Amd + Ati

[AKA_RA]

so i click over to hardocp.com and to my suprise, listed under announcements is information that confirms the rumor that AMD will be buying ATI. this seems like it will have a very interesting outcome. although, itll be funny if AMD owns ATI and Intel continues to support crossfire in their 975x chipset

[sirkillalot617]

well think of amd nforce 4 sli edition motherboards maybe intel will pair up with nvida the battle is over now comes the war or somin like that

[AKA_RA]

true, this could be a jump in the direction of CPU/GPU specific motherboards. maybe in the future if you want SLI youll have to go Intel and if you want Crossfire youll have to go AMD. only time will tell.

[Omega]

I Already run nothing but AMD/ATi (or nV/Intel) combos, so this wouldn't really affect me

but with any luck, that nV/intel machine will be upgraded to AMD/ATi.

[AKA_RA]

persoanlly, im running a nV/AMD combo right now, but thats because i got a good deal on a used video card from my friend. otherwise i would have totally stuck with ATi. im really looking forward to what will become of this merger

[Silenced_Coyote]

I saw this at the top in the TG Daily Article:
AMD also said that, within two years, the company wants to offer processors that integrate graphics functionality.

That should be interesting.


itll be funny if AMD owns ATI and Intel continues to support crossfire in their 975x chipset

Intel's purchase of Xpress 200 is going to stop.

ATI's Intel specific product revenue [including chipset shipments] is about $80 to $100 million per quarter

[nil8]

Suck. I like intel/ati combos.

Just wait for VIA to team up with...uhhh...nevermind.
Maybe this means we will be rid of the crappy intel graphics chipsets.

[AKA_RA]

go on nil, i know what you were gonna say. VIA can team up with Matrox. I can see it now. Integrated VIA chipset, integrated VIA CPU, and integrated Parhelia GPU...lol

[nil8]

That's such a ghetto scary thought AKA.
Although, it would work decently well for a mini car computer or some other nonsense. Mini-itx, bah.

[Cool1Net6]

I saw this on Digg earlier today. It was announced a few weeks ago, but then a follow up story said it was false. Guess not.

Also, Intel pulls their license with ATI chipsets. There wont be any beyond the end of this year. And AMD/ATI want to have a "synergy" of their chips, as far as putting them on the same die, sharing the same L2 cache memory (slower than dedicated GDDR3, but more cost effective).

-Cool-

[Slug Toy]

ta da, i figured it was a matter of time before i saw something like this pop up. i heard today that the deal is finalized for $5.4 billion.

yes... things will get quite interesting... and very complicated i would expect. i wouldnt be surprised if we see socket GPU's in the future (amd seems to be pretty damn ambitious on paper and in practice). imagine what an AM2 CPU and 940 pin GPU would do in a 4x4 motherboard... more importantly, what would you do with pci-e slots after that? now all we need is for amd to buy ageia or something, or fix up GPU physics support to make it include more things... and then they can start making sound chips... uh oh, i said too much. they're coming to get me now, i can feel it.

but ya, hopefully this turns out to be a good thing. we'll definitely see better CPU-GPU couplings, and thats a good thing. theres a double edged sword in this situation. amd can now sort of dictate what ati does, and this can go either way (they have the ability to make this something awesome, or to ruin it if they arent careful). if they DO end up doing socket GPU's.. well they have to address memory bandwidth big time unless they start implementing crazy prefetch features and branch prediction things. im rambling though.. who knows whats going to happen now...

[AKA_RA]

meh, forget ageia. besides, havent you seen ATIs solution for handling physics? i dont remember if its a GPU being used or if its a special card, but basically you can use either a cross fire setup or a single card solution, and the third or second card will do all the physics crap. honestly, if they could somehow get a powerful GPU onto a motherboard without using an expansion slot, wether its a socket or its integrated, maybe ill be able to have my crossfire and my physics card, and sound card, and whatever else i may need without worrying about running out of slots.

[Slug Toy]

yes, but you forget that sm3 based physics is limited to a few types of physics. ageia has the ability to expand the available features almost limitlessly.

[simon275]

meh, forget ageia. besides, havent you seen ATIs solution for handling physics? i dont remember if its a GPU being used or if its a special card
No you just use a normal card I think in crossfire with another card. Except you dont need that powerful of card to run graphics. So you could run graphics on a 1900xt and physics on a 1600xt or 1300xt.

[DaveW]

Interestingly, both ATI and Nvidea have anounced they will continue to use Havok physics. Which is bad news for ageia, as i think the technology just needs investment. It got even worse for them after it was revealved that a command line hack could enable all those special features in most of the games...whoops.

Hope things work out for those guys...

-Dave

[monoflap]

I don't think there is going to be much of a push for actuall physics hardware untill more games come out that use the technology (hence ageia's dillema). The only really popular game I can think of that trully took advantage of physics was half-life 2 (im probably going to get flamed for that last one:redface: ).

[simon275]

Yeah true that about HL2. In 6 months time or longer at least by the next E3 will we see more and more devlopers using load's of physics affects in games. It's interesting it's come to the point where graphics can only be so good and sound is pretty realistic these days. So devlopers are branching out into other area's to make the gamimg experience seem more realistic like with the use of physics and better AI.

[sirkillalot617]

well maybe we wont have graphics card any more maybe there will be another slot like a cpus to put are gpu chip into

[CanaBalistic]

They wouldnt have a chip socket on the mobo unless AMD also bought a motherboard company. It would take too much away from there profits.

Every company has one universal directive, make more money.

If AMD were to merge with a mobo company, i would think they would split off completely from the "pc" and another proprietary system much like apple would immerge.

That would be devistating...

[Cool1Net6]

...That would be devistating...
To who?

-Cool-

[simon275]

Us. maybe. I agree a whole properitary system would be bad.

Even if they bought a mobo company they might not acutally decide to a design and build whole PC's. You just might be able to get a mobo board with CPU and Grpahics built in all from the same company which would make compouters cheaper.

Who's knows lets sit back and see what the future holds.
(In the world of computers we only may have to wait a few months)