Ars: ATI a takeover target?

[GT98]

**** that shit. they need a massive change of management. and their entire software department to get summarily fired.

****ing retards.

I thought I saw a rumor on Rage3D that ATI had their interns or 1st year graduates write their drivers!

That being said I haven't had problems with ATI drivers since the Orginal Radeon minus a couple goofs with the 8500 series

[Jammrock]

I can see AMD as the #1 buyer, because that would give them a foothold into the graphics market, where they don't currently have anything, but Intel does. This would also give them the ability to have their own motherboard chipsets for non-workstation/server applications, because that's the only market that AMD current makes chipsets for. A good offering in the OEM arena could open doors for AMD with certain businesses and OEMs *coughDELLcough* that have been hesitant about buying AMD because AMD doesn't make their own motherboards. That would be the ideal marriage in my book.

I can also Intel buying ATi to stop AMD from buying ATi and potentially getting a better foothold in the business and OEM world.

I can see braodcom becuase it would give them good expansion options and full line of computer peripherals.

I have no idea why TI is in the market. The best I could come up with for TI is maybe so they can get ahold of ATi's HDTV processor line to beef up their DLP line of HDTVs and video processors?

Jammrock

[Nowhere]

But can AMD afford to anger Nvidia? (best chipsets for a long time...and I don't see that'll change...)

[Kurt]

AMD to buy ATI would be a good business move, long term. Short term would be messy. They would have problems with NV (their N°1 chipset manufacturer) and ATi's chipset division is still battling for a bug-free chipset.

They would have, however, an excellent position against Intel in the mobile market, where ATi has excellent market shares and AMD is a laggard. That would be the single best reason for them to do it, IMO, since notebook sales are bound to grow above desktop sales in the near future.

Then again, AMD has much less resources than Intel and diversificatin might no be the best thing for them.

[DGhost]

TI does a lot of other businesses - they would aquire their Media products (Theater and Xilleon chips), their mobile/embedded market (Imageon products) (both of which could potentially augment their own markets), and then by buying into the video card/chipset business they expand their business portfolio.

Broadcom would probably push the Theater/Xilleon/Imageon chips far harder than the PC Graphics stuff too - their own preferred market is that as a chip/solution provider, not dealing with the end user.

both would win because of manufacturing experience, contracts and capabilities.

AMD might have a similar goal in mind. their embedded platforms division would gain a lot from those pieces. the graphics division would help round them out a lot, but I don't see the chipset department being a good investment for them. their own chipset, while lacking, does what they want it to. they never intended to make a living off of it - just to provide the platform for their processors. plus, to bring in ATI would possibly alienate their #1 ally right now - NVidia.

Intel has a lot to gain off of it. they would gain a lot of IP that would help bring their now dead graphics dept back to life. their engineers have a much better chipset going for them, but the graphics business would help them improve their integrated offering that much more. plus, being able to come up with a faster integrated solution will help their chipset adoption when Longhorn comes out. their other "little" businesses would benefit a lot from the other tech - the Imageon was designed to be able to work with their StrongARM processors and being able to merge it into the platform would secure their chipset as the platform of choice for a handheld app.

edit: IIRC, ATI's chipset biz came mostly from ALi/ULi. It is most definately not the best chipset out there, and with Intel's current deals with NVidia I could also see it as a way to strengthen this relationship. Intel can afford to kill it off and scrap the products for tech value only, and I could see NVidia very much appreciating that. with NVidia alreading offering an SLi compatable (and by all available information, Crossfire compatable) platform, Intel could be in quite the position to give NVidia their midrange desktop/lowend workstation chipset market - someplace that Intel has never really gotten right. the benefits they would get by graphics tech for their own integrated products would more than offset that.

Just remember, it's about who wants it the most, not who will do the most with it.

[Fluff]

How much money does Matrox have in the bank?

[Gurm]

How much money does Matrox have in the bank?

Not even enough to hire back the engineers that NVidia poached.

