Apple Dropping ATI?

[freiheit]

1) Intel sells a LOT of CPUs (and ethernet chips, etc.) due to mainboards which use ATI's chipsets. Intel would be shooting themselves in the foot if they said ATI can no longer make chipsets for their CPUs. Granted Intel does have other options (nVidia, Intel, Sis ).

2) Apple has gone back and forth between ATI and nVidia for years. The G3 iMacs had ATI video. Many of the G4 towers had nVidia (GeForce 2 MX, GeForce 4 Ti, etc.) while others had ATI (Radeon 7000, 9000). The G5 towers originally had all ATI (R9600, R9800) but one revision saw them go to nVidia (GFFX5200, GF6800) and the last G5 PowerMac line had GeForce 6600's. The G5 iMacs and MacBook Pros use ATI graphics. It's been a long-running flip-flop, so I wouldn't doubt it if Apple used nVidia cards again in their MacPros. If history is any judge, they'll come back around to ATI for the next revision.

 

[ezekielrage_99]

No, he meant, dual Power 6+ quad SLI PowerBooks...

Either way I love the unrealistic rumors

 

[Multimedia]

This Premise Is Plain Nuts

Several sites are pointing to a blog with speculation that AMD's recent acquisition of ATI may mean that Apple will drop ATI.

This remains entirely speculative.

This is a load of nonesense. Intel is not going to care if Apple uses ATI or not. Moreover, Intel has ZERO influence over an Apple decision like this. I highly doubt Apple is going to drop ATI since it is the only company that has consistently made retail video cards for various Mac models over decades of Mac support. Jumping to the conclusion that Intel is going to tell Apple what to do about video cards is like saying that Exxon can tell Shell what to do. It's none of Intel's business.

 

[eXan]

This is a load of nonesense. Intel is not going to care if Apple uses ATI or not. Moreover, Intel has ZERO influence over an Apple decision like this. I highly doubt Apple is going to drop ATI since it is the only company that has consistently made retail video cards for various Mac models over decades of Mac support. Jumping to the conclusion that Intel is going to tell Apple what to do about video cards is like saying that Exxon can tell Shell what to do. It's none of Intel's business.

Hope you're right ATI rocks!

 

[kwong2006]

Are these the same analysts who said Intel will force Apple to abandon FireWire forever because Intel developed USB? And where is FireWire now? It is still built into every single Intel Macs! This rumor is about as far from the truth. Violation of law notwithstanding, the PR disaster from this will be horrible. Intel will not do this, unless they hire thugs as CEOs lately.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Are these the same analysts who said Intel will force Apple to abandon FireWire forever because Intel developed USB? And where is FireWire now? It is still built into every single Intel Macs! This rumor is about as far from the truth. Violation of law notwithstanding, the PR disaster from this will be horrible. Intel will not do this, unless they hire thugs as CEOs lately.

Well, I can tell you from personal experience that Paul Otellini is no thug. I worked for Intel's server division back in 1999-2000 when Otellini was VP of the Intel Architecture Group (the overarching group that the server division was part of at the time.) I only met Otellini once, but he was a very nice guy.

Otellini was touring our building, and while walking around, one of my coworkers even bowled him over while rushing from one cubicle to another! (He didn't realize it was Otellini at the time, just muttered "sorry..." and kept moving.) Otellini was very nice about it, and lightly commented that my coworker was being a little too serious, and needed a break. Our boss commented that he was dealing with a particularly nasty technical issue, and Otellini told our boss to make sure he got a decent break after he was done. When we told him that it was Otellini he had bolwed over, he turned bright red.

 

[kwong2006]

Well, I can tell you from personal experience that Paul Otellini is no thug. I worked for Intel's server division back in 1999-2000 when Otellini was VP of the Intel Architecture Group (the overarching group that the server division was part of at the time.) I only met Otellini once, but he was a very nice guy.

Otellini was touring our building, and while walking around, one of my coworkers even bowled him over while rushing from one cubicle to another! (He didn't realize it was Otellini at the time, just muttered "sorry..." and kept moving.) Otellini was very nice about it, and lightly commented that my coworker was being a little too serious, and needed a break. Our boss commented that he was dealing with a particularly nasty technical issue, and Otellini told our boss to make sure he got a decent break after he was done. When we told him that it was Otellini he had bolwed over, he turned bright red.

I am not saying Otellini is a thug. All I am saying is that Intel will never force Apple, or any other computer manufacturers for that matter, to drop ATI graphic cards from their products. Using the rumors that Intel was forcing Apple to abandon FireWire, we can see how wrong these "forcing" rumors can be. FireWire, not only is it on every single Macs now, is also on a lot of PCs.

