ATI gains big OEM wins

[Alpine]

Quietly taking over

SINCE DAMMIT LAUNCHED the R6xx class chips, a few thing became clear, it was late, lacked high end performance, but had some killer video features that NV can't touch. Would it, combined with a price war be enough in the market?


The short answer is yes. The slightly longer answer is look to the OEMs, they are the ones who decide winners and losers as far as cash flow is concerned, but that picture is murky. Product cycles are just that, and if you miss a window, you could have a killer product and Dell will not pick it up.

ATI missed a bunch of windows with the June-ish introduction of the 24xx and 26xx parts, so the question of wins would not be answered until until the fall/back to school lines were introduced. When questioned about it, DAMMIT sources would only grin and say 'we have a lot of design wins, just wait'.

I did. We waited and waited and waited, the crickets chirped, eventually went hoarse and then quiet, probably dead. Nothing. Then came that Intel white box vendor Apple, it introduced a new line of iMacs a few weeks ago,and lo and behold, the market went from 100% NV to 0% NV.

One data point does not a trend make. The next data point is a big one though, and that is Dell. The new fall Dell Optiplex line also features 0% NV. Two data points still do not make a trend, but they are much more compelling than a single event. If the next set of introductions has a similar shift, I would call it a trend.

Why is this happening? Two reasons, video and price. Price is the easiest, as far as price/performance goes, ATI is notably better than NV, cheaper in every category. NV still holds the outright speed crown, but that is about it. $300+ cards don't sell much in OEM boxes.

The other selling point is about video acceleration, the main reason you buy a low end GPU in a PC. ATI's video acceleration puts NVs to shame, and OEMs know this. If you are selling a cheap box that will play an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, you not only get a cheaper card with ATI, but you can also cut corners on the CPU, it will be far less loaded. This saves OEMs a ton of money, and they can advertise cheaper boxes.
The two combined make a compelling case for OEMs, and the Apple and Dell wins show it is much more than a slide show bullet point. Keep an eye on this as new lines are introduced, there could be quite a shift in the low to mid range GPU segment.

The INQuirer