AMD buys ATI

[Daffy4895]

For all of you who don't yet know, AMD has purchased ATI for $5.4m

see here

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33223

should make for some interesting developments

[DaveMac]

Missed a few zeros off.... $5.4 billion

[Daffy4895]

Missed a few zeros off.... $5.4 billion


oopps my bad :rolleyes:

[coolmiester]

Was going to say..........we could have clubbed together and bought it at that price :D

Does this mean the AMD are going to favour ATI over nVidia - i think i know the answer to that :sad:

[Highland3r]

If they did it'd be a mistake IMO.... AMD need to offer both ATI and NV support, otherwise they risk loosing business to NVidia... No support may force people to Intel

[Daffy4895]

I think AMD will still support Nvidia, but all of their early testing of new cpus will be done with ATI, meaning they'll have an edge. shame as i like Nvidia over ATI, just have to see what happens

[koola]

Yep, it will be sad if AMD push more ATI chipsets etc our way as I favor the Nvidia chipset over ATI anyday. Could be interesting to see how Intel and Nividia respond to this!

[UnreaL]

AMD's move is logical due to Nvidia aquiring ULi, this left them weak for southbridges. AMD need someone to build there southbridges dont they :)

[Bubbles]

i would hope that AMD helps push ATI in to SLI more

[f.sardis]

i cannot understand it. ati never fitted in the picture. nvidia has been the best chipset makes for amd cpus. how the hell ati fits in is something beyond me.
so whats gonna happen now? ati will be getting the samples first which means their chipsets are bound for better overclocks and optimisations. problem is crossfire sucks worse than the water in Hyde Park. SLI was a clear winner and i can see nvidia taken out of the picture slowly. So we are either getting shit multi gpu and good overclock or less overclock/optimisations and better multi gpu.
and what happened to the 4x4 plans amd has? my understanding was that they were gonna combine quad sli with quad core. ati never announced anything about quad cpu and iirc they even announced something about dropping all their multi gpu plans.
i just dont like the looks of this.

[UnreaL]

i cannot understand it. ati never fitted in the picture. nvidia has been the best chipset makes for amd cpus. how the hell ati fits in is something beyond me.
so whats gonna happen now? ati will be getting the samples first which means their chipsets are bound for better overclocks and optimisations. problem is crossfire sucks worse than the water in Hyde Park. SLI was a clear winner and i can see nvidia taken out of the picture slowly. So we are either getting shit multi gpu and good overclock or less overclock/optimisations and better multi gpu.
and what happened to the 4x4 plans amd has? my understanding was that they were gonna combine quad sli with quad core. ati never announced anything about quad cpu and iirc they even announced something about dropping all their multi gpu plans.
i just dont like the looks of this.

Will you shut the .... up with your pointless crapping of ATi all the time, PLEASE.

Go read the bit-tech analysis (http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/07/24/how_it_all_shakes_out_for_4/1.html) and then use your brain to mull it over before letting us all know your useless bias.

Thank you.

[f.sardis]

Dude, its the third time you personally attack me and once again you dont even know what you are talking about.
first of all i want to remind you that i am the owner of an ati card on my lan rig and one in my old laptop that i sold. i got nothing against ati. I give credit where is due and i critisice those who deserve it. Crossfire is a failure wheter you like it or not. It is also a fact that right now nvidia is holding the best ovc results with their new chipsets for amd cpus. Like it or not ATI never managed to create anything beyond slightly better hardware. Their drivers had always been second class. their crossfire was dead before it was even introduced and their chipsets seem perfectly fine for overclocking but the are still stuck at the 16 PCI-E lanes while nvidia has 32 for a while. Bias? no, absolutely not. just saying things as they are. Perhaps you need to check the market a bit better and through various sources and not through bit-tech which i do admit is a respectable source but like any other source it is not 100% accurate.
get your facts straight, watch how the market has moved through the past 18 months and then your own bias might allow you to understand what i am talking about. right now the only point you are making to anyone is that you are an ATI fanboy and you dont even know why.

[Teebor]

Personally I like ATI as I have had problems with nvidia (but before that I liked nvidia over ati for the same reason) so its swings and roundabouts. I do however think that ati have a really good chipset in the 200 express.

