AMD acquires ATI for $5.4 billion

[Virtuosofriend]

The AMD acquisition of ATI is now official, with the chip manufacturer acquiring the Canadian based ATI for US$5.4 billion.

"AMD and ATI today announced plans to join forces in a transaction valued at approximately $5.4 billion. The combination will create a processing powerhouse by bringing AMD’s technology leadership in microprocessors together with ATI’s strengths in graphics, chipsets and consumer electronics. The result: A new and more formidable company, determined to drive growth, innovation and choice for its customers, particularly in the commercial and mobile computing segments and in the rapidly-growing consumer electronics market. Combining technologies, people, and complementary strengths, AMD plans to deliver in 2007 customer-centric platforms for the benefit of customers who want to collaborate in the development of differentiated solutions."

Exactly what this will mean for the graphics card market remains to be seen, but if AMD can bring their technological innovation to bear on the graphics market, nVidia may well find that they are no longer the dominant player.

[Dark Hacker]

Brilliant move of AMD, i must say. They are almost cornering Intel in O.O

[luck777jojo]

NOOOOOOO!!!! not ATI and AMD, where will my beautiful nVidia go :(

[Dark Hacker]

Yeah i'm concerned about that too -.-

[julius_123]

well i am running the dual invidia geforce 6600 gt's so well i got the amd athlon xp 3200 64 bit.....so well if the card is better then my gt's then well i will use it but still invidia all the way......

[Weedh3ad]

Wow, Nvidia jus got ownt.

[JAvEX]

NOOOOOOO!!!! not ATI and AMD, where will my beautiful nVidia go
haha
Wow, Nvidia jus got ownt
true

Omg, I'm going to laugh at soo many people... ontopic: I prefer ATI and AMD, this is fantasic news imo. Nvidia and Intel are all alone... muhahahauhaha!! And Nvidia isn't going to want to go with Intel, so they're screwed! ATI and AMD will take over the gaming industry!

[luck777jojo]

as much as it pains me to say this (as I'm an AMD fan) Intel is currently plugging AMD up the ass quite hard with their new dual core cpus

Honestly every review site I have seen with the comparison results up shows Intel's new chip way ahead of any AMD chip :x

[Glassjaw]

yeh luck777,

your referring to the new AMD AM2 vs Intel Conroe.
Conroe is set to be bounds ahead of anything AMD (in particular the AM2)

Maybe thats why AMD have merged with ATI to conquer some of the GFX market ... they may be anticipating losses when the conroe demolishes the AM2.

[Virtuosofriend]

NOOOOOOO!!!! not ATI and AMD, where will my beautiful nVidia go To hell , to HELL! :P

[chinito]

Well its seems Amd dropped their prices to compete with Intel Core 2 Duo ....

[infu5ion]

pretty fair id say... i always saw nvidia as the more successful company.. but now.. lol smart move. but then i wonder tho.. will amd be able to do as good as before? now they got more to concentrate on... hmmm

[MIG-DARTH]

THATS TRADIGIC WHAT WILL BECOME OF NVIDIA!?

i think they would be WAY more better with amd Amd and nvidia because nvidia has alwase been dominant player leaving ati in the shadows...

anyway if Amd and ati come up with this super cool chip/card with was $50 and 10x better than 7900 512 and there was only the 5750 nvidia 128 i would burn ati and buy nvidia

[JAvEX]

i think they would be WAY more better with amd Amd and nvidia because nvidia has alwase been dominant player leaving ati in the shadows...
I play in the shadows and I've always had better graphics and performance in my games than anyone I've known that plays in the light.

[scruie]

Intel have always been able to manufacturer the whole package (motherboard, CPU and graphics), and supply OEM system builders (eg. Dell) with a one-stop shop for a cheap PC to build and sell maximising profit for OEM builders. And add to all this you have a better comatiblitity between all parts/sub-systems.

AMD have never been able to do this. In the early days of AMD they were forced to practically bribe motherboard/Chipset companies to suppport them; in fact early AMD CPUs were 'clones of Intel chips so they could fit into Intel mobos. Of course this all changed when AMD produce the Athlon range and mobo/chipset manufacturers were falling over themselves to support AMD. And with the AMD64 range, well we all know them so no use babbling.

With the addition of ATi, AMD have now got both graphics and motherboard chipset solutions at hand. This should put them on an equal par with what Intel can offer to OEM system builders. And this is even better now since they ATi have a 'proper' Directx10 solution ready for Vista, thus AMD can take advantage of this by supplying the whole package ready for Vista (when M$ release it).

[Dark Blaze]

as much as it pains me to say this (as I'm an AMD fan) Intel is currently plugging AMD up the ass quite hard with their new dual core cpus

Honestly every review site I have seen with the comparison results up shows Intel's new chip way ahead of any AMD chip

Not sure if you guys have come across other news, but Intel keeps firing staff, it's not looking good for them right now...

[KizZamP-]

Not sure if you guys have come across other news, but Intel keeps firing staff, it's not looking good for them right now...
err,they just released their intel conroe,everybody wants one,so...

[Sudden Death]

Maybe Intel will buy nVidea :ponder:

This is good, because now I wont get AMD and ATI confused :P and hopefully better products will be made - we wont need intel or nvidea anymore.

[JAvEX]

Maybe Intel will buy nVidea
I very much doubt that, but it's always possible. I'm voting for AMD taking over... Just thinking, if AMD bought ATI, is ATI going to be called AMD? Or will they keep it separate? Anyone have more information about all of this.

