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Sham B
Will ATI rest on it's laurels and slow down it's rapid pace of improving
Hi Ron
Graphics cards need to be demonstrably better between card 'waves' otherwise
no one will want to buy them. If NVidia become less of a competitor, ATI
still have to better their *own* cards to give users a percieved need to
upgrade. They may do this slower if the heat is off, but they must weigh
this against no differentiation between their own old and new cards.
On a more fundamental level, it begs the question 'Does it matter?'
There is no point in brand loyalty. You have paid your dues to ATI in total
when you pay for the card. I look at specs and reviews before I look at the
company label, and have already changed company twice over the years:
First Voodoo (bought 2 cards)
Then nVidia (bought 3 cards)
Now ATI (bought one card so far)
If the best card is not ATI when my next buying point comes along, how will
it affect me? Games will always be written for the range of cards at that
time, so the answer may well be 'it won't'
Interesting to see that the problems with the NVidia cards are essentially
the same that plagued the later voodoo cards - lack of innovation in the
processing core leading to heat dissapation issues.
Its almost as if both companies started with a totally new idea in silicon
that beat the competition at the time, then kept making it faster and faster
(with no real new structural innovation apart from cooler overall
fabrication processes) until they ran into heat problems causing rising
costs. Then someone else working with a better new idea beat them in the
end with a better 'heat vs processing power' solution, given the same
fabrication process.
S
Hi Ron
Graphics cards need to be demonstrably better between card 'waves' otherwise
no one will want to buy them. If NVidia become less of a competitor, ATI
still have to better their *own* cards to give users a percieved need to
upgrade. They may do this slower if the heat is off, but they must weigh
this against no differentiation between their own old and new cards.
On a more fundamental level, it begs the question 'Does it matter?'
There is no point in brand loyalty. You have paid your dues to ATI in total
when you pay for the card. I look at specs and reviews before I look at the
company label, and have already changed company twice over the years:
First Voodoo (bought 2 cards)
Then nVidia (bought 3 cards)
Now ATI (bought one card so far)
If the best card is not ATI when my next buying point comes along, how will
it affect me? Games will always be written for the range of cards at that
time, so the answer may well be 'it won't'
Interesting to see that the problems with the NVidia cards are essentially
the same that plagued the later voodoo cards - lack of innovation in the
processing core leading to heat dissapation issues.
Its almost as if both companies started with a totally new idea in silicon
that beat the competition at the time, then kept making it faster and faster
(with no real new structural innovation apart from cooler overall
fabrication processes) until they ran into heat problems causing rising
costs. Then someone else working with a better new idea beat them in the
end with a better 'heat vs processing power' solution, given the same
fabrication process.
S