Its a shame that Crossfire has been so badly shipped (I say shipped as its often difficult to get the master card) however conceptually it can be used for things other than just gaming and I think thats where its strength should have been and maybe AMD can harness that now.

Perhaps we could even see AMD integrate a low end GPU in to their processor for physics processing, very unlikely but would be an interesting twist.

However ATI were trying to push the three PCI-E slots on one motherboard and maybe that will happen now? who knows?

It will be an interesting time for the next couple of years, and I just hope its not the end for ATI as its been good competition for NVidia through the years and it would be a shame to see them chopped up and sold off by AMD if they find that they are not making their money back from them. Of course there is no reason to expect this.

Should be fun, maybe lots of new innovations and gadgets (from both intel/amd and nvidia/ati as a move to counter each other)

I'm personally looking forward to see what happens either way

[Leeum]

Keep the discussion civilised please. Take it to PM's if you guys must sort out your differences.

Thanks

[TREE]

I'd agree that ATI seem to have been trailing behind Nvidia for some time, however there is one apparent strength that they seem to have shown. Their first chipsets are alsmost and in some cases better or the same as Nvidia chipsets, which i may add are on technically their sixth series (maybe more) and with each one comes more problems.

Its simply a givin fact, although good chipsets Nvidia always forget somthing. Im not saying ATI are any better, however going in terms of devleopment, from zero to somthing and then somthing to serious compititor is impressive and from the news of the ATI RD600 chipset things are looking even better for the guys in red.

Also now that ATI and AMD are together this could mean development help with ATI motherboard chipsets. As ATI already have the lower power using board it may also fit with AMD to use this as a means of competing with Intel on terms of power usage with the likes of the Conroe. it makes sense as it results in lower power usage but without relying on the CPU to (well a little bit with the new lower power usage AMD's) be responsible for the economical aspect of the AMD system.

[Bubbles]

we'll all have to wait and see what AMD plans on doing with ATI, me and my friend have been talking about this whole thing and we think that AMD knows that ATI needs help and they think they can help them out and if these does happen then i think i would be seeing alot more A-team comps (AMD and ATI) i for one really like ATI but im going with Nvidia because of SLI and Nvidia cards are alot easier to overclock im not saying you can't overclock ATI but you have to download the overclocking program which i for one dont like to do and thats just my 2 cents

[Highland3r]

i cannot understand it. ati never fitted in the picture. nvidia has been the best chipset makes for amd cpus. how the hell ati fits in is something beyond me.
so whats gonna happen now? ati will be getting the samples first which means their chipsets are bound for better overclocks and optimisations. problem is crossfire sucks worse than the water in Hyde Park. SLI was a clear winner and i can see nvidia taken out of the picture slowly. So we are either getting shit multi gpu and good overclock or less overclock/optimisations and better multi gpu.
and what happened to the 4x4 plans amd has? my understanding was that they were gonna combine quad sli with quad core. ati never announced anything about quad cpu and iirc they even announced something about dropping all their multi gpu plans.
i just dont like the looks of this.

It makes 0 business sense for AMD to limit their products to ATI only. Or to uberly heavily optimise them so that only ATI products perform. It also makes 0 sense for Intel to only support mutli GPU solutions from Nvidia. Basically they would loose customers.
ATI chipsets are INSANELY more overclockable than Nvidia's are. The RD580 is simply stunning. The HTT speeds it can pull are just out of this world. Couple that with the bios options from DFI and their CFX3200 (or whatever it is) is THE bes socket 939 board available. The reason its not more popular is that most people already had their multi GPU setups (and therefor gfx cards) before these boards arrived.
ATI's upcoming RD600 chipset looks to build on this and there will have been little input from AMD to "optimise" the chipset.

