AMD confirms ATI Purchase

[schild]

Yea yea, we were chatting about it in another thread. But here's the scoop from the Inquirier.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33223

Text:

AMD CONFIRMED its acquisition of ATI this morning, three days after the INQUIRER let the cat out of the bag.
While we doubted the chip-maker could afford to buy out the Canadian graphics chip firm, it turns out CEO Hector Ruiz went cap in hand to his bankers and borrowed a cool $2.5 billion.

Ruiz crowed the deal would "reinvent our industry," as he appeared in New York with ATI CEO Dave Orton. At 4.30AM? No wonder Dave Orton looks a bit tired.

AMD agreed to acquire all of the outstanding common shares of ATI for a combination of $4.2 billion in cash and 57 million shares of AMD common stock, based on the number of shares of ATI common stock outstanding on July 21, 2006.

The total comes to $5.4 billion.

AMD said the deal was 'unanimously approved' by the board of directors of each company, but it is still subject to ATI shareholder approval.

Crowed Hector: "Bringing these two great companies together will allow us to transcend what we have accomplished as individual businesses and reinvent our industry as the technology leader and partner of choice. We believe AMD and ATI will drive growth and innovation for the entire industry, enabling our partners to create differentiated solutions and empowering our customers to choose what is best for them."

Dave Orton, President and CEO of ATI claimed all of the companies' product lines would benefit. "Joining with AMD will enable us to innovate aggressively on the PC platform, and continue to invest significantly in our consumer business to stay in front of our markets," he reckoned

Orton will join AMD as an executive vice president of the ATI business division, reporting to the AMD office of the CEO, comprising Ruiz and president and chief operating officer Dirk Meyer.

But hundreds of other employees will lose their jobs as the new giant seeks to cut operating expenses by around $75 million by the end of 2007.

The combination of AMD's processor expertise with ATI's 'strengths' in graphics, chipsets and consumer electronics, would result in a "new and more formidable company," the pair claim.

The combined company would have achieved approximately $7.3 billion in total consolidated sales during the last four quarters with a workforce of approximately 15,000 employees, according to the joint statement today.

ATI will pay AMD a termination fee of $162 million should the deal yet founder. The transaction is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2006. µ

Fascinating. So, will Dell stop carrying ATI products? I can't help but think AMD's purchase was influenced by the monster retailer and its bunny love for Intel. But this is all sort of foreign to me. I can't see how this will help ATI at all other than make it's shareholders very very rich.

[dusematic]

If anything it will speed up Dell's integration of AMD processors into it's product line.

[Kenrick]

Thassa lodda moneys.

[Engels]

I would hail this as a boon for the industry except for the talk of layoffs. I don't know how many of you have been through a 'corporate restructuring', but its not pretty.  Most of the time its not done with any type of surgical precision. How many good programers from ATI will be lost? How many of them have already sent work-visa requests to Nvidia?

Lets assume on an optimistic note, that the layoffs are only going to be in redundant sectors, such as customer service or sales staff; it will take a lot of time before our fantasy of an AMD tech and an ATI tech standing shoulder to shoulder in the laboratory takes place. In the mean time, god knows what'll happen in order to please shareholders of AMD. Shareholder pressures might make AMD put a subpar cpu/gpu esplendido combo package on the shelves.

Does anyone really believe that if AMD makes a honest woman out of ATI, Dell will finally let them come into the big consumer package house? Maybe in the distant future, when the merger is a fading memory and noone even remembers the name ATI.

[Strazos]

Hardware Techies have a long memory....

We all still remember Voodoo, Savage, Diamond, TNT, etc, yes?

[Alkiera]

I would hail this as a boon for the industry except for the talk of layoffs. I don't know how many of you have been through a 'corporate restructuring', but its not pretty.  Most of the time its not done with any type of surgical precision. How many good programers from ATI will be lost? How many of them have already sent work-visa requests to Nvidia?

Lets assume on an optimistic note, that the layoffs are only going to be in redundant sectors, such as customer service or sales staff; it will take a lot of time before our fantasy of an AMD tech and an ATI tech standing shoulder to shoulder in the laboratory takes place. In the mean time, god knows what'll happen in order to please shareholders of AMD. Shareholder pressures might make AMD put a subpar cpu/gpu esplendido combo package on the shelves.

