QUOTE

ANALYSTS AT THE Dundee Securities Corporation said today that Canadian company ATI was "well positioned" to pick up future Xbox business. Obviously, MS is trying to lever Nvidia and ATI against each other – both of them being suppliers, or would be suppliers. But we wonder who is playing hardball here. Nvidia faced off MS before. Will ATI crumble for the extra revenues the next Xbox will bring? We suspect MS thinks its power is as it was before. Tell its suppliers what to do, and wait for the fallout...

My feeling is that nVidia makes the processor chipset for the board, as well as the GPU. ATI does not make processor chipsets. Who's going to make a replacement for nViia's special Xbox chipset? Certainly not ATI.

Just more games for M$ to play against nvidia, if you ask me.

I agree. They don't call em M$$$$$$ for nothin'! If there is an angle, they'll work it.

Well i personally feel nvidia's dominance is over since the 8500 card series ati has surpassed them in 3d graphics and honestly the gamecube which is powered by ati has better graphics then the ps2 and xbox.

That's how they've made there name. But, we are all addicted to there crack. Look how many people devote countless hours to M$. Not just Xbox. I'm talking Windows, Office, the games division, MCSE, MCP, MCDBA, Servers, Game consoles, soon to be PCs, media players, etc, etc, etc.

We keeps coming back. So will the suppliers. M$ wants to make money. The hardware MFGs wants to make money. WE want to make money. That's why people pay $10,000 to get a certification that says M$ on it.

So, we got 2 choices. Accept this and enjoy what M$ produces. Or, wine and complain, and still be forced to use M$ products.

ATI's technical prowess is decent, but they **still** lack the proficency to deliver truly stable drivers. I used to love my ATI cards (bought my first one in 1988 - EGAWonder card for my XT) nvidia keeps on improving it's driver prowess, and keeps pace on the hardware. The fx will rock, but I suspect the economic slowdown has as much to do as anything for their pause in updating the GeForce line.

It's just not the same market conditions it was a couple of years ago.

The only thing FX seems to be lacking on the ATI 9700 is memory bandwidfth, and even that's not a conclusive lead; nor is it something that can't be tweaked in a new spin.

You're right about the drivers. ATI seems to not be able to release stable drivers, ever. Nvidia seems to do a good job though. But I DO like the 9700pro over the 4600Ti. I'm sure MS would whip ATI into shape at least for the Xbox2. MS certainly does not want to release a shitty console as the successor to the current great one!

QUOTE (MorfiusX @ Jan 15 2003, 04:47 AM)

That's how they've made there name. But, we are all addicted to there crack. Look how many people devote countless hours to M$. Not just Xbox. I'm talking Windows, Office, the games division, MCSE, MCP, MCDBA, Servers, Game consoles, soon to be PCs, media players, etc, etc, etc. We keeps coming back. So will the suppliers. M$ wants to make money. The hardware MFGs wants to make money. WE want to make money. That's why people pay $10,000 to get a certification that says M$ on it. So, we got 2 choices. Accept this and enjoy what M$ produces. Or, wine and complain, and still be forced to use M$ products.

I agree, when you buy a new TV you don't go to the first store and buy the first sony TV you see because you own a sony now. You shop around for the best TV at the best price, thats all m$ is doing, nothing wrong with that.

The only thing that i thought of when i saw this was that if the xbox 2 with an ati video chipset will it then be able to play the older xbox games, but if the xbox 2 can not play current xbox games then i would piss off the xbox and buy a ps3. At least the ps2 can play all the psx one games.

I just thought ok the xbox 2 is out with the ati video chip and it will not play the xbox games i have now then why would i buy one! if this was the case then you would have to keep your xbox to play the games you have now and have the xbox 2 to play xbox 2 games,for me this case is total bullshit and when $MS look at this they with stay with Nvidia

I don't really understand you Hammy.

Why did you buy an Xbox in the first place? You didn't have any games that you could play with it, and it wasn't compatible with any other console you may have owned.

