Just who do Trident think they are???

[SteveC]

They surely can't produce a GF4 competitor! I still have nightmares over their VLB attempts at graphics cards and their 9440 PCI cards!

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1673&p=1

[Gurm]

Yep.

They've had AGP parts all along, you just haven't been paying attention. Cyberblade, Cyberblade XL, etc.

They're good enough to run last-gen games (not NWN or WC3 but close).

This new one sounds promising.

About as promising as the SiS parts, anyway.

- Gurm

[SteveC]

Oh no, I know their laptop stuff - I've used a fair few with them in, but they've never made anything like GF4 standard that's all!

[Gurm]

Yah, but the laptop stuff is ... *shrug* I'd say GF1 standard anyway, which is enough to play all but the most demanding games.

- Gurm

[Dogbert]

I still remember their VGA cards from the (80)286 days

[Agent31]

more power to 'em!

[Belwarrior]

well at least the market will be the better for it... games shall be written to a more open standard rather than for nvidia.

[DGhost]

part of this with trident is that Via owns them. this is probably good for trident, as it raises the standards up from where they were, although it certainly won't be on the level a Matrox or an Nvidia card.

part of this is that Via has been rather, ermm, ballsy... i would expect for them to have a *big* falling out with AMD within the next year. its already started to happen... in part over the chipsets (look at VIA's hammer solution... they are shooting themselves in the foot by using V-Link to go between the AGP Tunnel and the South bridge instead of hypertransport. considering that a lot of the first DDR boards for Athlons were a combination of AMD/VIA chipsets, this seems like a decent size screw up for VIA). also, their low end processor stuff is making them a competitor to AMD in several places.

[The PIT]

Originally posted by DGhost
part of this with trident is that Via owns them. this is probably good for trident, as it raises the standards up from where they were, although it certainly won't be on the level a Matrox or an Nvidia card.

part of this is that Via has been rather, ermm, ballsy... i would expect for them to have a *big* falling out with AMD within the next year. its already started to happen... in part over the chipsets (look at VIA's hammer solution... they are shooting themselves in the foot by using V-Link to go between the AGP Tunnel and the South bridge instead of hypertransport. considering that a lot of the first DDR boards for Athlons were a combination of AMD/VIA chipsets, this seems like a decent size screw up for VIA). also, their low end processor stuff is making them a competitor to AMD in several places.

I would say that is a bad thing for trident having Via involved. You're right they're ballsy.

[GT98]

Originally posted by DGhost
part of this is that Via has been rather, ermm, ballsy... i would expect for them to have a *big* falling out with AMD within the next year. its already started to happen... in part over the chipsets (look at VIA's hammer solution... they are shooting themselves in the foot by using V-Link to go between the AGP Tunnel and the South bridge instead of hypertransport. considering that a lot of the first DDR boards for Athlons were a combination of AMD/VIA chipsets, this seems like a decent size screw up for VIA). also, their low end processor stuff is making them a competitor to AMD in several places.

Well I think Via is in alot of trouble....they still dont have a P4 licence to make P4 compatible chipsets that your OEMs want to buy or use. Add in the shitty 4 in 1 drivers they turn out and bad PCI impementation well you can see where they are going. I for one are never going to support VIA again if I dont have to when it comes to the Mainboard Business after using SiS Chipsets in the last 2 AMD builds I did. The SiS 735/745 is alot like the BX board (not as overclockable in my experance, but I degress) when it comes to be stable and working with everything without major problems. I have a SIS P4 Mobo coming in my Shuttle SS51G and I'm very cuirous to see how good it works.

[aswedc]

Originally posted by DGhost
part of this with trident is that Via owns them. this is probably good for trident, as it raises the standards up from where they were, although it certainly won't be on the level a Matrox or an Nvidia card.

Err sorry 100% wrong. I don't know where you could have gotten a misconception like that. Trident is a totally independent US based company, and is in fact traded on the NASDAQ under TRID. Trident and Via have done chipset products together in the past, but they are far from even close partners. They had a long-running lawsuit between them that was resolved in 2000, and Via is in competiton with the XP4 with their new SavageXP. Please check your facts before posting...

[DGhost]

granted, now that i look i am hard pressed to find any evidence of an aquisition, so i was probably wrong on that.

but, if they are in such competition, why does VIA still ship chipsets with Trident graphics cores in them. in fact, their precious Eden Mini-ITX platform motherboard has a Trident graphics core.

in addition, if you install the latest drivers for those integrated chipsets, they get detected as a Via graphics core and displays an S3 logo in the driver properties, even if it is in reality a Trident one.

i somehow doubt they are in serious competition.

[aswedc]

You are right, until now Via and Trident have not been in any competition. Via/S3's latest graphics core was the Savage 4 (Savage 2000 was all but abandoned), and Tridents last was the T64. Both parts aren't even capable of reaching TNT2 Ultra performance levels, they were no threat to any GPU manufacturer except in the ultra low end market that nVidia and ATI aren't even in. But now, within months of each other, both manufacturers are leaping ahead with products that reach within a reasonable distance to the cutting edge, and returning to the discreet GPU market. Here, they are in very serious competition in a suddenly very crowded marked including other newcomers like Matrox, SiS and 3D Labs/Creative.

[rubank]

*snip*
Just a little update on Trident XP4 from Anand

One of the guys from Epic Games joined me for a meeting with Trident this afternoon where we got to see the XP4 in action running Unreal Tournament 2003. The card ran the latest build of the game just fine with a few minor rendering issues that can be attributed to the early nature of the drivers. The performance seemed respectable although I'm working on building an identical test system here (we couldn't bring our own system due to time/location constraints) so I can get Ti 4200/4400/4600 scores to compare to.

rubank

[Rakido]

*snip snip*
and again just a little update i found on VoodooExtreme http://www.ve3d.com/#30010 (they quote from Gamer's Depot)

Le: I think both ATI and NVIDIA will start buying Trident stock in bulk and try to take over our company somehow. However, we do have a few poison pills waiting for them to enjoy.

Rakido