ATI+AMD confirmed

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
LOL! I was just interested in your opinion. I can remember a time between roughly GF1 - GF4 when nvidia was effectively a monopoly (none of the "competition" did much in the way of actually competing anyway...) and that era was responsible for some great 3D games, in fact the 3D scene pretty much exploded during that timeframe.

you mean during the Rage to Radeon 8500 timeframe?

ATi existed as a worthy 'alternative' to nvidia's faster GPUs . ..since Rage Fury 32. . . they always had better IQ - at least thru the R8500 era.


and don't worry about PC gaming . . . it doesn't matter who is making GPUs . . . it has enough problems surviving competition from the Consoles.

ATI was largely a nothing during that time, they never hit it big with any of their products (Except in the mobile market) and generally didn't have the performance to compete. The voodoo5 was a decent competitor (taking I think 20% of the overall market I think, with nvidia taking the majority of the rest), along with the kyro 2, which was a decent competitor mainly on price and that it was something "fresh."

XGI sold off its graphics division quite a while ago, so that counts them out. Matrox probably doesn't have the resources to take on the 3D high end graphics realm again. That really only leaves S3, unless a new company just pops up out of nowhere.

Matrox let their 3d graphics division go awhile ago. That leaves S3, who won't go for hte highend, and Bitboys, who was never in the PC market, and PowerVR, who withdrew years ago. However, it's very possible Intel could take a stab at it.

BTW, I'd imagine AMD will cut substantial employees, hopefully they don't gut ATI.

Now, if you add in GPU functionality to the cores, not a GPU on the die, but integrated into the x86 pipeline, you have something that can, on a command, eat a GPU for lunch. A very smart game developer told me that with one quarter of the raw power, a CPU can do the same real work as a GPU due to a variety of effects, memory scatter-gather being near the top of that list.

See if you can get a cpu up to one quarter of the power of a gpu.
Oh, you could just implement hidden surface removal into a gpu and accomplish the same thing with 1 quarter of the power (and much lower transistor count). Most likely a CGPU will not beat a graphics card, but be merely "good enough" for the mainstream. (though can they put a directx interface on it and still play to its strengths?)

 

[5150Joker]

I bet Microsoft will purchase nVidia in the future to use them as a design arm for their next Xbox, handhelds etc. Seems to be the beginning of the end of discrete graphics cards for PCs and thus the end of our hobby in a few years.

 

[apoppin]

not true, Fox5 . . . let me refresh your memory . . . ATi was a much bigger player than nVidia . . . but they were mid/low end. Their first "performance" GPU was Rage Fury 32 - it's IQ was noticeable better than the faster Geforce256. With Radeon 8500, ATi narowed the Performance Gap with the Ti4200 series and then blew them away with the 9700p.

 

[OBCT]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
Isn't this just a merger, not a buyout? From what I have heard, AMD does not quite have the broccoli to buy ATI outright.

AMD got a $2.5 billion loan from Morgan Stanley to cover the cost of purchasing ATI.

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: Cooler
If this is a merger then what will be the new name? ATMD?

DAMIT

rofl.

One of my friends made this image, I think you'll all like it:
http://www.ebproductions.co.uk/files/starocean/amdti.jpg

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: 5150Joker
I bet Microsoft will purchase nVidia in the future to use them as a design arm for their next Xbox, handhelds etc. Seems to be the beginning of the end of discrete graphics cards for PCs and thus the end of our hobby in a few years.

:shocked:

That would actually make sense now that MS is trying to compete with the iPod. Not to mention MS and Intel seem to have some sort of "courtesy reach around" policy.

Sigh. I guess we will just have to wait and see how badly we get screwed.

I don't see anything major happening this year and not until late next year so we can go back to our daily routine soon.

(Although it's already rumored that Intel is pissed and has pulled ATI's chipset license) :thumbsdown:

 

[GundamSonicZeroX]

That's it? it's done? Damn, now I have to buy ATI cards?

 

[bluemax]

I thought it was amusing that we suspected it for months and just this weekend I saw it in the Financial Post. Wish I had money for stock way back when.... or now.

 

[archcommus]

Originally posted by: apoppin
not true, Fox5 . . . let me refresh your memory . . . ATi was a much bigger player than nVidia . . . but they were mid/low end. Their first "performance" GPU was Rage Fury 32 - it's IQ was noticeable better than the faster Geforce256. With Radeon 8500, ATi narowed the Performance Gap with the Ti4200 series and then blew them away with the 9700p.

Those were the days....too nostalgic...