[megamanx]

Well, NVidia and Intel sure are going to lose a hell of a lot of money.

ATI and AMD might just get richer than Bill Gates thanks to us gamers lol.

[Conker]

well i'm back from inactivity guys

i know a lot about this subject, AMD and ATI are going to be kept completely seperate and will function independently however there is a joint initiative between them to develop a complete motherboard, cpu and on board graphics set that is easily recognizible and will make buying AMD cpus and systems a lot easier

nice article i found a week ago:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2006/07/27/amd_and_ati_will_their_technologies_merge_as_well/

[Gav]

This is good very good. No more I can say really everyone has said it. :)

[Blubarry]

I don't know if that was such a good play on AMD's part. Consider this, their chips have often gone better with nVidea compared to ATi (personal oppinion).

Although, if you look at it from another angle, this could be VERY smart. Because of AMD's friendly relations with nVidea, this could be used to shove Intell in to a more..... non-graphics related mindset.

I always thought of AMD working with nVidea, whereas Intel worked, primarily, with ATi, yet, because of this, I don't know what to believe in

[scruie]

I don't know if that was such a good play on AMD's part. Consider this, their chips have often gone better with nVidea compared to ATi (personal oppinion).

Although, if you look at it from another angle, this could be VERY smart. Because of AMD's friendly relations with nVidea, this could be used to shove Intell in to a more..... non-graphics related mindset.

I always thought of AMD working with nVidea, whereas Intel worked, primarily, with ATi, yet, because of this, I don't know what to believe in

Funny thing Intel had signed a deal with ATI to make chipsets for Conroe, this is still going to happen; which means that AMD will get a slice of Intel's profits in a roundabout way. Also, when making a new chipset for a CPU the chipset maker needs information on the new CPU - therefore you could say that AMD could get info on Intel's future plans.

I really don't think Intel have to worry too much about graphics - they make some of there own anyways and the market share for high-end graphics is only a small market compared to the mid-range solutions. Both ATi and nVidea will want to sell as many of thier products as possible. This means they'll both want to support the CPU which gamers want - currently Conroe.

All parties involved will both win and loose with this deal. Which hasn't been finailised yet - shareholders have final say!

In recent years AMD have made great in-roads in crushing Intel's dominance in both the Server and desktop market. However, one area they fail is the laptop/mobile market, which is dominated by Intel's Centrino - a branding on CPU, wireless device and battery-life. AMD don't make chipsets but ATi do; therefore AMD/ATi could finally come up with a Centrino beating machine.
Another thing to remember is that ATi don't actually make (fabricate) the chips they sell, they have to rely upon third parties. This is where AMD can help them as AMD have several chip fabs and are making more of them - thus the profit ATi loose in having others make chips will be no more as AMD's fabs can make them.

Personally, I just hope that AMD and ATI somehow work on a method to use hypertransport for the graphics solution. AMD's new CPU (K8-L) will use DDR3, couple that with a nice GPU all using and 'talking' over hypertransport will have such a low level of latency it could be an nVidea (possibly even SLI) killer. That is if they use some sort of modular platform - think of a mobo with sockets for CPU, graphics, possibly even a games physics engine or even other fancy things.

[Blubarry]

I have heard rumors of AMD working on reverse hyper treading, if that is true, they will become MUCH better than intel, due to the fact their chip will work as one core, although, that is JUST a rumor.

Intel's main focus is not gaming, as we have seen, but the average working computer. They tend to excell in benchmarks that are productive, instead of recreational, yet this all changed with their new chip. Personally, I hate intell, due to their marketing stratagy of making their intel pentium 4 chips APPEAR fast on benchmarks and in ads because of their high clock speeds.

scruie, I thank you for giving me some more hope in AMD.

think of a mobo with sockets for CPU, graphics, possibly even a games physics engine or even other fancy things.

Now that you mention physics engines, do you know how AMD and Intel will respond to this new technoligy that is JUST coming out and is not REALLY even needed? Another thing, how will the future games be made to take advantage of this system?

[scruie]

Blubarry, the home user isn't the only market for computers. The 'big' money is in servers and workstations; Intel currently have about 90% of the server market and that is shrinking as the Opteron range was vastly superior and cheaper to boot.

You are slightly incorrect in the assumption that Intel aren't interested in the gaming market. They are as it is highly profitable; gamers will pay a premium for high-end chips. And so will other PC hobbyists such as overclockers - this is shown by the releases of CPUs like the FX range for AMD and the Extreme for Intel. No 'home-user' really needs that much computign power; but they still buy them.

Yes, the Netburst architecture was a flop for Intel; they were still trying to 'win' the GHz war and that is why the Prescott was such a flop as Intel hit a thermal/clock barrier. Whereas AMD's approach was different as they couldn't 'win' on a GHz front they attacked via a 'more work per clock' approach. Which is something that Intel have now followed, though you won't find them admitting defeat over Netburst. Conroe has more in common with the P3 than a P4! And it is worth noting that Intel's 64 bit desktop P4 range was actually built around licenced work from AMDs 64bit architecture.

The AMD K8 series CPU woke the sleeping giant in Intel. And with Conroe Intel will have the performance advantage for at least the next year as AMD aren't releasing a new core (K8-L) until about January 2007 at best and Q2 at worse - which should include quad cored CPUs.

[Blubarry]

Well, either way, the compitition is good for us. In either way we get better chips at an..... OK price.

IF we did not have AMD, then Intel would have never made thier good chips, and vice versa for AMD's chips.

I know that Intel is interested in the gaming market, but they are more for workstations.