Thoughts on AMD-ATi Merger

Big B

Big B

HWF Godfather
The guys over at [H]ard|OCP have their thoughts on the AMD-ATi merger that's been approved. I'm still making up my mind on this, but here's some thoughts on it:

I think today would certainly not be the day to jump to conclusions, but there are some things that do look obvious to us. This merger is probably one of the best things to ever happen to ATI. ATI’s overall corporate culture needs some new direction and motivation. It has too long been a company “run by the engineers,” and some of that rhetoric does ring true even though it has become cliché. ATI’s execution over the last two years has almost been laughable. ATI constantly has great technology and vision but so many times it does not end up making it to the shelves inside the proper market cycle. I think ATI will become much more of a force in the graphics market with AMD’s visionary management in place.
 
I think it will turn out to be good in some ways. ATi will become better, and AMD will have a better chance at catching up with Intel. Also, Intel may work more with nVidia, and scrap the Intel onboard graphics (I hope).
 
There's a lot of points made, and ultimately, we're going to have to wait and see how this pans out. What we may see is a budget CPU with integrated graphics. AMD has expressed intrest and may have this implemented for some of the Turion chips. However, an ATi solution could give AMD a solid core to go by. Also, AMD has dropped out of the chipset business awhile ago, so we could see an AMD core logic come out.

What I do think we're going to see is nVidia enabling SLI support on Intel-based chipsets. While they can't give the finger to the Athlon (which they'd be stupid to alienate that large of a customer base), this might be the incentive they need to drop this driver lockout crap. It probably won't happen until after the merger, but I do think nVidia is going to do this at some point. I think it's inevitable; this simply speeds it up.

The [H] pointed out one biggie: ATi getting the products to market on time. nVidia wins on this alone. ATi beat the snot out of them with the 9700's because they were a superior product to the GeForce 5 blunder. ATi's hardware is amazing, but they've had an issue with crappy drivers and sluggishness to market. Also, lately, their mid-range products aren't that impressive. AMD has done very well in the high-end and low- to mid-range sectors for years now going back to the Duron/Celeron wars. ATi has come amazingly far in driver development. You don't know the horrors of their drivers around the time the 8500 was their top dog. The hardware was amazing, but ATi couldn't write drivers worth a damn and that was killing them. They finally got that in gear and have really been sailing since, and I think they've pretty much bucked off that stigma of horrible drivers. AMD typically doesn't do paper lauches, and if they do, the product is starts showing up within a few weeks. ATi has had problems with announcing a product and it not being available for a few months. With product cycles being 6-9 months, this is a real killer. AMD's head honcho's are goombas like what Microsoft has with Steve Ballmer, and they'll do a good job of kicking ATi's ass into gear. Like I tell people at work: 'It doesn't sell in the backroom'.
 
I'm just wondering how much it's going to affect the nForce product line.

Considering nVidia helped make AMD what they are today because of the initial nForce boards I'd hate to see AMD either really up nVidia's royalty's on chips or eliminate their license all together.
 
thomas234 said:
I think it will turn out to be good in some ways. ATi will become better, and AMD will have a better chance at catching up with Intel. Also, Intel may work more with nVidia, and scrap the Intel onboard graphics (I hope).
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nVidia and Intel will certainly buddy up more, but I don't see Intel moving toward a 3rd party integrated solution. Their upcoming integrated solutions are supposed to be pretty good for integrated. Not hardcore gaming stuff, but it's substainally better than previous graphics that Intel has implemented. I highly doubt we'll see that.

Like I said in my previous post, I do expect nVidia to allow for SLI on Intel chipset-based systems.
 
syngod said:
I'm just wondering how much it's going to affect the nForce product line.

Considering nVidia helped make AMD what they are today because of the initial nForce boards I'd hate to see AMD either really up nVidia's royalty's on chips or eliminate their license all together.
Click to expand...