Personally I don't much care about the backwards compatibility thing. I have a ton of old consoles lying around that I occasionally fire up to play some game or other.

Lets face it, when the PS2 came out, it could play PS1 games. Great. So what do you do? Do you sell your PS1 but keep all the games? How much is someone going to pay for an old PS1 with no games? Not a lot You may as well keep it if you want to play those games.

As for the driver issue - well. IMO it USED to be true that ATI made very reliable and stable drivers, but their hardware was nowhere near as fast as most of the competition. They seem to have done a complete about-turn lately, and are making stunning hardware, but the drivers are sadly lacking. But will this be an issue with Xbox2 ? I don't think it will. Because it's a closed box, they don't have to worry about different components / software installed, or even different revisions/types of graphics card. They have complete access to their own hardware without having to jump through all the hoops of Windows. From what I've heard, there are no problems with the Gamecube and the stuff they wrote for that. So I'm not too concerned about it.

True, though, they haven't yet produced a CPU chipset. But maybe MS are looking to Intel for that... Who knows.

i dunno bout you guys but....
i think that ati is a cheap excuse for a gfx card

QUOTE (BenJeremy @ Jan 15 2003, 04:24 AM)

My feeling is that nVidia makes the processor chipset for the board, as well as the GPU. ATI does not make processor chipsets. Who's going to make a replacement for nViia's special Xbox chipset? Certainly not ATI. Just more games for M$ to play against nvidia, if you ask me.

ATi do in fact have chipsets...

It's true that ati make sucky drivers and if anyone didn't notice bill gates(MS) dished out directx 9 for the ati video cards so it's true billy will shape them up pretty much but i can also assure you that the 9700 and even the 9000 retail cards will whip the 4600ti's butt anyday and furthermore the 8500 and 9000/9700 cards are excellent cards did anyone try playing GTA3 with the nVIDIA cards? Tons of problems but no problem with the ati 8500s,9000s and 9700 ati cards and for the drivers there're the Plutonium and Omega tweaked drivers out and are excellent in all ways and like mentioned above the ati video card will be a custom xbox2 version so there's no need for any updates or other thing, i own a ps2 an xbox and gamecube and can assure you the gamecube in alot of games graphic wise kicks both of the other 2 consoles butt!

What utter Bollox!!

Um go out to Gamespot and check out the new Nvidia cards coming out in March (basically the GeForce5), in games it pretty much decimates anything out there, and ATI's next card isn't even able to keep up with it.

Regarding backwards compatibility, IMHO I don't see why moving to an ATI graphics solution would automatically make the Xbox 2 unable to play Xbox games. Surely the games are developed on a high enough API level (DirectX-like, if not exactly) that both Nvidia and ATI support 100% anyway.

Hmm, reminds me of the fact that MS apparently worked closer with ATI for the development of DirectX 9.0 specs, like it did with Nvidia for DirectX 8.0. So perhaps there's much more truth in this rumours than meets the eye!

This is good news in my mind, as I'm an ATI convert :-P I used to have a GeForce2 GTS, but now have a Radeon 9000 Pro and am very happy with it. I think the latest Catalyst drivers are much better than before.

cheers,
indotoonster

QUOTE

honestly the gamecube which is powered by ati has better graphics then the ps2 and xbox.

You're joking right. . .?

Fuck the video card companies. Their cards should be upgradable... I'm so fuckin' sick of buying a new video card every two years. You should be able to add more DDR RAM and flash firmward or something... something...

To hell with ATI and nVidia.

FYI: All of your credibility built when posting is lost as soon as you use the word "M$", it shows ignorance.

QUOTE (shaklee3 @ Jan 17 2003, 05:52 AM)

FYI: All of your credibility built when posting is lost as soon as you use the word "M$", it shows ignorance.

Don't get that.... why?

"M$" is the standard when dealing with Microshaft, Microslut, MScock...