Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 7th Aug 2006 18:29 UTC, submitted by netpython
AMD Chip guru AMD has announced that it's going to drop the ATI brand name following its takeover of the Canadian graphics underdog. Gareth Cater from AMD told Custom PC that 'the new company will be called AMD', meaning that we could shortly be seeing AMD-branded Radeon graphics chips.
Order by: Score:
It's all the Same I guess
by Devilotx on Mon 7th Aug 2006 19:05 UTC
Devilotx
Member since:
2005-07-06

AMD Radeon
ATI Radeon

All that matters is that AMD helps push ATI back to the forefront of the graphics market,

for the first time since the Geforce 2, I've moved my crop of machines from ATI to Nvidia, it just makes sense to me.

From the Radeon 7500 to the Radeon X850XL, I hit every good bump in the road.

now my cash has gone for the 7950 X2 for my gaming needs.

here is hoping for better performance and better linux support.

Linux Drivers
by gsus on Mon 7th Aug 2006 19:45 UTC
gsus
Member since:
2006-05-31

Hopefully this acquisition will lead to some linux drivers that are actually decent, for a change.

RE: Linux Drivers
by Jack_Green on Mon 7th Aug 2006 20:21 UTC in reply to "Linux Drivers"
Jack_Green Member since:
2006-01-04

You know, I'm not entirely sure what makes ATI's binary drivers any worse than nvidia's. I'm using the latest ATI drivers (8.27.10). The installer for the drivers builds packages for lots of different distros, and the performance I'm getting is very, very good.

Now there is no doubt in my mind that ATI's Windows Drivers/Software are complete crap compated to nvidia's. I hope the improve that for sure, but both ATI and AMD are hardware companies, so I'm not sure why AMD would be any better at the software stuff than ATI.

RE[2]: Linux Drivers
by butters on Mon 7th Aug 2006 21:16 UTC in reply to "RE: Linux Drivers"
butters Member since:
2005-07-08

That's strange. nVidia distributes nearly the same driver (unified driver model) on Linux as they do on Windows, while ATi has always developed a separate fglrx driver based on their old workstation support for FireGL. You realize that nVidia has superior Windows drivers, so therefore it should follow that nVidia's binary Linux drivers are better.

Furthermore, nVidia supports the vast majority of their cards on Linux, whereas the Linux community has no reasonable expectation of having an R500 driver anytime soon. nVidia supports SLI (albeit rather poorly) on Linux, whereas ATi doesn't support Crossfire at all, and they also have better multi-head support for Linux.

You might want to read Phoronix for more information. ATi has been getting better, but they still trail nVidia quite substantially in Linux support.

However, the open source R200/300 driver is much better than the open source nVidia driver. You might also be interested in the Nouveau Project, which aims to reverse engineer an open source 3D-accelerated driver for nVidia chipsets.

RE[3]: Linux Drivers
by smitty on Mon 7th Aug 2006 21:31 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Linux Drivers"
smitty Member since:
2005-10-13

That's strange. nVidia distributes nearly the same driver (unified driver model) on Linux as they do on Windows, while ATi has always developed a separate fglrx driver based on their old workstation support for FireGL. You realize that nVidia has superior Windows drivers, so therefore it should follow that nVidia's binary Linux drivers are better.

Your logic assumes that he thinks the ATI Windows drivers are better than the linux ones. Which I think is reasonable, but if you are a huge anti-.NET person you might hate the ATI windows drivers and think the linux ones are great in comparison.

RE[4]: Linux Drivers
by Zoidberg on Tue 8th Aug 2006 18:14 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: Linux Drivers"
Zoidberg Member since:
2006-02-11

The ATI Windows drivers do not require .NET, only the new control panel which is completely optional.

RE[3]: Linux Drivers
by flywheel on Mon 7th Aug 2006 21:56 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Linux Drivers"
flywheel Member since:
2005-12-28

Butters, the nVidia might be working great (Where the secret is the wrapper approach) on GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and Windy - but there's no support of any other platforms. nVidia refuse to release even 2D specs under NDA, which means that reverse engineering is the only way to get any support of nVidia graphics processors. THAT SUCKS!

RE[4]: Linux Drivers
by ormandj on Mon 7th Aug 2006 23:01 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: Linux Drivers"
ormandj Member since:
2005-10-09

Works great on Solaris for me too. Working well on OSX also. WHAT other platforms? Amiga? Yikes.

RE[2]: Linux Drivers
by MattK on Tue 8th Aug 2006 14:57 UTC in reply to "RE: Linux Drivers"
MattK Member since:
2005-11-14

I agree. I found ATI drivers much easier to install under Linux then Nvidia's. Performance is comparable to Windows.

any drivers
by REM2000 on Mon 7th Aug 2006 19:50 UTC
REM2000
Member since:
2006-07-25

i just hope drivers for all OS's are updated and are more optimized from now on.

Logical
by Manuel FLURY on Mon 7th Aug 2006 20:09 UTC
Manuel FLURY
Member since:
2005-07-05

That's what Intel did some years ago with some other graphic brand. I've forgotten the name yet ...

This is just logical.

