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Interview with ATI's soon-to-be CEO Dave Orton
wolfgang writes "Tom's Hardware has published an interview with Dave Orton, who will become ATI's next CEO in June. Orton talks about the transformation of the company within the last three years, the current competition with Nvidia and what can be expected from graphic chipsets in the near future. Orton believes that ATI can grab more than 50 percent market share in the desktop market in the short term."
Powering those little cable boxes and HDD recorders is where the money lies in the near to mid-term.
The desktop is for all intents and purposes a locked up market. Get a deal with Intel to fry your chip onto the mobos and you're home free.
But the embedded world is still the Wild West of technology.
I have been pwned because my
What they really need to do is release better Linux drivers, and care more about Linux support in general.
Setec Astronomy
I predict an extra 15% market share every year for 10 years.
He should start now on that graphics card that longhorn will need.
I used to be a die hard nVidia fan until ATI started to keep nVidia on there toes around Radeon 8500...this type of compitition if the best thing for the consumer...I mean im sure if ATI kept releasing infirior pruducts we would not have soo many monster grapics cards right now...good stuff...keep up the good work ATI.
As somebody who has just upgraded their RivaTNT 64 drivers to the latest version (all of about 5 mins before seeing this /. post) I don't think flattening NVidia is going to be much trouble...
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
That's what Nvidia has been banking on... the short term... they're the leader for like 2 weeks... what the hell is the point of looking at the short term? 50% market share short term means nothing... unless you define the length of the term... what is that, months/quarters/years?
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
ATI has some great cards, and I think it is possible for us to see that kind of market share.... but can we get some real linux support??? The kinds of geeks who will plop down $400 for the best out there would love to see that. (Even if many games don't run under Linux, we still dual-boot!)
ATI does look well poised to capture the majority of the desktop graphics card business. They have had excellent competitors since the 9700 and their newest generation gives superior performance to nVidia cards with less cooling and power requirements.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
Orton believes that ATI can grab more than 50 percent market share in the desktop market in the short term.
That's exactly the kind of BS that CEOs are paid to spew. Does he honestly believe they'll capture more than 50% of the market, or is that the line he's feeding to the board of directors to get the CEO position, which he'll lose when the board gets sick of the BS?
One video card company cannot gain more than 50% of today's market. It's just not possible.
Longhorn itself doesn't exactly seem to be in much of a hurry to get out the door
Goodwill with the tech crowd will go a long way. There are some companies that play nice with our crowd and prosper from it... Apple for one has tried to deliver what we want and now they are doing better than they did 4 years ago.
Although, I think we're both just feeding the troll.
Why? What's the benefit to them?Yes, exactly. What I think will drive ATI to release better Linux drivers is seeing more *commercial* applications that run on Linux and require the cards that ATI makes. There is no point to ATI to invest lots of time / money in developing drivers for a non-existent market. Translation: Games, we need to see more *commercially* released GAMES for Linux.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
To capture market share, they need to figure out how to write drivers that don't crash 50% of the systems they're installed on. I've flirted with ATI on and off since 1989, and have *never* had a stable system with one of their cards installed.
Longhorn will require a card that's at least ten times as powerful
and 1000 times larger and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own one.
Here is the actual quote: "We would like to reach 50 percent of the market in the short term." Since there are only really two main players for graphics cards, and they have been gaing share on NV, the goal of 50% doesn't seem unrealistic. Especially when you consider that so far ATI seems to be leading again on the high end.
"Orton believes that ATI can grab more than 50 percent market share in the desktop market in the short term."
I beleive they can.
i'm trying to give up sigs.
Why the heck does the mpact2 driver always crash when changing resolution?
It's a small point, but it's a small "i" (ATi).
If ATI can figure out how to get a superfan/cooling device installed on every ATI graphics card, I'd buy from them again.
Until then, my Radeon 9800 pro experience has been a complete disaster. Compared to other Geforce cards I have owned... no heating problem... no driver problem.
Because they don't have to. And don't think for a minute that the graphics card business isn't rife with IP lawsuits.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
What they really need to do is release better Linux drivers, and care more about Linux support in general.
Oh my, no.
It's got nothing to do with Linux.
