The idea of having a CPU style GPU is something that I
dreamed up the first time I owned a BP6.
I was having delusions of being able to plug in a GPU
on the second socket.
I guess now that fantasy of mine is closer to reality!
I am honestly all in for this idea.
Just think of the possibilites!! Slapping on a nice
cooler for your VGA GPU and overclocking it sky high.
No more messy power cables to the VGA Card!
Everything goes to the mobo now.
The down side would be the memory (speed). But with
Hypertransport they could add a bank of memory just
dedicated to the GPU.
I see it as a giant leap forward and a small step
back. But overall I call it progress and I am all for
the idea!
--- Winterlight [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/amd-ati.ars/1
AMD + ATI: does it add up?
By Jon Hannibal Stokes , Anders Bylund
Monday, June 12, 2006
At the very end of May, Forbes ran a short piece
reporting analyst
projections that AMD is looking to acquire graphics
chip maker ATI. The
article was essentially informed speculation, based
ostensibly on some
analysis of the graphics and processor markets and
on the recent news
that AMD is expanding their fab capacity. Nothing in
the article
suggested that the speculation had its basis in
anonymous sources,
leaks, or rumors, so the piece didn't make much of a
splash at the
time.
Last week at Computex, however, Intel allegedly
began telling folks
behind closed doors that AMD is planning to acquire
ATI. This news came
courtesy of Tweaktown, who cited a trusted and
reliable anonymous
source for the claim. It wasn't clear from
Tweaktown's report if Intel
itself had heard a rumor to this effect, or if the
company was reading
the same tea leaves as the RBC Capital Markets
analysts in the Forbes
article and coming to the same conclusion. Finally,
last Friday brought
the following short note from our old friend Kyle
Bennett at HardOCP:
Over dinner tonight in downtown Taipei it was
explained to me that
Intel was making the rounds with their customers
explaining exactly how
the AMD/ATI merger/acquisition was going to impact
their business.
Closure of the deal is expected to pass in 2 weeks.
This looks fairly definitive, but only time will
tell if the rumor
turns out to be true. As of this writing, the
AMD-ATI
merger/acquisition is still in the realm of informed
speculation and
anonymous sources. Nonetheless, that didn't squelch
our excitement over
the possible deal here at the Ars Orbiting
Headquarters. We think that
an AMD-ATI fusion is a match made in enthusiast
heaven, and in this
article we're going to tell you why it would work
from both a technical
and financial perspective.
Caught in the Crossfire
So what will it mean if the rumors are true? For one
thing, it would
mean that AMD would finally have an in-house source
of core logic
chipsets with the kind of features and quality that
would better enable
them to compete with Intel in the consumer market.
Before Intel started its platformization approach
with the Centrino
portable line, the company wasn't really thought of
as a chipset maker,
even by many technical people. When people thought
Intel they thought
CPU, despite the fact that Intel has long had the
lion's share of the
PC chipset market. Intel is a chipset powerhouse,
and their ability to
offer a complete CPU + chipset solution with
integrated graphics and
networking gives them an edge in the consumer market
that AMD currently
cannot match.
AMD's lack of a complete, homegrown chipset solution
has long been a
major weak spot, as those of us who've been burned
by VIA chipsets can
amply attest. Back before NVIDIA and ATI got into
the AMD core logic
chipset market, AMD users were stuck with whatever
VIA produced. Even
those who later opted for an AMD-made northbridge
still turned to VIA
for the southbridge (I/O hub) chip. Both NVIDIA and
ATI eventually
entered the market and produced solid AMD chipsets,
with the former
company occupying the higher end of the market and
the latter left to
the lower end... at least until recently.
When ATI launched their multi-GPU Crossfire Xpress
3200 chipset earlier
this year, the graphics maker finally had a chipset
that could compete
with NVIDIA's Athlon offerings. AMD's acquisition of
ATI would bring
that new chipset line under AMD's roof, giving AMD a
complete chipset
solution that could set the company on its way to
competing with Intel
in quality, price, and features.
It's also important to note that Crossfire just
isn't selling well on
Intel platforms. In fact, Intel won't even be
supporting Crossfire on
their forthcoming series of enthusiast-oriented
desktop chipsets, the
965 series. Right now, if you really want to do
Crossfire, then you'll
be doing it with an Athlon FX rig. So if AMD and ATI
join forces, ATI
won't really be losing anything in