Does anyone really believe that if AMD makes a honest woman out of ATI, Dell will finally let them come into the big consumer package house? Maybe in the distant future, when the merger is a fading memory and noone even remembers the name ATI.

Dell doesn't have any issues with ATI... my Dell laptop has an onboard ATI card.  Now, it might be the other way around; the hope being that perhaps ATI will help AMD 'settle down', or something... but Dell is already shipping, or getting ready to ship, AMD-powered servers.  Who knows how long it'll take for them to get to the consumer side of Dell, tho.

--
Alkiera

[schild]

Hardware Techies have a long memory....

We all still remember Voodoo, Savage, Diamond, TNT, etc, yes?

That doesn't make you a hardware techie.

[Righ]

This is a hardware techie:

[Yegolev]

Mmmm... AMD mainboards will prefer ATi now.  I prefer Nvidia.  Suck.  Instead of getting chocolate in the peanut butter, they shit in the jar.

New company name: NAMD

[Strazos]

Maybe they've gotten better, but I had bad experiences with Nvidia cards previously.

[Yegolev]

There are two kinds of people: those who have had ATi bite their asses and those who have had Nvidia bite their asses.  I falll into the first set.  On the bright side, if I go ATi again, I can get some Omega drivers.

[Engels]

What is the deal with Omega drivers? Supposedly better, but they made Titan Quest run like ass for my machine.

[Rodent]

What is the deal with Omega drivers? Supposedly better, but they made Titan Quest run like ass for my machine.

Didn't improve my TQ, although to be fair I could already run it with mostly everything on high at an acceptable framrate.

As for ATI/AMD. Well that's what I'm using at the moment, but I can't help to feel that it's just the two underdogs fighting for survival... Still - - = + right?

[Koyasha]

To me, this is interesting news that is irrelevant at the moment, but may be good sometime in the future.  At the moment Intel and Nvidia have come out on top of the world with their Core 2 Duo and 7950 GX2 respectively.  By the time AMD catches up and makes a processor that can really compete with Intel again, maybe they'll be working very well with ATI and have kickass support for graphics as well.

[Yegolev]

What is the deal with Omega drivers? Supposedly better, but they made Titan Quest run like ass for my machine.

I am finding TQ is an exception to many rules.  It runs worse on my rig than anything else I have, even Oblivion.  Most of the time, though, Omega drivers are a tad better than stock.  Not sure if we are still in the age where sometimes you want older drivers for certain games, but I keep a stockpile anyways.

If they start integrating GPU and CPU functions, that would be interesting.  Put it in a Shuttle case and I know someone that would buy it.

[Soln]

Omega Drivers are "optimized" and I don't know what that means in this case, just that I've seen visible improvement in my games by running them over the years.  That and they give you free tools to overclock your graphics CPU if you want and other stuff.  So, yeah.  I have no idea what's up with TQ, since even getting rid of anti aliasing I'm seeing it stutter and catch up sometimes.

back the story

the hardware wonks I know, and some investor guy last night on some investment show (how's that for accuracy) all were asking the same thing -- why ATI?  There are smaller and apparently as skillful (but not as large) graphics chips companies out there to buy up if AMD really wanted "expertise" as they claimed.  So market share and the other stuff.

[Ironwood]

You know, that's a lot of 'Crowing'.

Thesaurus.

[schild]

I stand by my opinion that this is a ploy to get "into" Dell. What I don't see is why ATI allowed themselves to GET BOUGHT by AMD. Intel, OK sure. But AMD? Either ATI is worth nowhere NEAR what AMD paid and went for the money grab, or something terrible was going down in the house of ATI.

[Engels]

I don't get the ATI hate, really. For years they provided graphics cards that were more solidly built than Voodoo, 3dfx and Nvidia, but software was not built around them. That's always been their disadvantage. In recent years ATI cards' stability has suffered somewhat, probably due to the insane competition to get the latest and greatest out there up and working, but its still the only strong competition against Nvidia, simply due to their ability to penetrate the market. Other manufacturers may be making chips 'as good as' ATI (a suspicious claim), but they have no reputation, mass production abilities or pre-existing customer base and wouldn't do much for AMD.