[Gurm]

I have remained relatively quiet in this thread, because some of what I might otherwise want to say might be a breach of NDA.

HOWEVER...

Disclaimer: I'm saying this based on personal conjecture only and in no way representing ATI:

As for the rumors that Intel helped ATI design the 8500/9700. Those are all clearly false for the following reasons:

1. Intel STILL doesn't have a chipset that is even as fast as the 8500, which was market leader in... 2001? If they had helped design the 8500 and/or 9700, why do their chipsets still suck donkey balls? In fact, if anything I would guess that Intel might have gotten occasional outside help. Once in a while they have non-sucking chipsets. For a while the i740 was a good chipset, and some of their integrated graphics now aren't ENTIRELY terrible. But ATI's bottom-of-the-barrel bargian chipset... outperforms everything Intel has for graphics.

2. ATI acquired several smaller ventures over the past few years. They acquired Oak Technologies, or at least part of it. Oak had acquired Xionics, and Xionics had some talented driver writers when I worked there. Oak, in general, has had very COMPETENT driver writers for their various chipsets.

-------------------------

On the topic of drivers...

ATI's drivers have consistently gotten BETTER with each iteration since the introduction of "Catalyst". Around the time that Neverwinter Nights came out (summer 2002) was the last time that ATI had SERIOUS driver issues that weren't promptly rectified. Within the next couple months, the Catalyst project began to crank out drivers, which were consistently MUCH BETTER than the previous drivers. And they've just gotten better.

While there are still a number of games from that era that DO have some issues (Half Life - the original - still has a few issues here and there with ATI's drivers), ever since they've done very well. They've taken a LOT of bashing that wasn't deserved. Drivers come out nearly monthly, and each time there are bugfixes and even speed improvements. Hell, new drivers still offer speed improvements for 8500-series cards!

NVidia, on the other hand, has NEVER gotten their driver act together. Their chipset drivers are so inconsistent that virtually everyone uses "remixes" with the safe versions of all the drivers rolled into one package. Each new NVidia video driver release brings with it the possibility of breaking some game that worked with the last release. And their support for their older cards is lacking - there's a bug in Call of Duty that causes some GF2 class cards to go all "yellow and black triangle-ish" that, last time I checked, was STILL THERE. Has been for a year now.

So honestly I don't know where the anti-ATI driver vitriol comes from. My GUESS is that it sort of trickles down from the gamer magazines and review sites, who are always a bit irked that ATI's OpenGL drivers are perpetually behind NVidia's in the numbers. When you glorify FPS above all else, you tend to be derisive about a company that doesn't make that their top priority. And that derisiveness filters down.

[mmp121]

How much money does Matrox have in the bank?

LOL, you beat me to the punch Fluff! I was gonna post something similar about Matrox takin em over.

[DGhost]

my Anti-ATI sentiment comes from the fact that every ATI card I've ever owned has given me problems until the day I got rid of it. And then it gave the people who got it problems. every single card.

The OpenGL drivers are not simply slow, they are *BAD*. when working on development projects things would break with every release of the drivers. not just small things either. to try to do any OpenGL development on an ATI display adaptor is equivilent to bashing your head into the wall repeatedly.

Gurm, the comments you have on ATI versus NV are bullshit. I can still ****up an 8500 just as fast as I could back in the day, and NV's driver updates give some performance increases to the GeForce3's as well. it may not be much, but it is easily on par with what ATI claims for their older architecture.

both companies have had their issues with support. I remember the ATI TV Wonder I purchased that constantly went from beta to beta drivers on XP. not that big of an issue, except for the fact that they would wait until 1 day shy of a year (literally) between release, and the driver set had more issues that a hacked/converted set of All in Wonder drivers. no other company had the same number of issues going from 2k to XP. and every other company had resolved their conversion issues by a year after, whereas ATI *still* had problems a year or two after the RTM date.

you say NV's products require constant hacks and repackages - last I checked it was ATI's drivers that started (and still continue) that trend. how many people over on Rage3d acctually run stock ATI drivers these days? Every time I poke over there to check things out I routinely see people recommend that they use the Omega drivers *instead of* the ATI released ones.

you say their drivers have gotten better... i have to agree with that in the "no longer causes random BSOD's on regular intervals" sense. last time I used an ATI card it still was responsible for causing BSOD's on a non-regular interval though. or their lovely VPU recover feature kicking in at a bad moment.