I am sure nothing will come out of this. That is all I am saying. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

 

[weldon]

I agree that Apple will continue to have ATI cards. In fact, I expect that any Mac Pros announced at WWDC will have ATI cards, probably x1600 and x1800, although x1900 could be a nice BTO option at the top end.

One potential concern is whether or not Apple chose to use the Intel 975x chipset with support for ATI's crossfire. If they did, and included 2 x16 PCI Express slots with crossfire cards as an option, this solution might be a dead end. Intel dropped ATI Crossfire support in the 965 chipset aimed at mid-level desktops and I wouldn't expect them to continue to support ATI/AMD technology.

Since Apple will likely continue to use Intel chipsets for the next year or two (I'm guessing), I don't think we'll see any multi-GPU solutions for Macs this coming year. I wonder if the Intel contract will allow Apple to buy nVidia chipsets to support SLI in future Macs.

This only affects a small segment of the market, but it would be too bad if Apple had already prepped a Crossfire solution for the first round and then had to abandon it because of their commitments to use Intel chipsets.

 

[SeaFox]

i can understand intel saying to ATI, now a division of AMD, that you can't make intel based motherboards anymore. that makes sense.

i can't understand intel saying to apple/dell/anyone who builds computers saying "well, theres a market with two competing companies, but if you use intel platforms, you can only use this one from now".

can't see it happening.

Exactly what I was thinking. Since when does a company tell its customers what to do?

 

[tonymillion]

wheres my asbestos gloves?

Apple dropping ATI is the best thing that could happen. I hate ATI, and have done for years, I personally see them as an also-ran that refuses to die. Maybe in the same league as S3.

nVidia has vastly better hardware and drivers, and as an example of fantastic engineering they use a single source code core for their drivers and make it work across platforms (windows/linux/and yes.. OSX).

ATI drivers are, and always have been complete rubbish. their OpenGL implementation is sub-standard, and probably would not pass an official test.. see http://homepage.mac.com/arekkusu/bugs/invariance/index.html for more information. Their hardware, always seems to be slapped back to second place, just as they catch up to nVidia (see what the NV60 and 7x00 cards did each time).

While I own a MacBook Pro which has an ATI GPU in it, I have to put up with it. All my previous macs have been towers with BTO nVidia graphics cards... yes I really don't like ATI that much. That said, I would however accept an ATI GPU over an integrated Intel job any day of the week.

 

[weldon]

Exactly what I was thinking. Since when does a company tell its customers what to do?

I hear you, but this sort of thing happens all the time. If someone produces a popular item they put restrictions on how it can be sold and they also provide incentives for their channel to move the product. Intel can, and does, place restrictions on how their products can be packaged and also provides incentives to their customers.

 

[Eighty6ix]

It should be pointed out that apple seems to be drifting from Ati anyway. The g5's pretty much come outfitted with nvidia only, now, and the macbook and mini use that stinky intel gma950. Only the macbook pro and imac have ati's
Looks like an obvious cut back to me.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

ATI bashing?

What's with the ATI bashing? Go visit neutral hardware-enthusiast sites, and you'll see that ATI is just as high quality images as nVidia; and that for the most part, each one's top-end part is about the same in performance.

As for the link detailing stinky OpenGL, that web page writer apparently has no concept of what OpenGL should do. By definition, anti-aliasing in hardware isn't pixel-precise. Every implementation will look different. Now, with hardware-assisted Quartz, you shouldn't even rely on Quartz to produce identical results on different systems. The guy's results an indictment of OpenGL for his uses, not of ATI's implementation.

As for Apple dumping ATI for 'stinky' Intel... They are using cheaper, but still adequate for most purposes, video on the cheap systems! The current Mac mini has more capable video than the previous generation Mac mini. But they're using ATI in the iMac and MacBook Pro. They could have just as easily used nVidia graphics. If they really wanted to dump ATI, we would have seen nVidia in those products. Obviously, either Apple's engineers felt that the ATI products were better solutions technically; or Apple's finance department felt they were better bang for the buck. Either way, it's Apple saying that for one reason or another, ATI solutions were better than nVidia for those products.

And as we've seen, Apple likes to keep its options open. (vis a vis IBM/Freescale to Intel.) I'm sure Apple has a contingency contingency plan to switch to AMD should Intel get ornery. So I'm sure that Apple will continue to use both nVidia and ATI products. Maybe they'll switch to nVidia as nVidia's parts become 'better' (better from Apple's point of view, not mine, I happen to think that the present product lineups have nVidia with better products,) maybe they'll divide their product line between the two manufacturers, just to keep both happily working with them.