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Blog: Hardware AMD + ATI: Consumer Advocates Go Nuts!
Rahul Sood (Blog) - July 26, 2006 2:37 PM

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2 comment(s) - last by Master Kenobi.. on Jul 26 at 4:04 PM

The other day I wrote the comment "cut throat competition is NOT good for consumers" --

Recently I was hit with a barrage of emails from consumer rights advocates trying to tell me how wrong I was with regard to "competition is not good for customers." First, I never said competition isn’t a good thing, I said "cut-throat" competition. There's a huge difference here: cut-throat competition is designed to cut the throat of your competitor and put them out of business (thus the name). Cut-throat competition is flawed by design, and it’s been lurking in our industry for far too long.

It’s time that we let innovation prevail and let companies like NVIDIA and ATI create products for consumers that work properly out of the box. No more paper launches, no more buggy hardware – and hopefully no more trying to get to the king of the mountain position by releasing hardware that’s unattainable for most consumers and doesn’t work for enthusiasts either. This deal with AMD + ATI will all but eliminate the cut-throat competition between NVIDIA and ATI, because AMD understands all too well what cut-throat competition can do to good companies.

AMD needs to survive to keep things balanced in our industry. In the last few years AMD has transformed itself from an underground edgy non-mainstream entity to a mainstream company with growing acceptance. They moved mountains to get where they are and they don’t want to be in the same position they were five years ago. If AMD had not made the move to buy ATI then in a few years we would be looking at a fairly boring landscape. No one wants to start a semi-conductor company anymore; it’s just too easy to get killed.

Whatever your opinion is, based on their lawsuit AMD believes that Intel is (or was?) a monopolist. AMD believes that Intel made it nearly impossible for them to grow their business by using unfair business tactics to stunt their growth. Intel doesn’t agree one bit – they say the lawsuit is complete nonsense. Obviously both companies have strong... Click here for the rest...

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No apocalypse to day...

By Trisped on 7/26/2006 3:19:40 PM , Rating: 2

“This deal with AMD + ATi will all but eliminate the cut-throat competition between Nvidia and ATi, because AMD understands all too well what cut-throat competition can do to good companies.”
Not likely. AMD isn’t going to play favorites in the GPU market, so NVIDIA and ATI will still be dueling it out for the coveted king of the hill position. AMD might try to get them to play nicer, but actual change will have to be forced by the market, and right now that isn’t happening.

“ATi has been removed from the event and I suspect that Intel is changing the configurations of all the machines based on the feedback I’ve been hearing.”
I don’t know if ATI has been removed from the event, but they haven’t been removed from Intel’s motherboard map. RD600 is still on schedule and 975 still supports crossfire. In addition, I don’t think Intel is going to drop their alliance with ATI. They may stress some points, like not sharing certain data with AMD people, but I think ATI will continue with business as usual.

Is AMD or ATI laughing? probably not. Is NVIDIA? they are more likely crying because all their work in becoming the AMD Motherboard of choice is at risk, now that AMD owns a company that will produce boards. Is Intel hiding in the corner? probably not, as they currently have the most powerful chips on the market and are looking at a big regrowth in the enthusiast fields.

RE: No apocalypse to day...

By Master Kenobi

(blog) on 7/26/06, Rating: 0

By Master Kenobi

(blog) on 7/26/2006 4:04:42 PM , Rating: 0

All this merger really has done is put AMD in a position to potentially compete better with Intel. Just the "potential", it will still take many years before AMD could hope to do what Intel does right now, simply because Intel rules the corporate market for its Solid Intel-Only solutions, and that has taken Intel over a decade to solidify that position. We likely won't see any real push by AMD to reach into that market until 2010 at the earliest, and even then Intel has an excellent track record in this space, where as AMD has nothing to their name in this market segment. AMD will likely launch an AMD-Only mid/low end slution in 2008/2009 and run that for several years to gain a credible track record with their integrated one stop solutions, if they can get a few years without any major problems, they might be in a position to compete with Intel there.

You really need to keep in mind that this merger gives no immediate advantage other than AMD has a chipset/board maker in house. As for marketshare, its unlikely to change until we see something out of nVidia. If we start seeing SLI officially supported on Intel boards, your going to see AMD marketshare drop in the enthusiast market, and rapidly. Crossfire is nice and all (I've been ATI only for several years now too), but SLI in a 2 card configuration seems to work a lot better than Crossfire, the 4 card/proc solution is still relatively untested.

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