Competition has exploded in the graphics chipset market in recent years.  This industry boom was in no small way attributed directly to the ?Fallen Titan? 3dfx. While there are many who would like to fantasize that NVIDIA, currently a market leader in the 3d graphics chipset market was directly responsible for the fall of 3dfx; the truth is that the cause of the downfall was much more internal. While that rivalry did indeed play a role, it was missed product cycles and mismanagement of assets by 3dfx that was the major nail in the coffin that resulted in 3dfx?s closure in the year 2000.

The fall of 3dfx left an opening in the market for ATI to start picking up more and more of the 3d graphics market share. While it is true that ATI has only recently made a big push into the consumer market, many are not aware of ATI?s true history as being one of the first and most popular OEM graphics manufacturer?s in the industry.

ATI was established on August 20, 1985 (which is, ironically enough, this author?s birthday), nearly a full decade ahead of their current closest competitor, NVIDIA (established in 1993, a relative newcomer in the field) and is headquartered in Ontario, Canada. Back in those early days of home PC computing, there were several quickly emerging, and incompatible video technologies being produced and released. In 1987, they released their EGA Wonder and VGA Wonder, a single card that worked with every graphics interface, software and monitor on the market. The products high compatibility and superior performance gave ATI the grounding credibility they needed, and quickly established them as the company to watch.

During the next 5 years, ATI?s favor among OEM computer manufacturers continued to grow. In 1991, ATI released their first ?graphics accelerator?, the Mach8 in both chip and board products, which was capable of producing graphics independently of the CPU. Only a year later, competing against the likes of the S3 Trio 32, ATI released the Mach32A, an improved version of the Mach8. In 1994, the further improved Mach64, the first graphics board capable of accelerating motion video was released.

In 1995, ATI took a breakout role as the first graphics card maker to produce Mac compatible graphics cards, proving they are committed to both the PC and Mac platforms. ATI powered Macintosh computers go on to become a favorite of the graphics industry, and continue to be so. In the same year, ATI inked deals to expand its manufacturing by building new factories in Taiwan.

In 1996, PC gaming was busting out in a big way, and ATI was there to pitch its new Rage 3d line of graphics processors. Competing directly along side of several other ?3d accelerators? such as the (in)famous S3 Virge, and the world famous 3dfx standalone voodoo graphics accelerator.  In comparison, the Rage was definitely not a standout performer, but it did gain heavy acceptable in the industry as a well-performing general duty accelerator. Over the years, the Rage went through several improving generations and was well known as being one of the most commonly installed OEM graphics chips.

1996 also heralded in the introduction of the very famous ?All-In-Wonder? line of Rage powered cards.  The All-In-Wonder line initially garnered a lot of skepticism, but with so many single function adapter cards flooding the market and vying for limited consumer PCI slots, the All-In-Wonder cards were quickly adopted by both consumers and OEM?s alike because of their low cost feature packed goodness.

1997 saw ATI?s release of the 3D Rage II+ DVD chip, the first graphics accelerator capable of performing software motion compensation DVD playback, and with the advent of AGP, ATI became the first graphics company to release products that fully supported the AGP 2X graphics port.

1998 and 1999 saw ATI continuing to expand and refine its Rage product lines, especially in the notebook market with its immensely popular RAGE MOBILITY line of products.

The year 2000 turned out to be a big turning point for ATI. Even with all of ATI?s huge successes and saturation of the OEM market, ATI?s consumer reputation was severely lacking. Considering the competition in the likes of the popular NVIDIA Geforce consumer graphics accelerator and others, the mature Rage architecture just could not compete in terms of pure 3d graphics performance. With the launch of the Radeon Graphics accelerator, ATI broke into the mainstream consumer graphics market and high end workstation market in a big way. Initially, the performance of the Radeon family was lacking due to poor software support (drivers), but over the next 3 years, ATI continued to improve both their hardware and software by leaps and bounds, proving once and for all that NVIDIA definitely wasn?t the only show in town.

Looking back, you can see how ATI has continued to improve steadily but slowly, aging like an old wine, but the suddenly they just ?burst? out in a big way with the Radeon family, and have been pushing the bar ever higher. Often, they would manage to not only exceed, but completely blow the bar away. While the first generation Radeon was truly a revolution for ATI, poor driver quality and performance all but wiped away the steady improvements made to the Radeon hardware. The Radeon was well and capable of standing up to NVIDIA?s famous GeForce2 (in its various incarnations), but the card?s drivers often crippled its performance.

 

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• The Radeon 8500 (1 of 2)
• Conclusion (2 of 2)