Conclusion

We think that for most developers, the highlights of NVIDIA's new developer tools releases at GDC 2007 will be massively welcome. GPU-accelerated texture tools with more than a 10x speedup compared to the CPU, and Windows Vista support for PerfHUD and the rest of the PerfSDK, should both be trumpeted pretty heavily by most with a vested interest in 3D application development on the PC.

However the wait for PerfHUD to support Vista highlights an issue of lag that persists throughout the NVIDIA developer toolset that we hope they're willing to address more strongly in the future. The thing that frustrates the most about using their tools as a developer is their sync with hardware releases, such that there's often a lag of months between a new hardware release and support for that in their tools. The promise of a new architecture like GeForce 8, with its support for Shader Model 4.0 and a unification of shading in hardware, isn't upheld without the software to run on it, software that requires careful development and thus begets assistance by tools like PerfHUD, ShaderPerf and FX Composer.

Therefore if NVIDIA can keep on top of their tools and driver development to closer match hardware release schedules, something we fully admit would require a significant extra investment in manpower and effort within the company, then NVIDIA would further their arguable lead in this particular part of the 3D space. While AMD developer tools like PerfHUD don't have matching functionality in places, they do have the advantage of working with public CATALYST drivers and usually with support for specific hardware counters and features shortly after a new hardware generation or refresh product has been launched.

We'll avoid the fashionable NVIDIA Vista rant, but we hope the company is aware that gaps between technology releases and their supporting development infrastructure is a barrier to the technology being adopted or implemented using their products. Infact we know the company is aware and is working towards closing the gap, so we await their efforts, which hopefully includes a focus in more public instrumented driver releases (at least to appease us if nobody else!).

All in, this large and wide-ranging update in their developer tools is probably the strongest collective release in the company's devrel history. The new abilities and features that the tools will gain, centred around new GeForce GPUs and Windows Vista, are all welcome and it puts pressure on everyone else to match NVIDIA's efforts in providing their developers the best ways to fully exploit the hardware and their application investment.

We'll go more hands-on with the tools very soon, and GDC attendees can grab them at NVIDIA's booth on DVD

Finally before we go, Randy would like a word.......

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