Intel--Nvidia merger or acqusition. unlikely, but possible ?

"Garrot" wrote in message
news:9Pwxg.235772$Mn5.156002@pd7tw3no...
EDM wrote:

And that's not because of Intel/Nvidia merger speculation.
It's because AMD shareholders are about to get soaked,
paying a 25% premium for stock in a crap company who
can't write a decent Windows driver to save their lives.



You actually own an ATI card? I doubt someone who doesn't like their
drivers would be stupid enough to buy an ATI card. Or are you? If you
don't own one then you don't know WTF you are talking about. As an owner
of an ATI X800XL and a Nvidia 7900GT I feel qualified in saying that ATI's
drivers are just as good, if not beter, than Nvidia's.

I have an ATI x800 and I haven't had a bad driver from ATI in years.
Actually I am using a driver from Oct 05 and it works great. I have stopped
updateing drivers as I don't see how they can do any better than the one I
am using.

Barry Watzman wrote:
VERY unlikely that Intel will seek to acquire NVidia.

First, Intel has their own video chip group, which does the video in the
chipsets (the Intel GMA's .... Graphics Media Accelerators). Yes,
that's been low end, but they could do high-end if Intel wanted to.
Intel simply hasn't wanted to.

Second, a major reason for AMD's acquisition of ATI isn't graphics at
all, it's that ATI is now doing chipsets, and AMD wanted to acquire a
more robust chipset capability to better compete with Intel, which makes
superb chipsets (AMD used to do chipsets, 4-6 years ago, but stopped;
now they want to get back into that, from all appearances).

Third, Intel is likely to be barred from any significant acquisition
because of their size and anti-trust / monopoly considerations. AMD, as
the small underdog, had no such anti-trust or monopoly concerns.

I absolutely agree with this analisys.
I guess also NVidia won't develop more great chipsets for motherboards
supporting AMD cpus since AMD now has absolute control (and preference)
over its (new) own production through ATI.

Garrot wrote:

EDM wrote:


Garrot, I've owned ~two dozen video cards over the past
20+ years, going back to Paradise/Video7/etc from the
mid-1980's. I'll give credit where it's due: ATI drivers don't
suck as bad now as they did for 15 years. Yet they're still
lacking in a number of regards: no custom resolutions without
.NET or third-party software, no gamma adjustment etc etc.
Their reliance on .NET is what swore me off of them once
and for all. I installed .NET, it junked up my system so bad
and caused so many problems I had to do a full image
restore just to get rid of it completely.

If their drivers work for you, that's great. They don't for me.



Yea, they were bad at one time but not anymore. No gamma adjustment?
Must have been a long time since you used their drivers because there is
gamma adjustment. I've installed .Net and it never caused me any issues.
Install ATI raw driversrs and Ray Adam's ATI Tray Tools and you don't
need .Net and also get a lot more functionality than you will from CCC.

For me too as of ~1999, which I admit is a long time in computer years,
I had huge problems which were never resolved. Gamma was the main
problem for me at the time but I had some other issues with 3d games
that forced me to buy a new video card after lack of a response from
ATI. Thing is ~7 years isn't that long for being P.O.ed at a manufacturer.

Great hardware but problems with drivers/running in anything other then
common modes. It was like they only tested 800x600 in 256 color mode and
left everthing else from EGA to other VGA modes to users to figure out.
Serious lack of Q.C. and testing IMO.

In article h5Lxg.139939$I61.117147@clgrps13,
says...

"Garrot" wrote in message
news:9Pwxg.235772$Mn5.156002@pd7tw3no...
EDM wrote:

And that's not because of Intel/Nvidia merger speculation.
It's because AMD shareholders are about to get soaked,
paying a 25% premium for stock in a crap company who
can't write a decent Windows driver to save their lives.



You actually own an ATI card? I doubt someone who doesn't like their
drivers would be stupid enough to buy an ATI card. Or are you? If you
don't own one then you don't know WTF you are talking about. As an owner
of an ATI X800XL and a Nvidia 7900GT I feel qualified in saying that ATI's
drivers are just as good, if not beter, than Nvidia's.

I have an ATI x800 and I haven't had a bad driver from ATI in years.
Actually I am using a driver from Oct 05 and it works great. I have stopped
updateing drivers as I don't see how they can do any better than the one I
am using.

Define "bad". The ATI drivers shipped for years with ThinkPads
don't allow setting different resolutions on internal and external
displays. I had to go to http://www.omegadrivers.com/ to get
drivers that allowed one to chose different resolution and refresh
rates.

--
Keith

"J. Clarke" wrote in message ...
EDM wrote:
Since 2000
MS has not wavered on their stated purposes and goals of .NET.

Find us an "unwavering" statement subsequent to 2000.

More than a statement, how about Office Live, Live Mail,
OneCare Live etc etc:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/p...reBasedPR.mspx

MS is initially rolling these subscription services out as free or
paid by advertising, to hook in as many people as possible.

EDM wrote:

More than a statement, how about Office Live, Live Mail,
OneCare Live etc etc:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/p...reBasedPR.mspx

MS is initially rolling these subscription services out as free or
paid by advertising, to hook in as many people as possible.



And they are all optional. MS keeps spamming me at Hotmail to sign up
for Live Mail beta but I just ignore them.

EDM wrote:

I could go on, but hopefully you get the idea.

No, I don't. I haven't seen anything you posted that says Vista will be
subscription based. And what does .Net and video drivers have to do with
subscription?

Lee Waun wrote:

I have an ATI x800 and I haven't had a bad driver from ATI in years.
Actually I am using a driver from Oct 05 and it works great. I have stopped
updateing drivers as I don't see how they can do any better than the one I
am using.



Sometimes you need the latest drivers if you buy a new game that has a
graphics glitch and it is fixed by the new driver. Sometimes newer
drivers give better performance too. Mostly though newer drivers are to
support newer video cards so there is no need to update if you have an
oldr card and no issues with the drivers you are using.

krw wrote:

Define "bad". The ATI drivers shipped for years with ThinkPads
don't allow setting different resolutions on internal and external
displays. I had to go to http://www.omegadrivers.com/ to get
drivers that allowed one to chose different resolution and refresh
rates.


Those are still ATI drivers, they've just been modified slightly. I use
NGO modified Nvidia drivers because they give me better functionality.
What's the difference?

EDM wrote:

"J. Clarke" wrote in message
...
EDM wrote:
Since 2000
MS has not wavered on their stated purposes and goals of .NET.

Find us an "unwavering" statement subsequent to 2000.

More than a statement, how about Office Live, Live Mail,
OneCare Live etc etc:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/p...reBasedPR.mspx

MS is initially rolling these subscription services out as free or
paid by advertising, to hook in as many people as possible.

I'm sorry, but I don't see offering web based communication services as
being anything to get excited about.

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)