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No more ATI cards?
- Thread starter daneoni
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That seems very anti-competitive on Intel's part because of their market share - Brussels will be paying them a visit if they arent careful.
But yes, ATI, under its AMD brand, will continue to make chips.
But yes, ATI, under its AMD brand, will continue to make chips.
codo said:
So AMD would be making chips for Intel? That would be strange, indeed.
As for whether or not Macs will continue to use ATI... we will just have to wait and see. And I suppose we should also hope that nVidia comes out with some banging products!
I think AMD will sell ATI chips to whoever will buy them, but they are going to work best with AMD stuff (cheaper, better integration and new models appearing first on AMD).
Because of this it will leave Apple no option but to drop them.
Can't guess if this will be good/bad but in the short-term this is bad news for the first generation of macs to use nVidia.
Because of this it will leave Apple no option but to drop them.
Can't guess if this will be good/bad but in the short-term this is bad news for the first generation of macs to use nVidia.
daneoni said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't revoking the chipset license only stop ATI from making MB controller chipsets? How does this affect GPUs in any way?
Let's start from a typical desktop PC. The GPU is usually on a graphics card run off of the AGP, PCI, or PCI Express slot. At this point it's a standard interface and the only issue is whether there is a driver for the card which has nothing to do with the controller chipset on the motherboard.
Let's step this down to MBs with graphics built in. Correct me if I am wrong but don't the on board GPUs still communicate via AGP, PCI, or PCI Express? Why would MB manufacturers bother with a different interface? Why would OS/diver vendors want a different interface? It seems that once again this is independent of the controller chipset.
I can understand Intel pulling ATI's license now since communicating with the processor probably requires a fair bit of knowledge about the processor and possibly quite a bit of proprietary information that is needed optimize performance, why would Intel want to hand this data over to AMD? However the Graphics interface is most likely a standard interface which requires none of the inside knowledge, and AMD would be stupid to alienate half the market for their newly acquired division.
atszyman said:
This is, as far as I can see it, what the license is referring to, it has nothing to do with Video boards.
if you go to newegg.com, search through the motherboards, you'll see that ATI manufactures boards that use intel processors. thats the license that has been revoked.
not the right to put an ATI card on an intel machine
intel doesn't want amd/ati to make boards for them, so they are revoking the license.
not the right to put an ATI card on an intel machine
intel doesn't want amd/ati to make boards for them, so they are revoking the license.
ATI isn't the only GPU manufacturer!
Ever hear of Nvidia, hello?
This isn't the end of the world people!
Ever hear of Nvidia, hello?
This isn't the end of the world people!
bigrell486 said:
This discussion is about ATI, not nVidia. In addition, nVidia's drivers are awful compared to ATI's (no rotation, no FSAA, and I'm pretty sure they're slower too).
I'm probably going to start sounding like a broken record here but
The chipset license revocation will not eliminate ATI graphics cards from future Macs.
The way that most computers talk to the graphics cards is through a standard bus interface like AGP, or PCI Express. The processor is completely independent of these busses and as long as the OS has drivers the graphics card can be used. This should be true regardless of whether the GPU is soldered to the Motherboard or a standalone graphics card.
The chipset license that was nixed was for the motherboard chips that the CPU uses to talk to USB, PCI, and various other busses. CPUs rarely have built in PCI controllers or any other of the interfaces, and instead use a data bus system to communicate to dedicated controller chips to handle these functions. ATI made these chips as well as GPUs. This makes sense on the part of Intel since in order to optimize performance of the controller chips would require a lot of knowledge about how the CPU operates which they probably don't want to just hand over to AMD.
In summary, ATI graphics cards will be in Macs as long as they perform better than or are cheaper than the competition. AMD is not going to stop selling graphics cards to Apple simply because they use Intel processors, and since Apple was already using an Intel chipset for their motherboard controllers the license revocation means nothing to us.
The chipset license revocation will not eliminate ATI graphics cards from future Macs.
The way that most computers talk to the graphics cards is through a standard bus interface like AGP, or PCI Express. The processor is completely independent of these busses and as long as the OS has drivers the graphics card can be used. This should be true regardless of whether the GPU is soldered to the Motherboard or a standalone graphics card.
The chipset license that was nixed was for the motherboard chips that the CPU uses to talk to USB, PCI, and various other busses. CPUs rarely have built in PCI controllers or any other of the interfaces, and instead use a data bus system to communicate to dedicated controller chips to handle these functions. ATI made these chips as well as GPUs. This makes sense on the part of Intel since in order to optimize performance of the controller chips would require a lot of knowledge about how the CPU operates which they probably don't want to just hand over to AMD.
In summary, ATI graphics cards will be in Macs as long as they perform better than or are cheaper than the competition. AMD is not going to stop selling graphics cards to Apple simply because they use Intel processors, and since Apple was already using an Intel chipset for their motherboard controllers the license revocation means nothing to us.