NV's driver set has been the standard for software development and stability, rivaled only by Intel. not only have I never seen a BSOD in either XP x86 or XP x64, the level of compatability and performance offered by their drivers under those products was something that I had not seen for many, many years. they had nice stable drivers up and running on an in development OS before ATI even had drivers that would BSOD in a repeatable fashion.

*shrug*

[Tjalfe]

As for the rumors that Intel helped ATI design the 8500/9700. Those are all clearly false for the following reasons...

I believe I recall reading that intel helped with implementing power saving and general speed optimizations, nothing actual architechtural.. but I could be wrong

[Mikko]

Intel STILL doesn't have a chipset that is even as fast as the 8500, which was market leader in... 2001? If they had helped design the 8500 and/or 9700, why do their chipsets still suck donkey balls?

I suppose faster graphics would definitely have some impact on a price of the motherboards. And not all customers are willing to pay that price. Let's say you have a motherboard of $100. I think that maybe only 10% of the whole price comes off the graphic chip, at maximum. You don't get anything spectacular with this amount of money...

[Gurm]

my Anti-ATI sentiment comes from the fact that every ATI card I've ever owned has given me problems until the day I got rid of it. And then it gave the people who got it problems. every single card.

Sucks for you. What are you doing wrong? I'm not just being an ****ole here, but I've never... NEVER... had this kind of problem with an ATI card. None. I have with nVidia cards.

The OpenGL drivers are not simply slow, they are *BAD*. when working on development projects things would break with every release of the drivers. not just small things either. to try to do any OpenGL development on an ATI display adaptor is equivilent to bashing your head into the wall repeatedly.

You write "OpenGL development". Are we talking about games here? Or something more serious? It matters, you know. ATI sells a completely different line of cards to do anything other than game.

Gurm, the comments you have on ATI versus NV are bullshit. I can still ****up an 8500 just as fast as I could back in the day, and NV's driver updates give some performance increases to the GeForce3's as well. it may not be much, but it is easily on par with what ATI claims for their older architecture.

Wow, amazing. I've had EXACTLY the opposite experience. I can make a GF2 die a horrible, gasping death in about a minute... whereas I can't think of a single game/app that'll crash an 8500. Not one.

both companies have had their issues with support. I remember the ATI TV Wonder I purchased that constantly went from beta to beta drivers on XP. not that big of an issue, except for the fact that they would wait until 1 day shy of a year (literally) between release, and the driver set had more issues that a hacked/converted set of All in Wonder drivers. no other company had the same number of issues going from 2k to XP. and every other company had resolved their conversion issues by a year after, whereas ATI *still* had problems a year or two after the RTM date.

Oh, you're just not thinking, now. I had a dozen pieces of hardware that just had... ISSUES going to XP. My video capture card... unusable under XP. My MIDI board? Unusable. Creative's sound cards on my SMP system? Unusable under 2k OR XP. C'mon now. You're just being angry because you had some retrograde motherboard that didn't like ATI cards.

you say NV's products require constant hacks and repackages - last I checked it was ATI's drivers that started (and still continue) that trend. how many people over on Rage3d acctually run stock ATI drivers these days? Every time I poke over there to check things out I routinely see people recommend that they use the Omega drivers *instead of* the ATI released ones.

When's the last time you checked? Omega hasn't done a repack in over a year. This is what I mean. You're basing your entire estimation of their driver support on the way their driver support WAS. In 2003 I might have agreed with you.

you say their drivers have gotten better... i have to agree with that in the "no longer causes random BSOD's on regular intervals" sense. last time I used an ATI card it still was responsible for causing BSOD's on a non-regular interval though. or their lovely VPU recover feature kicking in at a bad moment.

