nVidia Buys ULi, Could This Mean Troubles For ATI?

[madmat]

As some of us are aware ATI has been having trouble with it's PCI-E core logic chipsets southbridge and the successful boards are using southbridges supplied by ULi.

I'm wondering if their aquistion by chipset rival (and GPU rival) will spell trouble for ATI until they can come up with a solid offering on the southbridge for their current chipsets.

 

[madstork91]

hmm... any attempt to cause ati to go out of buisness by this verticle (and horizontal) merger could be deemed an act of monopolizing...

wouldnt be suprised if something like that came up in court soon.

 

[Jakal]

Ati has been pretty much pushed to their limits market-wise since nvidia and pci expressed has emerged. They've fought for the market but just haven't been able to impress the majority. It's really a shame too. They make great products. My 9200 oc'd to 300/240 that's a 40mhz increase on the core and a 60 mhz increase on the ram. My new 7800gt won't go that far with the core. I can say though, they both have their markets. Ati tends to do better with video quality. While Nvidia is the winner in the gaming market.
To be honest I'm a big Ati fan. I love their products and support. It hurts to see them slip so far in the enthusiast market. I hope this doesn't affect them too much.

 

[madmat]

I don't know if it could be argued that nVidia is monopolizing against ATI. VIA, AMD and ATI themselves all make core logic chipsets so it could be argued that ULi isn't neccessary for ATIs survival. Besides, mergers like this have to be approved when the the two companies in question are offering similar products and one buying the other could represent a monopoly.

 

[Rob Williams]

There's no doubt that ATI has to improve their chipset to take back some of that market. I personally don't know anybody with a motherboard that uses an ATI chipset, but know far too many with a mobo and nForce chipset.

I think they can continue the road they are on, but listen to the consumers and tweak it to what enthusiasts want. Hell, even nForce isn't perfect, but it's far past ATI in my opinion.

I also love ATI products, but haven't owned a card since my 9800Pro. After that, NVIDIA kind of stole the show for me. Here's hoping that ATI to drag themselves out of this to become real competition again.

 

[Buck-O]

ATi should drop out of the chipset market all together. Buy some licencing rights from nVidia for the nF4 SLi chipset. And go that route. Im sure nVidia would welcome the competition. Or Intel needs to get off their duff and get somthing going in teh SLi front.

EIther way ATi's chipsets failed from the get go, and theres no turning back now. The biggest reason why nForce has done so well, is that when it came out, it was stable, it had few hardware conflicts, and it offered more then any other Intel chipset at the time did, and it performed at levels way above anything VIA had to offer. And was so impactful on the market that literally overnight AMD's market share went to the moon.

ATi has failed at ALL of those catagories. So much to the point that its forgetable as a chipset manufacture.

If anything, i wouldent terribly be suprised to see nVidia stick some money into ULi and make the ULi chipset 10 times better then any XPress chipset ATi can crank out.

I still think there best option though, is to just bite the bullet and buy right from nVidia. Im sure there are plent of SLi owners that would prefer to ahve an ATi card, if they could.

 

[madmat]

Intel has a chipset that will do SLI if nVidia would license it to the Intel chipset and allow their drivers to run SLI on Intel's chipset.

As it stands nVidia will not allow SLI to work on any chipset but the nForce 4 SLI and X16 chipsets.

 

[Jakal]

I don't think selling out would do any good for Ati. It's really the enthusiast market that Nvidia has a hold on. Many people buy Ati card just because they're more prevalent in stores. I think they can dig themselves out of the rut but it'll take a serious overhaul to do it. They could take a lesson or two from Nvidia on architecture and pipelines though.

Their video quality is superior and with the Avivo chip it's even better. For those who do video editing and creation Ati is the clear winner there. OpenGL and D3D gaming is another catagory. Ati is faster in the OpenGL framerates while D3D is Nvidia's territory.

I think the market right now is surely Nvidia's, but I think there's still hope for Ati. They just need to make some changes to their cards.

 

[madmat]

I don't think selling out would do any good for Ati. It's really the enthusiast market that Nvidia has a hold on. Many people buy Ati card just because they're more prevalent in stores. I think they can dig themselves out of the rut but it'll take a serious overhaul to do it. They could take a lesson or two from Nvidia on architecture and pipelines though.

Their video quality is superior and with the Avivo chip it's even better. For those who do video editing and creation Ati is the clear winner there. OpenGL and D3D gaming is another catagory. Ati is faster in the OpenGL framerates while D3D is Nvidia's territory.

I think the market right now is surely Nvidia's, but I think there's still hope for Ati. They just need to make some changes to their cards.

I think you've got it backwards, nVidia rules at OGL while ATI has the D3D thing pretty much tied up. This is why FireGL cards aren't as popular as the Quadro boards for doing intensive Open GL rendering, nVidia spanks ATIs butt at Open GL.

 

[Jakal]

Yeah, I couldn't remember which it was off-hand. Thanks!

 

[Sledgehammer70]

I heard ATI went toIntel to make chips and Intel denied them Ha ha ha ATI is in a hard spot!

 

[spiffyp]

Well, all the reviews/previews I've see so far of the R580, it seems like it performs just as well as the nForce4.
Plus, if they don't make a chipset, who will they get to make one that supports CrossFire for them?
It's too high-end for VIA & SiS, AMD would never do it & Intel doesn't want to show favoritism (as far as I can tell).