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Originally posted by: GundamSonicZeroX
That's it? it's done? Damn, now I have to buy ATI cards?

:roll:

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: apoppin
not true, Fox5 . . . let me refresh your memory . . . ATi was a much bigger player than nVidia . . . but they were mid/low end. Their first "performance" GPU was Rage Fury 32 - it's IQ was noticeable better than the faster Geforce256. With Radeon 8500, ATi narowed the Performance Gap with the Ti4200 series and then blew them away with the 9700p.

The gap between the rage fury 32 and the geforce 256 was much smaller than the gap between rage fury 32 and 3dfx or matrox. At the time, if you wanted image quality, 3dfx or matrox was still the way to go. ATI was just the best of the worst, with slightly more features than nvidia's equivalent card, and worse performance.
They were a decent alternative with the 8500 (though anyone who bought any of the cards in that series got screwed over with drivers), but they haven't been a major high end (or I'd say even mid-range) player until the radeon 9700 pro. It was only their cheapie and all-in-wonder multimedia stuff that sold prior to the 9700 pro.

 

[Maxspeed996]

Now, if you add in GPU functionality to the cores, not a GPU on the die, but integrated into the x86 pipeline, you have something that can, on a command, eat a GPU for lunch. A very smart game developer told me that with one quarter of the raw power, a CPU can do the same real work as a GPU due to a variety of effects, memory scatter-gather being near the top of that list. The take home message is that a GPU is the king of graphics in todays world, but with the hard left turn Sun and Intel are taking, it will be the third nipple of the chip industry in no time.

Basically, GPUs are a dead end, and Intel is going to ram that home very soonAMD knows this, ATI knows this, and most likely Nvidia knows this. AMD has to compete, if it doesn't, Intel will leave it in the dust, and the company will die. AMD can develop the talent internally to make that GPU functionality, hunt down all the patents, licensing, and all the minutia, and still start out a year behind Intel. That is if all goes perfectly, and the projects are started tomorrow.

Quotes from above...

What if we aren't seeing the big picture.....what if this means no more ATI , and no more Nvidia within the next few years as AMD and Intel turn to battle it out in the graphics market by killing the GPU.....and doing something totally new....??OOooohhh think about something like Conroe backed up with a ton of I-Ram or something of the like handling your graphics needs.....neato.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Fox5

Originally posted by: apoppin
not true, Fox5 . . . let me refresh your memory . . . ATi was a much bigger player than nVidia . . . but they were mid/low end. Their first "performance" GPU was Rage Fury 32 - it's IQ was noticeable better than the faster Geforce256. With Radeon 8500, ATi narowed the Performance Gap with the Ti4200 series and then blew them away with the 9700p.

The gap between the rage fury 32 and the geforce 256 was much smaller than the gap between rage fury 32 and 3dfx or matrox. At the time, if you wanted image quality, 3dfx or matrox was still the way to go. ATI was just the best of the worst, with slightly more features than nvidia's equivalent card, and worse performance.
They were a decent alternative with the 8500 (though anyone who bought any of the cards in that series got screwed over with drivers), but they haven't been a major high end (or I'd say even mid-range) player until the radeon 9700 pro. It was only their cheapie and all-in-wonder multimedia stuff that sold prior to the 9700 pro.

i am talking when the GeForce256 was King of Performance . .. the Rage Fury32 was ATi's first performance GPU . . . and the performance gap with the GeForce256 was small - if you factored in IQ. By then Matrox was Overpriced and becoming niche and 3DFX was old tech and on the way OUT.

ATi was definitely high-end with the Radeon 8500 . . . it's HW was the equal of the Ti series but - for an entire year - the ATi drivers sucked. With the advent of the 9700p, Ati dominated.

 

[blckgrffn]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Fox5

Originally posted by: apoppin
not true, Fox5 . . . let me refresh your memory . . . ATi was a much bigger player than nVidia . . . but they were mid/low end. Their first "performance" GPU was Rage Fury 32 - it's IQ was noticeable better than the faster Geforce256. With Radeon 8500, ATi narowed the Performance Gap with the Ti4200 series and then blew them away with the 9700p.