You know what? I've never seen a BSOD that wasn't from something else. The only ATI-related BSOD I've seen was an SMP-related issue on my VIA 694D that was rectified with a MOTHERBOARD BIOS update.

NV's driver set has been the standard for software development and stability, rivaled only by Intel. not only have I never seen a BSOD in either XP x86 or XP x64, the level of compatability and performance offered by their drivers under those products was something that I had not seen for many, many years. they had nice stable drivers up and running on an in development OS before ATI even had drivers that would BSOD in a repeatable fashion.

Really? News to me. I'm not talking about BSOD's, though. It's not excusable for ANYONE to have those. I'm talking about apps that crash, hang the machine, or just look like crap. And for you to deny that nVidia breaks their drivers every other build is ... simply perpetuating a monstrous falsehood. Every time I log into the nVidia forum, the advice is "well drop back 3 driver sets, that game worked two months back..."

*shrug*

See, I think the problem here is that you must have had some sort of horrible motherboard. Maybe using a VIA chipset, hmm?

[Gurm]

I suppose faster graphics would definitely have some impact on a price of the motherboards. And not all customers are willing to pay that price. Let's say you have a motherboard of $100. I think that maybe only 10% of the whole price comes off the graphic chip, at maximum. You don't get anything spectacular with this amount of money...

ATI's motherboards have R3x0 cores onboard. And they're cheaper than Intel's boards. nForce boards have GF2 graphics on the early ones, GF3 on the intermediate ones, and I imagine GF4 or better on the brandy-spanking new ones. THOSE boards are also cheaper than Intel's.

[DGhost]

LOL. VIA chipsets for some. NV for others. Intel on some of the others. If I were to reach I can even remember some AMD chipset systems running ATI.

RE: OpenGL dev was for games. thankfully, I was not the one working on the ATI code path. yes, the team was in constant contact with ATI's dev team who was pretty friendly with it. they would get something working, document the problem, send it to them who would thank us, suggest a workaround, and then tell us it would be fixed in the next driver release. we would wait until the next driver release and when they would bring it up and running on the new driver set the specific problem would be fixed, but a new problem would exist. wash, rinse, repeat. some of these were fairly specific code problems.

anyways, you mention the magic number of 2003. yes, most of this took place in 2003. however, my friends were the poor souls who tried 9600XT cards and were woefully dismayed by what it did to them. one was on an Intel chipset (i875/ICH5R, iirc) and I am not sure about the other. one ditched it in favor of a 6600GT when they became available and has been 3x as happy ever sense. the other still is limping along with his (I believe 9600Pro) and is subject to an insane amount of issues. he still gets cranky about it.

RE: XP. I was on the beta team for XP. there were a lot of pieces of hardware that were not supported, and a lot that were. i suppose most of my buying of hardware was probably more influenced by what *did* while it was still in beta. yes, a lot of hardware had issues. NV's drivers were insanely superior at the time. they still are. it took ATI forever and a ****ing day to get true dual-head implemented in a manner that didn't completely hose the system. and the TV Wonder... I had at least another TV tuner with the same chipset that had full XP support. for most hardware it was not a big deal to convert drivers, especially if they already had 2k driver out there (which ATI *did*). I believe I was using an 8500 right around then, although I had a GeForce 256 and a G400-Max that I liked to play with as well.

about the BSOD's... when you get a BSOD in atixxxxx.dll or .sys it's a pretty good indicator of who or what is at fault. and just about every time I've seen a computer doing that, I can drop an NV card in and it will work without issue. now... maybe thats an issue with the MB... maybe thats an issue with the video card... simple fact of the matter is that ATI didn't work and NV did...

as far as specific rendering issues... i've seen them on ATI. I saw them all the time, especially (although, probably mostly) under OpenGL. dealing with Quake3 graphics issues in 2003 is a little bit old, don'tcha think?