If your ATI card failed at some point, chances are it was more to do with the card's assembler rather than the ATI chip itelf. If you buy an MSI card instead of an ATI-brand card, you have noone to blame but yourself if the cooling goes pear-shaped and you burn the chip up. If you want to blame ATI for that, go ahead, but you might get the same result if you purchased the Nvidia chip from MSI.

ATI probably made a wise move, since AMD has become, for better or worse, a prefered platform for gamers, simply due to its economic advantages over Intel. AMD is now the pariah of gamers, since it didn't come out with its response to the Duo Core 2 chip within 1 week of Intel's release. Waa! Anyone who's been through this before knows that its a dance. Within 6 months AMD will provide a response, and 3 months later Intel will scramble and put out its new Quad Core omg WTF Core chip, and the cycle begins again. Treating Intel like its the belle of the ball for the next consumer cycle is short sighted in the exteme.

[dusematic]

I don't get the ATI hate, really. For years they provided graphics cards that were more solidly built than Voodoo, 3dfx and Nvidia, but software was not built around them. That's always been their disadvantage. In recent years ATI cards' stability has suffered somewhat, probably due to the insane competition to get the latest and greatest out there up and working, but its still the only strong competition against Nvidia, simply due to their ability to penetrate the market. Other manufacturers may be making chips 'as good as' ATI (a suspicious claim), but they have no reputation, mass production abilities or pre-existing customer base and wouldn't do much for AMD.

If your ATI card failed at some point, chances are it was more to do with the card's assembler rather than the ATI chip itelf. If you buy an MSI card instead of an ATI-brand card, you have noone to blame but yourself if the cooling goes pear-shaped and you burn the chip up. If you want to blame ATI for that, go ahead, but you might get the same result if you purchased the Nvidia chip from MSI.

ATI probably made a wise move, since AMD has become, for better or worse, a prefered platform for gamers, simply due to its economic advantages over Intel. AMD is now the pariah of gamers, since it didn't come out with its response to the Duo Core 2 chip within 1 week of Intel's release. Waa! Anyone who's been through this before knows that its a dance. Within 6 months AMD will provide a response, and 3 months later Intel will scramble and put out its new Quad Core omg WTF Core chip, and the cycle begins again. Treating Intel like its the belle of the ball for the next consumer cycle is short sighted in the exteme.

Good post IMO.  One thing though, I thought that since Dell had begun selling AMD servers, that it was only a matter of time before they began selling more AMD stuff.  Maybe they were just posturing to stop AMD's cries of "Monopoly!"?

[Engels]

I doubt that anyone really knows the answer except for a few muckamucks in Dell. I can speculate that Dell is probably under intense pressure from Intel to not do this, but I think the answer is probably more complicated than that.

Dell sells intel platforms for a pre-established higher price than the average manufacturer sells an AMD platform. Dell can get away with this simply because it has a good reputation. If you thrown AMD in the mix,  you get customers buying lower priced AMD/Dell machines instead of the higher priced Intel/Dell machines, and Dell basically loses right there. You can argue that they'd sell more machines that way, but there's probably a cap on home pc demand, and Dell would naturally prefer to sell the higher priced Intel/Dells rather than saturate the market with cheaper AMD/Dell machines.

[HaemishM]

Maybe AMD just wanted some dollars from the ATI chips being put in X-Box 360's and Wii's?

[geldonyetich]

Suddenly, my ATI card is obsolete - as though ATI's shoddy driver updates lately haven't been indication enough of that.  (Later ATI drivers cause poor performance in certain apps and they've decided to drop VideoSoap support after Catalyst 6.6).  Shows me what happens when I try to support the underdogs in a hardware field.  AMD will probably get even less use out of ATI tech as Nvidia did out of 3dfx.  The rebirth of a graphics card monopoly.

[Samwise]

I don't get the ATI hate, really.

It probably stems from their drivers and/or hardware bearing a strong resemblance to rancid piles of pig feces.

[Sky]

Except that my old 9800 pro is a fucking champ.