The RD580 actually runs true dual 16* lanes too btw, from a single chipset rather than the semi bodged attemps from Nvidia..
You have to remeber, ATI is on gen2 chipsets, Nvidia are on gen 4 or 5 by now, its a pretty awsome job IMO.
Many of the records are actually held by X1900 crossfire at the mo, one of the main reason these cards havent or dont hold more is their coldbug. If they'd take LN2 as well as the 7900 series do, we'd see a LOT more from them.
X1900XTX IS the fastest single card you can buy. Full stop. IQ is better on ATI cards too and the high end's are cheaper than Nvidia equiv's (or were when I looked last)

Before anything is said I'm NOT and ATI fanboi. Currently run numerous cards from both providers. I'll also say that crossfire is a bitch to setup and get working properly. BUT SLI IS no walk in the park either.. Took a lovely shiny windows re-install to get it working ;)

[f.sardis]

i never argued about who makes better hardware. my argument in a couple of simple sentences is this: amd has been relying on nvidia for chipsets since forever. whether we like it or not as superior as the hardware can be it means nothing if the driver is bad. the reason nvidia is ahead of ati in many people's minds is because of the superior nvidia drivers. making the drivers needs time and lots of testing. if amd focuses on ati we are bound to see nvidia always coming second. i am not saying limiting the product to ati only. i am only talking about optimisations. it is natural that ati will now have the faster chipset on the market before nvidia. so dillema would be high overclocks with crappy gpu drivers and multi gpu support, or less overclocks with good SLI. of course maybe ati will improve crossfire but like i mentioned above i did read somewhere that they were thinking of dropping multi gpu alltogether. there are many if and buts in our theories and all we are doing is speculationg. i merely mention how the market was working until now and how contradictory to the history it is for amd to join with ati. another way to put it is this: when you think of amd what chipset maker comes to your mind? when you think of SLI what cpu comes to your mind?
and there goes my intention of keeping this post short :lol:

[Sc0rian]

http://www.theinquirer.net/images/articles/screwtwo.jpg

hahahaha

rather cool.. although i've always been a fan of the nforce motherbaords from day1 :(

[f.sardis]

lol ben. have you seen the latest new from the announcement ati made?
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3524
pretty childish from ati's part.

[Daffy4895]

have just been looking around AMD's and ATI's web sites and it appears that the two companies togther will come under the AMD banner, iy fails to mention however, if ATI will keep its name for marketing purposes. There is a pdf presentation outlining future ideas, including combined cpu/gpu processors

[f.sardis]

integrated graphics in the cpu isnt a new idea. i think i was reading about it about a year ago and it was about future intel processors since intel makes their own graphics too. I think ati will keep the name for graphics products.

[Bubbles]

me and my friend have still been talking about this whole thing and i started to think that maybe amd is going to try and make a dual core video card so you dont have to get 2 video cards

[f.sardis]

i think the best benefit they can get is by using the htt3 technology which allows for co processors and other devices to be connected right on the htt bus. in essence this means that you can have a graphics card connected directly on the htt so it can communicate with the cpu directly and pull data from the system ram much faster. ever wonder why consoles have very good performance even though their hardware is in general inferior? thats because they use that method for the internal parts to communicate. in most consoles you will see that the gpu and cpu are connected directly with eachother and with the ram and in the xbox 360 if im not mistaken the gpu is also the northbridge.

[Dfour]

We all ahve to hope that this move doesnt put to much financial preasure on AMD/ATI. I think this could be the start of something really great.

All AMD need to do now is get the K8L out ASAP for S939 and AM2 otherwise In**l is going to become really hard to beat :(

[TREE]

i recall reading that the processing power of the highest end GPU is far greater than that of the highest end desktop CPU today... could we be seeing ATI producing CPUs anytime soon?

[f.sardis]

thats correct. but that also depends on the task as well. a GPU is powerful for many tasks running in parallel. if you give it one big long thread it will take more time than a cpu. graphics require a high level of parallelism which is why GPUs have so many pipelines of short length. its all about producing many results from different threads at the same time. the cpu is all about producing one result from one long thread. cant really replace a cpu with a gpu. you can surely offload some things to the gpu. especially multi threaded tasks. those will thrive on a gpu. but a long thread like a game AI wont work well on the gpu. what i see coming is a gpu integrated on the cpu. its been on intels plans for some time now but i see ati and amd beating them to it. of course this would mean that integrated graphics wont suck anymore. as i explained above if the gpu gets high bandwidth connection with the cpu and the system ram the performance of graphics will fly. just like consoles work.

[The CHOPPER]

Talk about dominating the market