Munich (Ger) - Dan Vivoli is Executive Vice President of Marketing of NVIDIA. From October 1988 to December 1997, Dan Vivoli held various positions at Silicon Graphics, Inc., a computing technology company, and was Vice President of Marketing before joining NVIDIA in 1997 as Vice President of Product Marketing. From 1983 to 1988, Mr. Vivoli held various marketing positions at Hewlett-Packard Company.

NVIDIA recently introduced its next generation graphic chip, the GeForce 6800 series. Once again, the company is fighting hard for the lead with ATI, which had introduced its X800 series a week later. We had the chance to talk to him about the new product line, the competition, future trends and technology.

Tom's Hardware Guide (THG): People who buy graphics cards often are not sure whether to buy NVIDIA's or your competitor's product. Do you have to work harder to differentiate NVIDIA from ATI and how do you plan to do that?

Dan Vivoli (DV): Build a superior product! ;-)

Seriously, we put a lot of energy into creating a new product architecture definition process starting with NV40 (the 6 Series family) It is a detailed, cross company process that includes architects, engineers, marketing, and most importantly, the developer relations group. The fruits are apparent with the 6 Series. Never before have we had an architecture that resonates so well with the developer community. Every feature of Shader Model 3.0 was one specifically asked for by developers. In addition, we added floating point filtering and frame buffer blending purely based on developer requests. Consumers simply get the highest quality, highest performance GPU.

Also, one of our best kept secrets is our Video Processor. It is an amazing and unique technology that provides consumers with the highest quality video solution on the market. And it's only getting better. Look for lots more video goodness from us soon!

THG: NVIDIA representatives mentioned that your company works on increasing its market share of desktop graphic chips. Is this still a realistic goal?

DV: Sure. We have been pretty stable at around 60% of the desktop GPU market. There is 40% more to get!

But the real opportunity is in educating the other half of the market. 50% of the graphics sold today is integrated into core logic. However, most consumers just don't realize the compromise they make when they don't get a real GPU. Not only is the gaming experience slower, visually challenged and less reliable, but video and photo editing are inferior on non-GPU's. Every consumer should demand a second processor, a GPU in their system. Take a slower CPU, get a GPU, get a better multimedia experience, and save money all at the same time!

THG: NVIDIA's 6800 has impressed much of the industry as well as the media. Were you surprised by the product's performance leap?

DV: Not at all! We intended to make the biggest leap we have ever made with the GeForce 6 Series. The new definition process and SM 3.0 really paid off. The best is yet to come, though! We have a broader line up of little brothers and sisters of the 6800 coming than we have ever had with a new architecture. Every consumer at every price point will be able to experience the 6 Series and SM 3.0.

And if you like the 6800, you'll love SLI. VooDoo SLI was awesome. GeForce 6 Series SLI is a whole new approach that is much higher quality and more efficient.

The new flagship: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra with PCI Express and SLI support.