Edited 2006-08-07 20:10

RE: Logical
by siki_miki on Mon 7th Aug 2006 20:24 UTC in reply to "Logical"
siki_miki Member since:
2006-01-17

Tungsten, maybe?
ATI is certainly more recognized brand than those folks.

RE[2]: Logical
by Manuel FLURY on Mon 7th Aug 2006 21:24 UTC in reply to "RE: Logical"
Manuel FLURY Member since:
2005-07-05

Cirrus Logic, Trident or Tseng Labs are possible choices ?

I don't remember ;-)

RE[3]: Logical
by helf on Mon 7th Aug 2006 21:53 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Logical"
helf Member since:
2005-07-06

sad thing is, I have cards from those 3 and the other two someone else mentioned in boxes ;) I think I'm only missing a 3dlabs card... heh

RE: Logical
by MYOB on Mon 7th Aug 2006 20:43 UTC in reply to "Logical"
MYOB Member since:
2005-06-29

Which one? Real3D or Chips & Technologies? Intel seemed to like buying clunky old graphics adapter firms

RE: Logical
by zerblat on Mon 7th Aug 2006 20:47 UTC in reply to "Logical"
zerblat Member since:
2005-07-06

Chips and Technology (I bet choosing such a generic name was a great idea at the time. Pre-Google, that is...) http://www.chips.com

RE
by Kroc on Mon 7th Aug 2006 20:17 UTC
Kroc
Member since:
2005-11-10

AMD are going vertical! :3

RE
by hobgoblin on Tue 8th Aug 2006 06:21 UTC in reply to "RE"
hobgoblin Member since:
2005-07-06

time to see if they are able to go ballistic ;)

Ummm
by zizban on Mon 7th Aug 2006 20:18 UTC
zizban
Member since:
2005-07-06

Okay, take a company known for its processors and slap it's name on a graphics card...I'd hate to be in marketing trying to sell this.

RE: Ummm
by r_a_trip on Mon 7th Aug 2006 23:31 UTC in reply to "Ummm"
r_a_trip Member since:
2005-07-06

Intel IGP. Need I say more?

RE[2]: Linux Drivers
by mariux on Mon 7th Aug 2006 20:36 UTC
mariux
Member since:
2005-11-13

What makes them worse than NVIDIAs?

Well, how about the fact that it took them over half a year to add support for Radeon X1xxx cards (R520)
Not supporting EXA.
Not supporting xv with x.org 7.1

And more.

I am glad that AMD actually chose to drop the ATI brand.
This means that tis actually AMDs brand and reputation that is on the line when your AMD Radeon works badly in Linux.

RE[3]: Linux Drivers
by smitty on Mon 7th Aug 2006 21:26 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Linux Drivers"
smitty Member since:
2005-10-13

What makes them worse than NVIDIAs?

Not supporting xv with x.org 7.1

Well, yes but they plan to in the future. I mean, Nvidia doesn't support any of the the 7.1 features by that logic.

I think the current ATI linux drivers have gotten quite decent as far as features/ease of use/etc. goes. Closing in on NVidia anyway. It is the performance area where they get completely crushed.

Edited 2006-08-07 21:29

DRI drivers
by JohnMG on Tue 8th Aug 2006 07:02 UTC
JohnMG
Member since:
2005-07-06

Hm. I've never even looked at ATI or nVidia drivers. I just made sure to choose a card that's supported by the DRI drivers, let autodetection do its thing, and have been using my computer ever since. I've got 3D h/w accel (glxinfo tells me so)... no idea how, performance-wise, it compares with the proprietary drivers. I'm not too much of a gamer though.

It would seem that it'd be great for AMD to just pitch in and help out with the DRI drivers.

Good for AMD and ATI
by BluenoseJake on Tue 8th Aug 2006 13:11 UTC
BluenoseJake
Member since:
2005-08-11

It's good to see that AMD is going to take total responsiblity for ATI's technology and it's implementation. By dropping the ATI name (and it does make me sad, ATI was a solid Canadian tech company) AMD is putting it's money where it's mouth is. I think we're going to get some goodness out of this.

Grahics cards are overpriced
by Bonus on Tue 8th Aug 2006 13:48 UTC
Bonus
Member since:
2005-12-23

I am happy they are dropping the ATI brand. I think they are going for IGP in the future. All in one solutions. uit's betttttttttttter. I think it's more efficient because you just have to buy one board and it is totally cheap. I can get an IGP board that runs faster then gforce 5 for like 50 dollars.

AMD + ATI
by BFGoodrich on Tue 8th Aug 2006 17:21 UTC
BFGoodrich
Member since:
2005-06-30

I remember reading about Torrenza, a co-processor like design for third parties that wanted to communicate directly with the CPUs via HyperTransport. I don't see why AMD won't produce a video chip that acts as a co-processor with an onboard memory controller and two or three HyperTransport links like Opterons. I think that may scare nVidia...

Well about OS X
by Stalinisto on Tue 8th Aug 2006 17:31 UTC
Stalinisto
Member since:
2005-07-06

I personally hope they keep making cards for macs and supporting current cards with drivers because I prefer ATI graphics to Nvidia.