That's certainly a concern, but if that were to happen, nVidia would cut off a good portion of their user base. They're certainly going to get more cozy with Intel, but I don't see them alienating that large of a customer base. True, they really helped AMD, but that's true vise versa. nVidia is going to keep a foot on both blue and green teams good side. Could they drop AMD? Sure, but that really seems like a bad business move.
 
I'm thinking the opposite way with AMD upping the royalties nVidia will have to pay them. One of the main reasons for the initial nForces not being released for Intel platforms was the high licensing costs. I'm hoping AMD isn't going to try and cut nvidia out of the motherboard market by making it unjprofitable to support their chips.
 
At this point, I'm not sure they'd do that. It could happen a few years down the road, but as it stands, nVidia has played a key role for them. ATi is still the newbie in comparison, with the Crossfire 3200/SB600 chipset being the first chipset they've put out without some major issue---although part of that does lie with the motherboard manufacturers. If AMD does go that route, and that's a big if, I'm not sure it's going to happen for a few years and it would largely depend on how AMD makes use of this merger. It's a given that the graphics will stay, but given that the Radeon Xpress chipsets are still up and coming, it wouldn't be a good move for AMD to sever ties with nVidia. Also, AMD hasn't been as exclusive as Intel has. If Intel hadn't made Slot 1 proprietary, I'm sure AMD would've released the Athlon in a slot 1 format. AMD had to develop a new system because of this, and the way the company has acted over the years in business just seems like they wouldn't alienate a user base. I don't see nVidia deciding to allow SLI to run on a Radeon Xpress chipset, but I don't see AMD making a push to be exclusive.
 
Whatever is happening, we are getting more profits out of it because after aprooving this deal, AMD has lowered the prices of their processors, mostly desktop line. The AM2 is nearly on half of its previous price now.
 
Those price cuts have nothing to do with the merger. AMD is slashing prices to help get AM2 rolling and combat Core 2 (Conroe). ATi will cut prices, but that's because they've got the X1950 and X1650's due out late next month.
 
The purchase would would allow AMD to bundle computer chips with ATI's graphic chips for lower prices.. which is good for us.
 
Possibly. What we're most likely to see is integrated graphics on the CPU like how the memory controller is on-die with the Athlon64's. I'm not so sure we'd see a high-end card with a high-end CPU on one package. It could be done, but I'd be concerned with cooling and the sheer size of the die. That'd would be a solution that would be unlikely to be cooled by just air. Entry level graphics, yeah, I can see them getting away with that given that the targets would be laptops and basic systems.

I'm not sure the prices would drop on either to be honest. They might be able to slash prices more to be competitive and/or clear out the old generation for the new, but there's a cost to make the chips, and also the fact that they can't pull the rug out from under nVidia (and vise versa). AMD can't use this deal to hose nVidia or they risk hurting a major contributor to their rise. AMD traditionally doesn't screw partners. The ATi graphics will be one part of the company. ATi's motherboard chipsets are one part of this, but for AMD, nVidia is still the main provider of chipsets. I don't know how AMD will position itself with the Radeon Xpress chipsets, but any changes aren't going to be hasty. Intel is still AMD's major rival. If the current relationship between AMD and nVidia doesn't change in some form, I will be shocked.
 
Your thoughts seems to be more correct....
Now lets see what will be the next step of Intel now after this big step of AMD...
I have seen most of the company's PC's are equipped with ATi's graphic's card, even my own dell's computer has one in it.....
 
My concern with this merger is the position AMD would put nVidia in. nVidia would be more Intel-friendly because of this move, and with them having such good products on the nForce range they shouldn't shut them out.

We'll have to wait and see, more thoughts in my blog below.
 
Oh, no doubt. I think nVidia is going to at the very least enable SLI functionality on Intel chipsets. What will be interesting is if Intel chipsets retain Crossfire support since AMD will ultimately be controlling this technology. This game of chess will be interesting for sure.
 
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