 2008 - link
I've been reading anandtech for years and there wasn't any article that makes me wanna read every single word of it. Usually i will read the forewords and then skip on to the Conclusion. But for this article, i really read every single words! period! Anandtech rocks!nitemareglitch - Thursday, December 4, 2008 - link
I was actually getting a little bored with the articles around here, until I read this one. Great job, I loved reading this story!!lchyi - Thursday, December 4, 2008 - link
This is by far the best (and most insightful) article I have read here to date Anand. It sounds like you put in a ton of thought to it and I have never flown through 7,500 words as quick as that read. Congrats to the ATI guys for their successful gamble on the RV770. The last three years must have been an extremely interesting experience for them and their engineers.joshjnm - Thursday, December 4, 2008 - link
Great article I will bandwagon with the rest of you and agree this is one of the best articles I've read in a while.josh6079 - Thursday, December 4, 2008 - link
I thoroughly enjoyed the article. Last time I was really involved with graphics cards was when the X1900's were in full swing and G80 was on everyone's mind. The history told in the article helped bring me up to pace as to what has transpired since I stopped gaming as much. I can remember how the Video card section used to be here on the forums with the trolls and constant flames. Two camps of people cheered on for one or the other competitors instead of realizing that they should be cheering for competition itself.Great job ATI, Nvidia - what's next?
Seikent - Thursday, December 4, 2008 - link
Very good article, most of these interesting background stories are written in books, but a lot of years latter.Something, that is not mentioned, is that it seems that AMD didn't affect ATI in any way (technically speaking). Many thought that the R600 failure had something to do with AMD.
BSMonitor - Thursday, December 4, 2008 - link
Awesome article.I am definately a performance/mainstream kinda guy in this market. Definately love the competition. I started my first build with a Geforce 4200Ti, moved up to the infamous 9700Pro, followed by X1900, and now 4850HD...
It is good to see that the ATI/AMD didn't damage ATI as a whole. Rock on guys! Love those cheap kick ass Crossfire cards! Go 4850HD x2.
dmer - Thursday, December 4, 2008 - link
as a long time reader of anand I never felt the need to register an account; however, after reading your article I felt compelled to create an account just to commend you on an excellent article.we need more articles that give us insight into business decisions like this. job well done mate!
johnkwright - Thursday, December 4, 2008 - link
Anand,I've been a long time reader of AnandTech but I especially liked this article. It was interesting to get a peek behind the curtain to see what challenges companies face when making these tough decisions. Hopefully more companies take a chance and share more of their stories with this site. Keep up the good work.
Regards,
John Wright