News Intel pulls ATI chipset license

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/07...ipset_license/

[DXR_13KE]

predictable, i only hope that Intel has some trick up their sleave, or else........

[Darkedge]

i wonder if intel have broken the deal - sounds like they are scared

[LVMike]

well... poop i was going to pick up an rd600 bad axe when they came out... now what will i have to wait for. Intel is shooting them selves in the foot. they already basicly locked out nvidia and now ati on their branded boards. IM a little pissed.

I dont look forward to this merger, the decreasing lack of compition in the Tech market is already bad for us consumers. We have 2 chip makers, 2 video card makers, this merger does not bode well for competitive pricing. or inovation.

[Da Dego]

Originally Posted by LVMike

I dont look forward to this merger, the decreasing lack of compition in the Tech market is already bad for us consumers. We have 2 chip makers, 2 video card makers, this merger does not bode well for competitive pricing. or inovation.

Actually, I wouldn't get too hot and bothered about that. This merger is a pretty smart move, despite what it initially looks like...

[ChromeX]

Originally Posted by Darkedge

i wonder if intel have broken the deal - sounds like they are scared

lol hardly they've got the best chip on the market by far atm. Besides would you continue making products which directly benifit your biggest rival? Hell no! This isnt any different.

[Buzzons]

Intel also hold like 50% of the gfx chip set market as well (wiht their onboard stuff) so i doubt the really care at all over this.

[Tim S]

it's more for the high end

[PetabyteUCF]

I see this as a potential very bad move by AMD and ATI.. This gives Intel and Nvidia the opportunity to jump on the bandwagon and while they may not merge into one company, I see a stratigic partnership in their future.. And forget about SLI.. using Intel's multi-core technology and the Nvidia GPU's we're looking at the start of multi-core GPU's in the near future.. That's the only logical progression I see.. With the Conroe processors already showing FSB's of 1333Mhz and ATI being sooo far behind in graphics processors, what else is there going to be for AMD and ATI to do..

Unless AMD's next gen processors blow Conroe out of the water (up to this point, it seems unlikely that this will happen) we're looking at the colapse of AMD/ATI in the next 1-2 years..

[Cthippo]

Keep in mind that AMD pioneered multiple cores for the consumer market and has plenty of expierience in their manufacture. We could very well see the first dual core GPUs come from the camp formerly known as red.

I'm not at all worried about AMD / ATi's long term viability. If the market was power-user centric that might be an issue, but it's not. The enthuiest market is pretty small and is more of a marketing niche for all the companies involved. AMD sells far more Semprons than it does FX series chips, and in the lower end performance is less important then price and reliability.

Remember "Intel inside, don't divide"? Lets hope they got it right this time

[PetabyteUCF]

I'd love to see the AMD/ATI merger produce some good competition with Intel/Nvidia.. They've both been producing incredible graphics that keep getting better and better and better (okay, maybe the Geforce 5000 series wouldn't be called "better") I'm looking forward to some good stuff coming out of the merger.. either company that can do multiple cores instead of SLI/Crossfire make the final cut in my book.. SLI/Crossfire have a huge bottleneck needing to connect to eachother via copper instead of silicon which is only available with multi-core on-die designs..

P.S. You guys have a great site and good discussion groups here in the forums.. still new here, but I'm a forum Moderator at Cluboverclocker.com and occasionaly write articles for them..

[TMM]

[15:53] <TMM> "I think it is a fairly safe bet to say that Intel will contine to support CrossFire on its high end chipsets for the foreseeable future."
[15:53] <TMM> not if ATI release drivers to block it
[15:53] <TMM> pwned!




That said ATI will have to let it go through to SOME chipsets to maintain the intel market. But which ones? Since ATI have no contracts, they could just make it available on all of them, so people would buy the cheap intel chipsets and then intel = mad :P

[Highland3r]

Originally Posted by PetabyteUCF

I see this as a potential very bad move by AMD and ATI.. This gives Intel and Nvidia the opportunity to jump on the bandwagon and while they may not merge into one company, I see a stratigic partnership in their future.. And forget about SLI.. using Intel's multi-core technology and the Nvidia GPU's we're looking at the start of multi-core GPU's in the near future.. That's the only logical progression I see.. With the Conroe processors already showing FSB's of 1333Mhz and ATI being sooo far behind in graphics processors, what else is there going to be for AMD and ATI to do..

Unless AMD's next gen processors blow Conroe out of the water (up to this point, it seems unlikely that this will happen) we're looking at the colapse of AMD/ATI in the next 1-2 years..

Howd you figure that? The issue is, if gfx and CPU manufacturer's "lock" their cards/drivers/chipets to a certain GFX card or CPU then you're going to loose business. It makes business sense to keep consumers options open somewhat and offer them choice. I'd HATE to have to run the GFX card I'm "told" to based on which CPU I chose to run. Highly doubt ATI/AMD will "force" AMD users to run ATI graphics cards. It'd be suicide if they did!

