DailyTech - AMD + ATI: The Fall-Out with Comments

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Blog: Hardware AMD + ATI: The Fall-Out with Comments
Rahul Sood (Blog) - July 24, 2006 7:10 PM

5 comment(s) - last by TheBaker.. on Jul 25 at 9:55 AM

I suspected that investors would react the way they did today, ATI was up and AMD was down

Leaving the financial side alone (because I’m no financial analyst – and that’s probably a good thing), I believe this deal has some very long lasting positive long term affects on AMD. Short term outlook for NVIDIA is good for obvious reasons, however don’t think Intel will go out and buy NVIDIA. I don’t see that happening – Jen Hsun Huang is going to do what’s best for Nvidia shareholders – and he loves his baby. Certainly long term for Nvidia could be nothing short of a “feel good” movie (imagine the possibilities).

AMD and ATI just planted the seeds to a Ttsunami that could turn the tables in the market today. Although it turned out to be one of the worst kept secrets ever - they have everyone who wasn’t "in the know" scrambling for a response.

AMD could (and likely will) eliminate the cut throat competition between ATI and NVIDIA (which is actually a good thing – cut throat competition is NOT good for consumers).

I think AMD had no choice but to make this move. In order to grow at the rate at which they wanted to they needed to bring certain key competencies in house. Had they not done this then they would be in a never ending horse race with Intel, with diminishing returns. I’m tired of horse races in our industry – like with Nvidia and ATI, one horse gets injured and the other keeps running, it’s no different with AMD and Intel. Horse races are boring; it’s time to see some serious innovation where we are all forced to raise the bar or face the music.

I posted all the major comments with responses here. Feel free to comment!

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This guy is full of it

By berat556 on 7/24/2006 11:11:38 PM , Rating: 3

What is he talking about cut throat competion not being good for the consumer, let me tell you that is what's keeping us from buying computers from the over expensive cannot afford one voodoo. Look at AMD prices until intel become competitive the X2 3800 was $316 now it droped to less than $180, how is that bad. Nvidia and ATI have their 6 month cycle that leads to faster and and cheaper perfomance( midrange) for everybody, so what is the problem with competition... if there was no competition there would be no innovation, just look at Micro$oft and their very delayed VISTA. This guy needs some competition against his comapany and their outrageous prices. Keep dreaming kid, and living in Canada kid.

RE: This guy is full of it

By Quincunx on 7/24/2006 11:45:29 PM , Rating: 1

"This guy" has plenty of competition. Alienware, Falcon Northwest and a slew of other not so huge 'built your way' companies that you find strewn through your average tech/gaming magazine. If anyone has a decent view of the industry and how it runs it is someone like himself.
"Nvidia and ATI have their 6 month cycle that leads to faster and and cheaper perfomance( midrange) for everybody, so what is the problem with competition" I like the 'midrange' add-in, but I don't think i've seen stunningly low GPU prices in a while. If anything each new line of amazing technology pushes the MSRP 'high bar' a liiitle bit higher, which I think is expected by consumers, at least myself. If every six months things got truely faster and cheaper in the GPU market, everyone involved in that market would diminish, vanish! The benefits you are seeing are cheaper 'last generation' cards (which is so common because of this 6 month cycle you spoke of) going for less in order to make room for the new orgasmic ones which are selling for the high price. Neh? *shrug*

I think we all know competition can be good for innovation and perhaps lower priced last generation goodness, but you might want to approach the man regarding his definition of 'cutthroat competition' as he mentioned, before attacking it. He may not be referring to the same competition you're thinking of. His point of view may reveal a vastly different picture than we see.

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RE: This guy is full of it

By tuteja1986 on 7/25/2006 1:12:14 AM , Rating: 3

Rahul Sood makes alot sense not like some idiot like John Dvorak who pretty much made stupid statment on this transaction.

Listen to TWIT pocast episode "TWiT 63: Hey John"

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RE: This guy is full of it

By tuteja1986 on 7/25/2006 1:13:16 AM , Rating: 2

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3?http://aol...

link to podcast :(

forget !!

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RE: This guy is full of it

By TheBaker on 7/25/2006 9:55:17 AM , Rating: 2

While competition in general is good, "cut-throat" competition leads to dishonest business practices and misinformation. How many charts have you seen about performance comparisons between GPU's that have absolutely nothing to do with real world performance?

ATI and Nvidia are so busy in their one-upsmanship games that they have lost sight of what is driving the market. Everyone always forgets that Intel is the leading producer of graphics chips. Why? Because they understand that most people aren't hard-core gamers who will spend tons of money to make their games look good. Most users are business users or home users who want to be able to check their e-mail, read some news, play FreeCell or Sudoku, and surf the web.

ATI and NV are fighting for a dramatically small sector of the industry, thus the dirty fighting. Rahul is right. If they can bring some moderation to this fight while still keeping the competitive drive, it will help us all out. AMD will be able to harness ATI's weight and make some killer integrated chipsets and likely CPU/GPU combo processors. Intel will remain the king of CPU's, Nvidia will take the throne as king of GPU's, and AMD/ATI will be number two in both markets, except with a larger share than eother has now and greater potential to gain more.

This is good foreveryone.

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