The gap between the rage fury 32 and the geforce 256 was much smaller than the gap between rage fury 32 and 3dfx or matrox. At the time, if you wanted image quality, 3dfx or matrox was still the way to go. ATI was just the best of the worst, with slightly more features than nvidia's equivalent card, and worse performance.
They were a decent alternative with the 8500 (though anyone who bought any of the cards in that series got screwed over with drivers), but they haven't been a major high end (or I'd say even mid-range) player until the radeon 9700 pro. It was only their cheapie and all-in-wonder multimedia stuff that sold prior to the 9700 pro.

i am talking when the GeForce256 was King of Performance . .. the Rage Fury32 was ATi's first performance GPU . . . and the performance gap with the GeForce256 was small - if you factored in IQ. By then Matrox was Overpriced and becoming niche and 3DFX was old tech and on the way OUT.

ATi was definitely high-end with the Radeon 8500 . . . it's HW was the equal of the Ti series but - for an entire year - the ATi drivers sucked. With the advent of the 9700p, Ati dominated.

The 8500 128meg really was a lot better than the GF3 Ti. I had to install different drivers to play different games though

Nat

 

[Hard Ball]

http://blog.pcmag.com/blogs/miller/archive/2006/07/24/1382.aspx

AMD says it plans to continue to develop ?best-of-breed? discrete products, but it also says that by 2008, it plans to be producing produce that integrate microprocessors and graphics processors to serve ?the growing need for general-purpose, media-centric, data-centric and graphic-centric performance.?

It seems that we will have about 24 months more of discrete ATI graphics solutions on PCIe; then all bets are off after that.

He said he expected the graphics processor (GPU) would remain separate in some markets, notably those that require the fastest 3D rendering, such as high end gaming, ?for as long as I can see.? But he said in other markets, where you want the lowest cost or the lowest power, it could become a single chip. In particular, he said he could see the combined company creating a platform for the needs of emerging markets through a better job of integrated graphics, consistent with AMD?s 50x15 vision.


Overall, he said, it gives the combined company two ways to accelerate its growth ? by using ATI?s relationships in the CE business, notably in digital TVs and in handhelds; and by creating new products, such as PCs that offer better and more media-rich experiences; and CE devices that are better integrated into the digital home

Clearly this will be the focus of future graphics devision of AMD-ATI: integration, digital media, low cost/low power but decent performance. The high end development seem to poised to be scaled back substantially.

And Then There Was One (standalone GPU maker)

I asked Meyer whether the merger would result in less competition, since a lot of machines now use ATI graphics with Intel processors; or nVidia graphics with Intel processors. He dismissed the concern, saying it doesn?t expect AMD?s relationship with nVidia will change enormously, even though the two will now compete in the GPU business.

He said in the discrete graphics market, primarily the high-end, everything stays at it was and ATI will continue to compete with nVidia. Because everything is attached to public and open interfaces, such as PCI Express, nothing will change.

NV will still be firmly in the game of AMD platform. ATI will continue to compete, until AMD-ATI arrive with the unified technologies to integrate both onto a single platform, which should arrive in 2008.

nVidia will still be able to build chipsets for the AMD platform, Meyer said, and said he expects they will continue to do that. He said that unlike Intel, AMD would continue to share technical information with nVidia, and would not do a ?Centrino?-like marketing approach designed to shut out other silicon vendors.

?We're not going to do that,? Meyer said, saying the strength of AMD?s apprpoach has been that its customers have access to best of breed components. Meyer said he thought the combination would create a competitive environment: ?We think this combination gives customers what they want -- a bigger stronger more viable competitor to Intel across a range of markets.?

One area he does expect will change is the relatively small business ATI has had supplying chipsets to OEMs for motherboards with Intel procesors. While he said the combined company ?will continue to honor and support as long as customers want to buy them,? realistically he says, customers aren't going to want Intel chipsets from AMD, so the focus will move more toward AMD-based designs.

Overall, he said ?We don't view this as AMD buying a GPU business; nor is it buying a chipset business so we can look like Intel,? Meyer said. Instead, he said the goal was to ?create products we can do as a joint company that we couldn't do as two separate companies.?

The implication is crystal clear; NV will still be right in the thick of the AMD game. Even though AMD-ATI will keep the high end GPU business in play in the short run; in the long run, they will shift to a unified uarchtecture with a high level of integration on the platform.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Hard Ball

AMD says it plans to continue to develop ?best-of-breed? discrete products, but it also says that by 2008, it plans to be producing produce that integrate microprocessors and graphics processors to serve ?the growing need for general-purpose, media-centric, data-centric and graphic-centric performance.?

Mmmm...produce. AMD is getting into the fresh fruit market now? That's an interesting twist on things. It must be part of their green initiative.

 

[Hard Ball]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: Hard Ball

AMD says it plans to continue to develop ?best-of-breed? discrete products, but it also says that by 2008, it plans to be producing produce that integrate microprocessors and graphics processors to serve ?the growing need for general-purpose, media-centric, data-centric and graphic-centric performance.?

