CR,
So, you have followed ATI since the early days. Of course, there was the ega wonder and vga wonder that preceeded that. I still have an old ega wonder and vga wonder that I paid lots of money for.
Given the history of this company's growth and the resillience of its engineers, one should be optimistic and bullish about its prospects.
I also heard that ATI hired all the key real3D engineers a while ago, so the standalone graphics strategy of intel is unlikely to have any legs anyway. (I still think the i740 was badly designed and implemented, but ASIC engineers are hard to find). The i810 or i810e is still < 1/2 of current top graphics chip performance (and <75% of S3 savage4), if the 3D minimum performance bar rises, then the i810 family will have very little market.
If the bar stays fixed, standalone graphics chips days are numbered. I'm still rooting for killer app(s) showing up. W/O a killer app that needs a PIII to run, even intel's days will be numbered.
Meanwhile, ATI has announced two strategic areas they are targeting : system on a chip and settop DTV decoders.
I think if the rumour of the "other two settop box decoder customers" is true, many people will be very surprised, since these two giants already make DVD players and have their own mpeg2-chip.
The big caveat of course, is that the HDTV-ATSC thing seems to be going soooo slowly. We can blame all that on those $5000 TV sets.
Same as the Graphics Solution, Mach 32, Mach 64, Rage, Rage II, Rage Pro, Rage 128. |
