ATI Cards changed to Nvidia Cards in the Future?

[godbout]

I think that Apple will switch most or all of it's line to Nvidia in order to keep Intel happy. Happy Intel equals a cheaper and friendlier Intel for Apple. I think Apple will do this as a natural progression as they refresh their product line. I don't think we will see new laptops just to change the graphics subsystem. I think ATI will still introduce third party graphics cards for the Mac upgrade market as they always have, but they may be less likely to continue this long term if Apple does indeed OEM only Nvidia in their products to please Intel. My two cents.

Intel sells their chips to anyone who wants to buy them (in batches of 1000) for the same price so I don't think that what you are saying holds ground. I think that Apple could very well have some macs running ATi/AMD or Nvidia/Intel. Actually, at least for the time being I imgaine that any permutation of graphics card and processor would be fine as I can't see AMD saying that Intel can't use ATi chips (I could be very wrong here). Apple does not have to have good karma with intel in order to get chips because Apple is not the only one Intel is dedicating its chips to. I think that in the future you will see AMD chips in macs... Steve will be able to say "I will use whatever is better/cheaper today"

 

[eXan]

I've always liked ATi better than Nvidia, probably because I like simple product names. ATi's GPUs for instance: theres an X, and number (bigger is better), and some letters, the more the better, I guess. NVidia has way to many options with GeForce (6, 7) plus the quadro and the FX and everything else. Thats probably why I've liked Intel better than AMD, INtel is pretty much the series, the core, and the speed. AMD is the same name and this after it: +2623y6231. Yea an exaggeration, but I shouldnt have to decode stuff like that to buy something. Does anybody know if ATi is keeping its name? Like the Alienware/Dell dealio?

Yes I do like ATi better than nVidia because on Mac ATi offers the great ATi Display utility and ATIccelerator, they also write drivers for Mac by themselves, unlike nVidia. It seems like nV doesnt really care about Mac platform at all. They do not offer retail versions of their cards, they do not write drivers for Mac, they have no software (like ATIccelerator and ATI Displays Utility) for Mac. Yes they make fast cards faster than ATI, but they are HUGE! Compare X800 to GeForce 6800!!! X800 is 4 times smaller, 100$ less and often beats 6800 in benchmarks!

I dont think nVidia's product names are worse than ATI's.

Radeon X800 Pro
Radeon X800 XT
Radeon X800 PE

GeForce 6800 GT
GeForce 6800 Ultra

Whats wrong with that?

As for CPUs, that 3800+ number in AMD's compare to Pentium 4's clock, so you have to know how that P4 performs to actually understand it, and most people dont know this. I myself (when I first saw such "benchmark" in AMD's chip names) thought it was chips MHz

Apple has (well.. had) best CPU names

G4 1.33 GHz
G5 2.3 GHz etc

 

[trainguy77]

I like Nvidia better then ATI. I would like to see apple switch. But I they may stay with ATI. This changes nothing for apple.

 

[Pressure]

Well, it's always been a swing motion between these two. When the Athlon X2 first came out, it trounced anything that Intel had out at the time. Even the Core Duo chips are inferior to them. The Core Duo chips use more power, produce more heat, and generally less value than the X2's (I own both). The Core 2 Duo will be an amazing leap forward for Intel, but you can be sure that AMD will not be far behind with something new and just as (or moreso) amazing.

I'm sorry but you got your facts wrong!

The Core Duo (Yonah) is optimized for the mobile segment and uses much much less power than the AMD64 X2! If anything, clock for clock they are pretty much on par.

The AMD64 X2 uses between 89-110Watt, the Core Duo uses a mighty 31Watt (15Watt or 5.5Watt for low voltage binned processors). Less IS better here . . . just so we have that clear. As a result, they are way cooler and fit inside notebooks. About the price, you haven't thought that the X2 is just grossly overpriced? It is . . .

There is nothing new coming from AMD until the second quarter of 2007.

 

[purelithium]

I'm sorry but you got your facts wrong!

The Core Duo (Yonah) is optimized for the mobile segment and uses much much less power than the AMD64 X2! If anything, clock for clock they are pretty much on par.

The AMD64 X2 uses between 89-110Watt, the Core Duo uses a mighty 31Watt (15Watt or 5.5Watt for low voltage binned processors). Less IS better here . . . just so we have that clear. As a result, they are way cooler and fit inside notebooks. About the price, you haven't thought that the X2 is just grossly overpriced? It is . . .

There is nothing new coming from AMD until the second quarter of 2007.

I meant to say the Pentium D, I had Core Duo on the mind, I guess.

 

[Gurutech]

Like it or not, AMD is the main reason that we can purchase any great CPU at cheap price.

I don't really care which company(or product) is superior or better.
As long as one side doesn't dominate other, I'm pretty happy. I'd really like to see a new CPU from AMD soon, or else, we might end up paying premium for CPU.

 

[gnasher729]

Ok.. without mentioning speed, which is easier to "decode" and tell the general performance of the chip?

Intel Pentium D 930

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+

Ok, I can't tell anything from looking at the Intel designation, but I can generally tell that the AMD seems to be a 64bit processor, looks like it has 2 cores (x2) and looks like it should be about the power of a 3.8ghz intel single core.

Pure marketing genius at AMD. While Intel scrambled to make their chips run at higher clockspeed, AMD just increased the numbers in their product names

I think Intel should have called the Core Duos at 1.83, 2.0 and 2.16 GHz "Core 2 x 3600", "Core 2 x 4000" and "Core 2 x 4400". Then we could get into an arms race of meaningless numbers.