AMD to buy ATI for $5.4 billion

OMG!

Good, AMD still managed to get their foot into the next gen consoles door.I felt bad for AMD when they were passed up in favour of IBM.I guess this deal will bring them closer to microsoft.I wonder if this will rub of on AMD with some ZUME or the fabled xboy love.

Expect nVidia to get all chummy with Intel FAST.

*sniff* I always cry at weddings!

Intel buys Nvidia. Let the war continue!

This is both good and bad. Good from AMD's perspective that they can potentially sell motherboards that include ATI chips or just sell the chips together as a package deal. But bad in that NVidia may be left out in future co-mingling deals or may have to fight that much harder to be included or considered.

I also have to wonder now that ATI is owned by AMD, how this will affect Microsoft and/or the next Xbox. Could you just imaging them changing the processor YET again. In my opinion, they should have gone with AMD for the beginning.

I don't see Intel going after NVidia, since Intel has it's own video chips, but you never know. I'd much rather see NVidia video with Intel motherboards than Intels own generic video chips.

Interesting.

Now we might see some competition for the type of computation Cell can do. Imagine the power of integrating general purpose logic and parrallel programable shaders. This is a fine day for scientists. Now maybe we can solve some protein folding on the cheap.

The timing here is pretty coincidental, considering the earlier topic on Crysis. There was talk of this in the business community for a while and we were all expecting this announcment this morning. ATI stock rose like $2 and somthing in over-night trading since Friday's close. What's strange is that most analysts, or amateur analysts like myself, kind of wonder what AMD is really getting out of the deal. Particularly, why purchase ATI instead of forming a stategic partnership? Epobirs...I know you're pretty close to the industry, what's your take?

As a gamer, and one who's gotten sick and tired of figuring out what video card to buy with their atrocious short life-cycles and screwy model numbers, one would hope that this is a sign of a hardware move to more standards in the video graphics market. (That's probably just wishful thinking on my part though.)

Not speaking from personal experience, I've heard that AMD is a good solution for gaming rigs. (I've always stuck with Intel chips, even when they're overpriced just to ensure 100% compatibility.) Couple that with one of the top two graphics chip developers and it could give AMD a real edge when considering a PC for gaming. However since I've seen nothing about what AMD is planning with this takeover, it could also mean that AMD is going to make more use of integrated graphics cards on motherboards. The brief statement about increasing marketshare in the business community lends some credibility to that hypothesis. We gamers may not get a darn thing out of this deal, but I have hope.

I doubt NVidia has much to worry about...yet. The graphics wars go far beyond the IBM PC realm. Couple that with the recent investor problems AMD is having and the new Intel chips that AMD should be worried about, I don't think that AMD is going to be grabbing up that much market share in the near future. They should be more worried about Intel's position to undercut them or increase EPS right now.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/07/24/intel_pulls_ati_chipset_license/

Now THAT's 'integrated graphics'

Crap. My processor of choice is now in bed with the RIVAL of my graphics card maker of choice.

Damit! I was going to buy ATI.

@Scooby
"and the new Intel chips that AMD should be worried about, I don't think that AMD is going to be grabbing up that much market share in the near future."

It seems the last few years the Intel is just playing catch up with AMD. AMD is not just sitting back and letting Intel beat them with the Conroe chip. AMD is bringing out 4x4 chips and boards to take over the lead once again.

I really dont like this.

Spoo,

That's based on some more recent news. It's no secret that AMD (unlike Cyrix) managed to become a true competitor to Intel over the years and I am not saying that I don't think they will remain so. However Intel got into the trouble that most companies with huge marketshare do: they got big, overconfident, and sloppy. It's been felt in the Economic Sector for quite some time. The cost of Intel CPU's were significantly higher than those of AMD and many of them couldn't even compete with the same class chip from a performance standard.

However, recently Intel has made a number of internal, and business changes to reduce those weaknesses. There's actually several articles about this invigoration in Intel, however check out this AP article:

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060707/chip_outlook.html?.v=2

AMD definitely has some problems right now and it might be a little while before they start posting a profit again. And Intel is BIG. It's hard to compete with the Intel's and Microsoft's in the world if you lose you're number one benefit: lower costs. Unless AMD pulls a rabbit of the hat, I just don't see a significant increase in growth coming; even with the aquisition of ATI.

Perhaps very little will change. AMD could have just bought ATI to polish up it's scattered company and provide it with some excellent fab creation facilities and knowledge. In the mean time, they'll just let ATI be all creative like normal, but help them suggest improvements within thoses ideas.

Sorry, this is the link I was thinking of. I know 'cause I was reading it this morning:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060724/tc_nm/intel_prices_dc_1

Crazier yet, they could go for the all-mighty GPU in CPU combo.

Dang. I hate AMD and I love ATI. Now what the f*** do I do? XD

yet another canadian company goes down the drain

/puke

Man...(imo) this sucks b/c I'm no fan of ATi. I've been a nVidia person since the Geforce cards started coming out and I've NEVER had a problem with them. I've never had a problem with them in my systems or in the ones I've built for people.

ATi on the other hand...there usually is always some lame problem with the driver.

All I hope for is that nVidia keeps updating their chipsets b/c I have a AMD Dual Core system with a nForce4 SLI chipset (and 2 Geforce 7800 GTs.)

Thanks for the link Scooby but the yahoo article states that "With no new products until the middle of next year, AMD will have to keep its prices low to hold onto its gains." Yahoo seems to be a tad off in the news of 4x4 that is stated to be out by the end of the year (yet unknown if it will use the X64 or a new processor.) The 8x8 should come out sometime next year. Intel is planning on having a quad-core processor out by the end of the year also.

This is great for moving things ahead and it seemed that Intel is finally moving things beyond the speed race of the past. Intel and AMD both have been doing sub par on the financial side but ATI should help AMD in the long run.

18.
19.

Agreed on both your posts. Hate AMD, like ATI. Sad to see yet another good Canadian company fall into the hands of the americans. (But we can take spiteful solace in the fact that in a few years AMD will be bought by the Chinese.)

/rant

Kinda retarded that people think that EVERYTHING Americans do is bad. It's called BUSINESS people.

Companies buy other companies ALL THE TIME. It isn't some thing that "americans" only do...it's something that companies do ALL over the world do.

/end rant

I'm on the opposite...I like AMD more (after a short journey with Intel) for the fact that you get more bang for your buck with AMD. PLUS AMDs tend to run cooler as well.

This sucks I was a proud of ATI being Canadian, being Canadian myself and now an American based company just write a cheque and buys them out. They will probably consolidate their branch and back out of Canada entirely. Typical American Business Practices, kind of sounds like how the NHL lockout occurred. Just pay your players exorbitant amounts of money even though we probably will not be able to pay him that in a few years. Though the cool this is with the exchange rates being so good in Canada right now at least they are almost getting a dollar for a Loonie. And we would probably see more heavy competition for NVIDIA.

Does this mean better Linux support for ATI cards?

Imagine how much porn they could have bought with that much money. What a shame.

Anyhow, this would be big news to me if I gave a shit for anything pc related. Though, this might seriously hurt pc gaming for reasons I myself may not disclose at this time. In other words "I'm a console fanyboy".

I'm not being sarcastic.

cheques? cheques?!?!?!? no americans write CHECKS aye?