AMD-ATI Fusion Shmusion

[MD]

As we were one of the first to report, the marriage between AMD and ATi is now official. The minister has completed the vows, the rings have been exchanged, and the confetti is raging as the two companies head off into the sunset for a honeymoon in Sunnyvale. This is such a big deal, the UK was blessed with not one but two CTOs for the official announcement event – one from each company.

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[Clunk]

for better or worse?

[jackvdbuk]

for richer or poorer?

[awm]

The idea of putting the GPU on die sounds good, but this will require better preformace/watt or insane coolers. I guess with this tech it would be easy to stitch a GPU and hyper transport together to make a socketed GPU.

[DR]

Sounds like we need a cool kinda chassis layout with a fan which is at the front and blows to the back... BTX?

[UpTheToon]

Agreed, dissapointing not to hear more about how they will compete with Intel in the next 6-12 months.

I hope they are just playing their cards close to their chest...

[Thorburn]

I fail to see how an integrated GPU could ever cater for more than just the low end.
Even a mid-range 7600GT graphics card has 22.4GB/sec of memory bandwidth and a high end 7900GTX has more than double that. A typical DDR2-800 setup in dual channel will give you 12.8GB/sec bandwidth, about the same as a 7300GT.
So you'd have to see at least 5 times the memory bandwidth to support a current generation CPU and GPU, and give it a couple weeks and that number is just going to be going up with the 8800 cards.
So DDR2 can't do those kinds of numbers, DDR3-1333 won't even double it, and I don't know the roadmap beyond that. You have the same issue as you do with any integrated graphics that current exists.

To me it seems like this is great for the £200 kind of price segment, keep the GPU core simple and just about running Aero Glass, you've got the memory controller on die too, fit it in with a bare bones chipset to handle your I/O, stack em high and sell em cheap.

The only other real use I could see would be the stream computing sense, but again to take advantage of something like that you've got to keep the data flowing or you'll have a huge amount of processing power just idling its life away.

[James Morris]

Sure, but AMD could put the appropriate GDDR memory controller on the die as well and use some motherboard-integrated memory instead. That's the beauty of their modular Direct Connect architecture.

[Thorburn]

Sure, but AMD could put the appropriate GDDR memory controller on the die as well and use some motherboard-integrated memory instead.

I do love spending £300 on a motherboard

[James Morris]

Yeah? I have a couple here you might like to shell out for then...

[UKMuFFiN]

Till death do them part?

[this_is_gav]

I do love spending £300 on a motherboard

Long gone are the days when a motherboard was just a PCB with some sockets mate.

[krazy_olie]

I think that it won't hit off, a lot of people upgrade graphics card 2 or 3 times before upgrading a cpu. It would severely slow the rate at which graphics improve.

[tickedon]

I think that it won't hit off, a lot of people upgrade graphics card 2 or 3 times before upgrading a cpu. It would severely slow the rate at which graphics improve.

AMD aren't looking to pitch this at X1900/7900 owners etc... (at least, not initially). Internet cafes, business machines etc.. - anything that doesn't require grunt. AMD's already moved the memory controller and what not onto the CPU, think of this as an extension of that with integrated graphics moving from the motherboard -> CPU, and getting a nice boost because of it.

[poolking]

for richer or poorer?

Until the smell makes us part

[James Morris]

Do I get the impression some of you guys aren't taking the AMD-ATi merger that seriously?