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Intel/nVidia War, bad for Intel or good for ATI?
Rescently, Intel announced plans on thier discrete video card Larabee. In the press conference they belittled market competitor nVidia. nVidia did not take this lightley, and have started a negative campaign with Intel saying that Intels graphics so far have been a joke even as an integrated solution, to think they can offer a competitive video card solution is implasible. We are now seeing the results of this on the market and a shift to AMD for nVidia cards.
The new chipset nVidia is offering, which is actually a competitor to AMDs 780g will only be offered on AM2+ boards. Notable features of this are its hybrid technology with more mainstream cards like the 8400, and powering down higher end cards when they are not needed. Obvisouly, this is great for AMD as they now have the best system for mainstream users.
However, probably impactful on nVidia's market share is that ATI will become more of a soul video card on Intel Platforms. ATI already has better support on Intel chipsets, including crossfire.
One last thing is that people are mixed between impressed and underenthused about Intel's Larabee. Larabee is an 8 core GPU with 2ghz per core set for 2010. Obviously, alot of computing power but is it smart. The larabee is designed more towards vector based rendering, which as some people may note, the ATI HD cards are too. With the texture dependance on games right now, is it a wise decision? Also an 8 core GPU may not fully be utilized by engines by 2010, seeing as how even 2 GPUs are slow to integrate. Then there is the 2ghz per core, good by todays standards, but by 2010? ATI HD4870 will have a 1 ghz core and will be seen later this month. By 2010, ATI could push into the 2+ ghz core range with multiple core.
Comments
If you narrowly focus on video games, then it might not make sense. This is a foward reaching move. 2009 forces digital TV on America and with that will be a lot more internet TV and movies. Heck NetFlicks is expecting a large hit on their profits next year due to internet movies. The importance of video near the processor is that it takes a load off the processor for handing various video formats and compression. So you can see how improtant that will be for devices with CPUs which don't have GPUs or can't have a GPU installed in them.
AMD is definetly benefiting through not only this war but that move. When you put it on the video front, AMD is winning hands down. Obviously not as a video encoder but as a playback machine. Intel can really only accomplish 1080p video, while AMD with Hyper Transport 3.0 has the bandwidth to pull of 1080i. Also when it comes to integrating the graphics closer to the processor, the only one with serious development in this is AMD with Fusion. Looks like AMD is gonna make a comeback.
I feel like I should be pointing out that ATI is owned by AMD. That fact might not be aparent to everyone reading.