computer market and whats up?

[Ignore this if you don't like computers]

Is AMD/ATI out for the count? I think they are at least for 2007. 2008 better be a storm if they want to come back. With a new fiscal year starting they have less time to catch up.

AMD released a few new low TDP at about 45W which keeps supporting my theory. With their ATI devision unvealing the new R600 series, the HD X1x00, and no intentions of launching a high end competitor to nVidia's G80 this could get ugly.

So what happened? Was it the merger? Was it the development time spent on the Xbox 360/Wii? What could have let ATI fall so far behind? Before the X1xx0 series they dominated the scene. Their X850 XT PE raped anything nVidia brought it. It was the building stones to what would evolve into the Xenos (or is it Xenon I always get those two confused) and later the X19x0 XT series.

AMD's Barcelona still hasn't matured and with Intel's Penryn right around the corner AMD needs something more then just filler CPUs. They haven't made a new CPU almost in year. They've been claiming that it is due them moving from 90nm to 65nm. And with Intel's Nehalem already showing road blocks for a 45nm HOLY SHIT!

AMD's price cuts didn't even phase when Intel decided to drop their prices. Intel's ability to produce chips at probably double the rate AMD could well...lets just say they didn't care.

2008 looks promising for the Intel Fanboy (me!) with the 3-Series Intel is bringing up. I was explaining it to a friend and pointed out how the new naming scheme follows the car naming scheme.

The X38 will be the NB for hardcore gamers with a ICH9/10 on the SB. Sticking in there a nice Quad-Core Penryn and matching it with true-dedicated 1066mhz DDR3. Intel will finally offer integrated Dual 16X PCIe channels that with software modding supposedly go either way, XFire or SLI, but only time will tell and I smell lawsuit if Intel were to do that. But it was hinted at that it will be definately SLI compatible and that makes me wonder if Intel struck a deal with nVidia.

But the ATI fanboys (ME!!) might be hurting as a new discovery of the HD X1900 XT showed that AMD didn't use full GPU off-loading for digital codecs. That doesn't suck much if you have a good decent computer but whats the point in dishing out all this money on a GPU that can't handle Blu-Ray/HD-DVD decoding on the fly? I know the GeFore 8x00 series offers full off-loading for current standard digital codecs, not current competitive future codecs, but it just makes you feel like ATI just doesn't care anymore.


Ahhh the computer world. Apple teaming with Intel, AMD buying out ATI, Intel returning to the champion, nVidia outperforming ATI at every category, and something I thought I'd never see - Intel's Pentium name will not be discontinued but it will no longer be the flagship name, the Pentium line-up will be a step above the Celeron line-up with feature decisions to eliminate the Celeron name altogether. That will be a sad day.

2008 looks to be very interesting.