ATI's always been weak in the driver category, though.

Also, GeForce MX.

[Samwise]

In seriousness, my own personal hatred of ATI comes from my own experience developing and supporting an OpenGL-based application.  EVERY complaint I've had to deal with about instability has been from someone with an ATI card.  I don't know if it's because their drivers are shitty, or because the hardware was shitty, or what, but it seems that stuff that runs just dandy on an nVIDIA card will lock your system up if you have certain ATI cards.  And it's not like I'm doing fancy supar sekrit nVIDIA-only calls; we're talking "glColor3f" here.  Stuff that's supposed to work anywhere and that has been part of the OpenGL spec from day 1.

Fuck ATI.

[Morfiend]

My first graphics card was a Voodoo2, and I have been a Nvidia fan ever since. Their cards work well, their drivers work great, and are updated very often, and the one time I had a problem with a card (recently) the maker RMA'd it and I got a brand new card. Yay for lifetime warranty. I will continue to buy Nvidia until I reasionably cant.

[Prospero]

I tried Ati once and paid the price for it. Their hardware might be the bees knees, but every driver upgrade just brought me more pain. Maybe the AMD merger will kick them in the pants. Someone has to put some pressure on nVidia, and sure the hell won't be Matrox.

[Sky]

My first graphics card was a first-gen graphics decelerator. Actually my first two card sucked and I had to swap them to play different games (I think it was an S3 card and a Diamond Edge, not sure, though...memory wiped intentionally). Things got better when I got a Diamond Monster, a Voodoo1. Thence on to a TNT, a Voodoo3, a GeForce 2, and now the 9800pro. Always the higher end offerings at the end of the card's lifecycle, they tend to have the best engineering and features. I've been very happy with the performance of every card but the first two. Brand really isn't all that important imo.

[HaemishM]

I'm not sure where the ATI hate is coming from. I've been using a 9600 for a while, and have had no problems with it. Nvidia's performance has been spotty (maybe because I've always had to get the budget card). The GF 2MX was a champ for me for years, the GF4 MX was a piece of monkey shit and the 6200 I eventually replaced with the current 9600 I have now.

[Yegolev]

Right, so I just started to wonder what is going to happen to the Nforce chipset?  Basically when running AMD you have (had?) two choices: roll the dice with VIA or rest easy with Nvidia.  I gave up on VIA quite a while ago, basically as soon as there was an alternative, so maybe they have improved.  Anyone running a late-model VIA mobo?

EDIT: I suddenly remembered that I might have read that ATi is making mobo chipsets?

[Engels]

I haven't seen any ATI chipsets on motherboards out there yet. VIA is ok, but doesn't do anything spectacular. I have an ASUS A8VN motherboard that sports a VIA chipset and it does ok. Nothing to ride home about, but its stable, which is all I really wanted. I got burned with NForce 3 back in the day, so I stayed away from fancy chipsets. My next board will probably have an Nvidia chipset, simply because its flooded the market that it would take some shopping around to find a top of the line motherboard without one.

[HaemishM]

I'm running a VIA motherboard for an AMD FX 2800+. I haven't really had any problems with this one. I had an identical system that shit the bed, but I've chalked that up to a different (and shitty) power supply frying the board.

[Morfiend]

I'm not sure where the ATI hate is coming from. I've been using a 9600 for a while, and have had no problems with it. Nvidia's performance has been spotty (maybe because I've always had to get the budget card). The GF 2MX was a champ for me for years, the GF4 MX was a piece of monkey shit and the 6200 I eventually replaced with the current 9600 I have now.

The Nvidia budget cards are absolute SHIT. They are horrible. But if you just go up a step or two above the low end models, you will see a drastic increase in proformance, and longjevity. Hell, the 4600Ti card I bought like 3-4 years ago still works great. I had to use it for 2 weeks while I was waiting for my newer card to get RMA'd, and it was very decent. I didnt even try to play GRAW though.

[rattran]

I'm running nforce 3 & 4 chipsets on my machines, but I recently put together a couple of socket 939  ATI RS480 chipset boards for other people. They're stable, decent performers. No odd issues in either windows or linux, which makes a nice change from VIA.