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AMD-ATI Merger on the Way?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the by-your-powers-combined-i-am-cpt-hardware dept.

miketronics writes "Forbes.com is reporting the possibility of a merger between industry heavyweights AMD and ATI. This is largely based on a 'prediction on recent checks in the PC food chain' by industry analyst Apjit Walia. A move like this might give AMD some leverage over Intel, who has been slashing prices lately to compete with a major surge in AMD popularity in both the home and server markets. Despite AMD's recent gains Intel still has a dominant market share and consumers have high hopes for their upcoming Conroe processors."

19 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Why not Nvidia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    All I can think is why AMD ins't looking at nvidia instead? If I had my choice of companies to chose from, it wouldn't be ATI.

    1. Re:Why not Nvidia by mrchaotica · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hey, I'd love to be able to get an AMD card, since they often seem to be a better value for the money. But I can't, because the Linux drivers suck. It's not fanboyism, it's practicality.

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    2. Re:Why not Nvidia by kimvette · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Amen to that.

      As far as I am concerned, ATI is evil.

      Their customer service USED to be excellent, better than other video card vendors. Unfortunately when DiamondMM lost the first video card wars and ATI got really huge, their driver quality sank very quickly and their customer service went from the best to quite possibly the worst - worse than even generic video card companies like Jaton. Not only that, they went from being quite supportive of X to being downright hostile (this change took place right around the time they bought up the charred corpse of Diamond) and REFUSED to disclose info to Linux developers, taking on the "proprietary intellectual property" mantra that Diamond used to love to chant. As if releasing "register c8e3 does foo" is going to reveal how you developed your chip mask. Idiots. Just release the map already, okay?

      ATI's drivers have become more stable in the last couple of years on the Windows side, and they've become slightly less evil in the Linux world by releasing (partially-functional - no 3D - WTF? No Radeon 7500 support? WTF!) binary drivers for X and register maps for older products, but they still have an extremely long way to go before I will consider buying any ATI products. Hell, they STILL haven't ever released a driver which will enable the tuner on any of my ATI tuner or All in Wonder cards on Linux. Even worse, the open source driver (on supported cards) significantly outperforms the proprietary driver on several systems I've tested. Also, I've never managed to get GL117 to run on ANY ATI card, but NO problems on NVidia or even Screw ATI.

      If AMD teams up with ATI, not only will I avoid ATI products, but I will also stick with Intel processors. Besides, with Intel's new cores, it's Intel's turn to babystep back into the lead again for a while. I think it's more likely that ATI's evil would rub off on AMD, and ATI would not improve any.

      --
      The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
    3. Re:Why not Nvidia by geobeck · · Score: 4, Insightful
      All I can think is why AMD ins't looking at nvidia instead?

      Because nVIDIA isn't a three-letter acronym starting with A*, which is probably this analyst's rationale for starting this pump-and-dump "prediction".

      *A for "analyst", which of course starts with "anal".

      --
      Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
    4. Re:Why not Nvidia by cp.tar · · Score: 3, Funny

      He's forward thinking.

      --
      Ignore this signature. By order.
    5. Re:Why not Nvidia by chewedtoothpick · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Perhaps this is a move by AMD to help NVidia finally rid themselves of their competition from ATI. Given the close relationship that AMD and NVidia have, and AMD's dependancy on NVidia, AMD would want to do everything in their power to help NVidia lorde their power over their competitors.

      That, or perhaps AMD is seeking to relieve themselves of their dependance on NVidia, and it has become quite obvious that VIA is no longer a player in the motherboard battle. AMD Could be looking to expand their performance by making an AMD motherboard that actually is worth the silicon it's made on - just as Intel's best boards use Intel north and south bridges.

      --
      Erutangis ym si siht.
  2. Uh oh... by mcpkaaos · · Score: 5, Funny

    There goes the amd64 stable keyword...

    --
    It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
  3. quick question by friedman101 · · Score: 5, Funny

    At what percentage of market share am I supposed to stop liking AMD?

    1. Re:quick question by Fallingcow · · Score: 3, Interesting

      AMD has had me as a customer ever since I went shopping for a budget chip a few years ago.

      Celerons sucked so much (they were still PII-based at that time, IIRC), but I didn't want to shell out for a real Pentium... then along came Duron, a line of chips that not only outperformed the Celerons by a large margin (and often at much lower clock speeds!), but were also FAR cheaper. Hell, there was a year or so there when one could buy a high-clocked Duron that would benchmark higher than many of the actual Pentium chips, and at budget-chip prices!