Mmmm...produce. AMD is getting into the fresh fruit market now? That's an interesting twist on things. It must be part of their green initiative.

Yes, especially surprising, since these "fruits" are said to have both GPU and CPU computation capabilities. Truely amazing.

Maybe microprocessors do grow on trees.

 

[fierydemise]

If 2008 is the target for unified GCPUs (for lack of a better acronym) then I give nVidia till then to cozy up with Intel (not that intel would because they don't need nVidia), work out their own solution or be left out in the cold.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: fierydemise
If 2008 is the target for unified GCPUs (for lack of a better acronym) then I give nVidia till then to cozy up with Intel (not that intel would because they don't need nVidia), work out their own solution or be left out in the cold.

Nvidia could buy VIA and/or develop their own cpu. With the way game dynamics are changing, shifting more and more off to the gpu, it's very likely that if nvidia could produce a processor equivalent to a 3ghz pentium 4 (maybe a bit better), integrated with a gpu, that would be good enough.

However, I still think discrete graphics will hold a large advantage over cpus for at least another decade.

 

[tooltime]

go amd. i am so happy to see this happen

 

[tooltime]

i cant wait for the day amd is the number one seller

 

[ronnn]

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster

I dont like this news AT ALL. Less Competitors mean less products to choose from which is a loss to us consumers.

Yep pretty soon only one company and will call itself big brother and cousins.

 

[Gstanfor]

Originally posted by: apoppin
not true, Fox5 . . . let me refresh your memory . . . ATi was a much bigger player than nVidia . . . but they were mid/low end. Their first "performance" GPU was Rage Fury 32 - it's IQ was noticeable better than the faster Geforce256. With Radeon 8500, ATi narowed the Performance Gap with the Ti4200 series and then blew them away with the 9700p.

That doesn't mean diddlysquat apoppin. During that era gamers bought nvidia cards (except fro a tiny minority), everything else ended up in oem or price conscious systems, and developers developed for nvidia.

Rage's IQ and 8500's (eventual and excruiatingly long time coming) performance were irrelevant at the time. As I said above, gamers bought nvidia (and they still do...).

 

[Hard Ball]

From Huang himself today:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/...0725_893757.htm?chan=top+news_top+news

PLENTY TO SMILE ABOUT. Maybe that's why Intel and Nvidia (NVDA), the companies' two biggest rivals, found a lot to smile about on July 24, the day the deal was announced. "I thought it was just impossible to get a gift like this," crowed Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, in an interview with BusinessWeek.com. ATI is "basically throwing in the towel, leaving us as the only stand-alone (graphics chip) company in the world."

NV certainly thinks that AMD-ATI, in the long term, will leave the discrete graphics card business to them. And from the careful analysis of all of the facts, it certainly seems to be the most likely scenario.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor

Originally posted by: apoppin
not true, Fox5 . . . let me refresh your memory . . . ATi was a much bigger player than nVidia . . . but they were mid/low end. Their first "performance" GPU was Rage Fury 32 - it's IQ was noticeable better than the faster Geforce256. With Radeon 8500, ATi narowed the Performance Gap with the Ti4200 series and then blew them away with the 9700p.

That doesn't mean diddlysquat apoppin. During that era gamers bought nvidia cards (except fro a tiny minority), everything else ended up in oem or price conscious systems, and developers developed for nvidia.

Rage's IQ and 8500's (eventual and excruiatingly long time coming) performance were irrelevant at the time. As I said above, gamers bought nvidia (and they still do...).

as usual, you post nothing related to what really happened. Rage Fury 32 - an excellent piece of HW - was a decent 'alternative' to nVidia's offering . . . especially for people that liked better IQ - like me. ATi's drivers were always inferior - until 9700p.

everything that doesn't place nVidia on your Altar of Worship is "irrelevant" and ridiculed . . . especially the facts. . . . it was far easier to get agreement from Rollo on 'history'.

:roll:

there is NO point to my discussing this with you . . . again

peace and aloha

 

[Gstanfor]

Rage Fury 32 - an excellent piece of HW - was a decent 'alternative' to nVidia's offering . . . especially for people that liked better IQ - like me

People "like you" were, and are an extreme minority. The majority of the people playing games at the time who weren't using nvidia hadn't got the memo about 3dfx yet...

And like most minorities, you get disproportionate coverage in discussions/forums/etc and hold an inflated opinion of your ownb self worth...