News - AMD wanted to buy NVIDIA, not ATI, claim former employees

[HEXUS]

Years on and revelations of AMD's graphical dealings begin to surface.

Read more.

[kalniel]

Thought this was old news. They considered nVidia, but given the size of nVidia it would be at best a more equal merger and in all likelihood more like nVidia taking over AMD. ATi were much smaller.

[Biscuit]

Interesting to see what else we might find out about what goes on behind the scenes at AMD. Some of the stuff could potentially be quite damaging?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The other issues was that JHH wanted to be joint CEO.

[Terbinator]

While i wasn't really interested in the industry back then, it wouldn't surprise me.

Does this mean we will get some behind-the-scenes gossip on Bulldozer as well?

[Terbinator]

Perhaps the biggest news from loose mouths?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/briancau...ding-graphics/

[kalniel]

The other issues was that JHH wanted to be joint CEO.

Well given the size of nVidia, that was kind of to be expected - it would be more like a merger than a take over.

[Hicks12]

As bad as it may look, AMD is actually starting to kick some ass in the last few years... if Kepler is a flop then yes i would say ATI was actually the better decision! Nvidia maybe bigger but if AMD took them over (hard to as they were similar sizes, i.e merger...) and made the same decisions as they did with ATI then they would really still be in this situation... its the AMD cpu divisions thats makingthe losses, the ati divisions doing pretty well last time i looked. I think the reason its taken a huge chunk out of AMD over these years is because the CEO made really stupid mistakes, only now is AMD starting to utilise having a very strong GPU division at its fingertips which is why in a few years(starting now) AMD should be making alot of money, their cpus are OK but if you combine them with excellent IGP or low power GPUs then it makes the whole portable market AMDs home as gpu can take alot of the load off the cpu .

[Terbinator]

Snip...

Even given Nvidia's recent shortcomings with Fermi/Kepler - buying it in 2006 when the 800's launched would have been a coup.

Also, i think the AMD GPU division actually made a loss last year?

[Hicks12]

Even given Nvidia's recent shortcomings with Fermi/Kepler - buying it in 2006 when the 800's launched would have been a coup.

Also, i think the AMD GPU division actually made a loss last year?

Sorry I should have said that if they didnt let Nvidia CEO take over they would be in a similar position really! Nvidia at the time was the better buy but far out of budget, in the end it was a deadend choice and yes it has screwed them alot over the years but its important for the future computing industry which we are finally going into .

If they could have got Nvidia i think yes they would have decimated everything in the gpu sector BUT AMD still have the weak cpu .

I recall reading that AMD made a small profit last year with the GPU division providing a reasonable amount to it, i of course could (probably) be wrong! However a quick google hits this : http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/27/a...ncome-of-97-m/ , not sure how q4 went but i cant see it being worse? End of the day youd expect less profits from the gpu division right now (actually last month) due to lack of 7000 series chips i.e all the R&D been spent and done but nothing to earn it back yet.

[Tunnah]

i wonder how much of a blow it would be to nvidia for them to not get in the new consoles - the manufacturers are pushed incredibly hard to produce a low cost product for very thin margins in high volumes, and is not as big a draw as people would think

for instance i doubt a single consumer weighs their purchase ideas on whether the manufacturer does a console's GPU

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

i wonder how much of a blow it would be to nvidia for them to not get in the new consoles - the manufacturers are pushed incredibly hard to produce a low cost product for very thin margins in high volumes, and is not as big a draw as people would think

for instance i doubt a single consumer weighs their purchase ideas on whether the manufacturer does a console's GPU

Actually,with a larger installed user base with desktop derived parts it might actually help the end users of AMD GPUs. There will be a larger number of developers developing games for relatively recent AMD GPUs. With the last generation,the Wii and XBox 360 used unique AMD designed GPUs.

[Tunnah]

i wouldn't say shortcomings, they're making a LOT of money with the HPC crowd

edit: er meant to quote terbinator in that one

edit2: aye cat, in theory, but the PC version will always be ahead and be more advanced, and more will be done to push the PC's standards (directx or whatever) rather than exploit the older architecture of what's in the "current gen" console

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

i wouldn't say shortcomings, they're making a LOT of money with the HPC crowd

edit: er meant to quote terbinator in that one

edit2: aye cat, in theory, but the PC version will always be ahead and be more advanced, and more will be done to push the PC's standards (directx or whatever) rather than exploit the older architecture of what's in the "current gen" console

OTH,now AMD can basically sell complete solutions with both AMD CPUs and GPUs as GCN is more compute orientated. If you look at the Top 20 fastest supercomputers in the world,a reasonable number use AMD CPUs but with Nvidia cards.

Regarding the consoles,it looks a bit different this generation. The GPUs used seemed to be derived from exisiting parts,rather than the ancient custom GPU in the Wii and the custom Xenos GPU,which was a half way horse between the X1900 series and 2900 series. I am thinking more of the experience games designers will have working with hardware closer to existing PC graphics cards. If AMD can even get one of the consoles to use GCN,it will be very advantageous.

[Tunnah]

aye, very true.

one of my favourite points is, while current gen systems were developed for HD gaming and were only a leap or 2 behind PC, and were therefore quite expensive, this time around the GPUs are more than powerful enough to do full 1080p gaming

imagine a home console with a modified gtx460 for example..

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If there was better keyboard and mouse support for consoles and console games it would probably tempt more PC gamers to consoles IMHO.