1333 FSB btw, is around the max Intel are able to run reliably at the moment, and even these FSB's are pushing things a little. Have some doubts they'll be able to push these much further in the near future. AMD has the better arcitecture in that respect. ATI aren't "far behind" in GPU term's either.. Their 7900 series is basically a tweaked and overclocked 6800. ATI on the other hand totally changed their GPU design with the X1xxx series. It's MUCH more flexible than the Nvidia design. Will be interesting to see how the DX10 cards pan out too, Nvidia going it seems for the hybrid approach and ATI moving the way of full unified shaders.. IF the roumers from ATI are true, and this IS their fastest DX9 card then Nvidia could be in some trouble... The initial thoughts re unified shading was that DX9 performance would take a hit as the card is "optimisted" for DX10...

Conroe isn't as far ahead of AMD as many were expecting IMHO. From the early results it looked like conroe would be MILES ahead. Thats not really the case. AMD arent out of the game yet, the low prices on the AM2 and 939 CPU's haul them back into the market. People looking for cheap machines might well go the AMD route over Conroe. I'd certainly recommend 939/AM2 machines in the budget segment over Conroe/Intel at the moment due to cost and the availability of decent motherboards at low cost.

[PetabyteUCF]

Originally Posted by Highland3r

Highly doubt ATI/AMD will "force" AMD users to run ATI graphics cards. It'd be suicide if they did!

I agree 100%, and I doubt that Intel/Nvidia will "force" users to run only Intel and Nvidia hardware just to spite themselves, however, neither side is going to provide "official" support for the other like they did in the past..

Originally Posted by Highland3r

1333 FSB btw, is around the max Intel are able to run reliably at the moment, and even these FSB's are pushing things a little.
Have some doubts they'll be able to push these much further in the near future. AMD has the better arcitecture in that respect.

This one I'd have to dissagree with, but all tests have still been in pre-Eng. Sample hardware.. Once they are actually shipped, we'll take a look at it again and we'll all see where it really comes out.. The 800/1066Mhz Intel's have been hitting 1333 on air cooling alone and we're all here for more extreme cooling if we're trying to overclock the chips anyways..

Originally Posted by Highland3r

ATI aren't "far behind" in GPU term's either.. Their 7900 series is basically a tweaked and overclocked 6800. ATI on the other hand totally changed their GPU design with the X1xxx series. It's MUCH more flexible than the Nvidia design. Will be interesting to see how the DX10 cards pan out too, Nvidia going it seems for the hybrid approach and ATI moving the way of full unified shaders.. IF the roumers from ATI are true, and this IS their fastest DX9 card then Nvidia could be in some trouble... The initial thoughts re unified shading was that DX9 performance would take a hit as the card is "optimisted" for DX10...

This is more of a personal grudge against ATI.. I'm a 3D/CAD person.. have been for 18 years now.. I teach AutoCAD, 3DS Max, Inventor and Revit and aparently, since Alias is now owned by Autodesk, I'm going to start having to learn how to teach that as well.. I never bought into the Quadro's due to the fact that the same level workstation card from Nvidia was always almost double the ATI equivilant.. Now the drawback.. I started out with an early $900 FireGL card and ATI stopped driver support for it less than a year after I made the purchase.. by the time the next version of the Autodesk software had been released, I was in need of another high-end video card again.. So I got the ATI FireGL 8800 128MB card (this is back in very early 2002).. by the end of the year, the FireGL X1/X2 cards had been released and I was out of another $800 due to their policy of only supporting a workstation card until it's out of production.. Thier newer cards all have drivers that are backwards compatible now, but it just left a very bad taste in my mouth that's going to be very difficult to get out..

Originally Posted by Highland3r

Conroe isn't as far ahead of AMD as many were expecting IMHO. From the early results it looked like conroe would be MILES ahead. Thats not really the case. AMD arent out of the game yet, the low prices on the AM2 and 939 CPU's haul them back into the market. People looking for cheap machines might well go the AMD route over Conroe. I'd certainly recommend 939/AM2 machines in the budget segment over Conroe/Intel at the moment due to cost and the availability of decent motherboards at low cost

back to 2 comments above.. we really just need to wait and see where these end up at actual release.. The lowest end 6300 Conroe is right now still just as fast as the FX62 on stock air is almost "every" pre-release benchmarks out there.. Those are expected to retail for only $189 compared to the X2-5000 being above $350.. As for motherboard availability, you're right, but then again, the chips haven't really been released to the general public just yet.. We'll see some budget, barebone $75-$100 motherboards in the coming month or two.. still, we need to be open minded on both sides of the game..

[webbyman]

me thinks intels is counting it's chickens.

And getting a little worried about the new AMD/ATI super power...