      Since Intel has yet to really exceed AMD in the price/value ratio since that time (though they are supposedly closing the gap when it comes to high-end chips), I've stuck with AMD. I imagine that they won over lots of other people at that time, as well--especially those who pay attention to these kinds of things (geeks).

    2. Re:quick question by glsunder · · Score: 3, Funny

      51%

  4. this merger would throtle Intels sales because... by Brit_in_the_USA · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... Intel is very dependant on ATI at the moment to supply intel CPU compatible chip-sets/Motherboards to help Intel move it's stock pile of CPUs. As Intel has a chip-set shortage which means it can not shift CPU's as fast as it would likes. (almost every new CPU requires a new MB).

    *IF* AMD bought ATI they could immediately can the ATI Intel motherboard line and deliver a big blow to intel's profitability for the next quarter or two.

  5. Doesn't make sense by DeafDumbBlind · · Score: 5, Interesting

    AMD doesn't need ATI's tech or headaches. The best chipsets for AMD's systems currently come from Nvidia; why would AMD want to piss them off?
    Nvidia's founder worked at AMD in the 80s and the 2 companies have a pretty close relationship. I can see a merger with Nvidia making sense, but buying ATI would be a blunder.

    --


    Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
  6. Can't see it happening... by RayDude · · Score: 4, Insightful

    IMO this is pretty silly. AMD would be backhanding NVIDIA by doing this. And this would encourage NVIDIA and Intel to merge in response. You really don't want Intel and NVIDIA working as the same company do you? Talk about stiff competition. And this could eliminate some choices we have as consumers on chipsets and video processors. All in all this would be very bad for consumers. I can't see this happening, no matter what the analysts say. Raydude

  7. What's with all the "Merge with nVidia instead" by OzPhIsH · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't want ANY of these companies to merge. I want more houses out there designing chips, pushing the limits, and enabling us to have more and more powerful rigs at a cheaper price. I don't want less competition in the sector one bit. We already only have really 2 choices for CPUs, and two different choices for GPUs. I wish there were a lot more to choose from. What I don't want is to be locked into a specific video card chipset based on whether I have an Intel or AMD CPU.

    --

    "To lead the people, you must walk behind them"

  8. Pump and dump... ATI up 9% on the rumor by DeafDumbBlind · · Score: 5, Insightful

    http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ecn?s=ATYT
    Looks like the analyst needed to justify his price upgrade so he started the rumor.

    --


    Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
  9. Re:Very unlikely, but... by PixelSlut · · Score: 4, Interesting

    AMD has their own chipsets, they're not buying ATI for that. The thing that AMD doesn't make of their own is integrated graphics chipsets. Intel is the largest vendor of graphics hardware (they either beat NVIDIA and ATI combined, or they come close to it). With Windows Vista coming out and requiring a GPU for Aeroglass, it totally makes sense for AMD to start producing integrated graphics solutions.

  10. Re:Consumers Don't care by lostchicken · · Score: 5, Funny

    Pretty sure I wouldn't be able to either. I mean, the Katami, being a much earlier chip probably has about half the number of pins that the Conroe has and might be lighter, but the Conroe uses BGA, so it'd probably hurt less, being less spiky. In the end, though, Conroe, Katami or 6502, I'd mainly just be pissed that you hit me in the head with one.

    --
    -twb
  11. I want to be an analyst! by RelliK · · Score: 4, Funny

    Being an analyst is awesome! Think about it: you make up wild speculation all day and people pay you for it. Next up: Amazon to buy RedHat and sell it on eBay!

    --
    ___
    If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
  12. ati revenge by codingh34v3n · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ATI drivers suck ?

    i dont know why people talk so bad about ati products, meanly at these times.

    I allways had nvidia boards and yes , i liked it because their support on linux started very well (easy install), but their prices now, start to grow against their quality.

    so, a few months ago i buyed a cheap ATI and tried to install it, downloaded the drivers from the website.

    At the time, there are many tutorials about how to install 3d on ati chips and if you see well, the procedures are very similar to nvidia chips installation.

    on debian based systems, with a few apt commands only, in a few minutes you have 3d acceleration on X.

    in my case, the 3d performance on games even outperform the equivalent nvidia chipsets. So, where is the complication?

    and if you do a "lsmod | grep fglrx" you realize the driver itself use only 1/2 MB of memory against the several MBs of nvidia driver.

    so where is the relation quality / performance / price here?

    If ATI join AMD, they could put the gfx cpu inside amd cpu and even make a custom main board for their specific product. There are a lot of choices.

    http://www.codingheaven.net/Computing Resource