All of their drivers are crap. Rather than make the ATI MultiMedia Center and hardware drivers *not* blue-screen Windows 2000 constantly, they spent a whole lot of time and effort on making it look stupid (like it was designed by a 17-year-old virgin with anime posters on his walls).
Support for discontinued products is also poor. Come on, when it's obsolete, just release the source for the drivers as you had them. I had several hundred ATI All in Wonder Pros installed at a TV station; they expected their investment was going to last: it didn't. What trade secrets are going to be lost by releasing that?
A long time ago, I swore off ever buying another ATI product.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
another very recent interview with Dave Orton, quite interesting IMHO: http://www.beyond3d.com/interviews/daveorton/
their video capture cards use DRM. It doesn't matter how good they are. We shouldn't support it in any way until that stuff comes out and we get a fully capable card. Say it with me. Don't tolerate DRM.
What?
I generally shift like the wind when buying tech. The best bang for the buck in current reviews is what I look for. About 3 years ago I bought a Retail ATI 8500. Decent card but, in hindsight, my system crashed quite a bit more than it should have. People were point finger at my Antec 350W PS. Finally I started getting consistent crashes in a game I wanted to play (NWN). This lead me to an exhaustive diagnostic process that eventually proved my card was at fault. AT this point my Card was 2.5 years old. I sent it back to ATI. They replaced it with a 9700 Pro free of charge. Now that is what I call customer service. The kind of move that wins customer loyalty. That ATI warranty is worth a premium to me. I fully realize you are not often likely to get that kind of free upgrade, but a nice long warranty with fast replacement is much appreciated. I realize a lot of people here are complaining about past grief with ATI product, but they have made dramatic strides in the last 2 years. Now releasing drivers monthly. Performance, Image quality and reliability are all top notch. They lag in Open GL a bit, and moreso on Linux though. So I can see lots of folks here passing them by. One last point is I like buying my card from the company that also made the chip.
Now releasing drivers monthly.
Those must be really good/stable drivers if they come out with new ones every month...
"Software is like sex: it's better when it's free."
Those must be really good/stable drivers if they come out with new ones every month...
By that logic, every FOSS software out there is pure crap, since some of them are updated almost daily. :p Since when constant updates are a bad thing?
Please think before you post, K?
I am running Recent Cat 4.4 and they are rock solid for me, as were the 4.1 I was using before.
It is a model small iterations, rather than the one huge dump of changes. I like the current model.
YMMV.
Since when constant updates are a bad thing? I dunno...heres an idea, bug check your software BEFORE u release it. Back in the day (TM) games that came out on console had to be thoroughly bug tested as there was no internet or way to patch your NES cartridge... We have come, or gone back, a long way since then.
"Software is like sex: it's better when it's free."
ATI isn't going to touch Nvidia in the linux/free/bsd/etc market, the way things currently are.
I had a radeon 9000, and i had more issues with it than any other card i've ever used. Most games couldn't be played, lots of system hangs etc. All with their offical drivers.
Got tired of that, grabbed an nvidia 5900FX ultra, using nvidias drivers, and haven't had a single issue in two months.
It's pretty clear who the serious company is as far as linux/fbsd/etc.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
Now releasing drivers monthly.
Those must be really good/stable drivers if they come out with new ones every month...
It may be more the case that the VLIW microcode used by the GPU is compiled directly from a high level language such as C. As technology progresses, they manually optimise any bottlenecks in the paths that developers are finding. At the same time they are also optimising their microcode compilers. Not forgetting adding new extensions.
What makes you think that NVidia and ATI have a perfect right to give away the internals of their systems? Clue: They don't. Both use proprietary code which they don't have a right to distribute, hence the binary-only kernel modules, blessed, or allowed at least by Linus.
ya know. I'm just sayin.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
I still use my good old Helcules' MDA, you insensitive innovation maniac... ^_^
Do they support Linux? In the same way as you describe?
Say my card is broken. I call ATi tech support
Tech support: "Fire up start [...]."
Me: "Sir, i don't run Windows."
Tech support: "What OS do you run?"
Me: "Debian GNU/Linux."
Tech support: "Sorry, we don't support Linux. Most likely there's something wrong in your configuration anyway"
You too can get free stuff for representing a major portion of ATI's market.
Just say no to license servers!!