Crucial brand...video cards?

[Jason Dunn]

<a href="http://www.crucial.com/store/listmfgr.asp?cat=Video+Card">http://www.crucial.com/store/listmfgr.asp?cat=Video+Card</a><br /><br />I never thought I'd see the day when memory king Crucial Technology gets into the video card business, but it has happened. They're using the ATI Radeon chipset, which is a good thing or a bad thing depending on who you talk to. I wonder if they'll get any market traction? They make extremely high-quality products, so it will be interesting to watch.

[michael]

Hmm, I can't agree on their choice of chipset, but if they were to put out a GeForce based card I may well be interested based purely on brand recognition. I would expect their cards to be slightly cheaper than the competition as they shouldn't be affected by flutuating memory prices or shortages.

[JonnoB]

I like chipset competition, but for now nVidia is the king of the hill and if they want a top of the line card with good name recognition, they would have gone that route. These days, I find little to differentiate the board manufacturers... perhaps they have something up their sleeve respective to accelerated memory?

[/dev/niall]

ATI makes wonderful hardware. The R300 (http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1656) looks to be a fantastic piece of hardware that will beat anything Nvidia has to throw at it for pretty much the rest of the year. I've had an ATI card for the last year.

That being said, they make the *worst* drivers and support software I've ever used. Their hardware would be capable of so much more if they would just focus on driver development! I don't know how many times I've faced the blue screen because of ATI's drivers or video capture software. This is the reason my next video card will be an Nvidia card. I miss the stable reference drivers. ;)

[Xaximus]

I believe that the R300 will use a completely new set of drivers, but of course we'll have to wait until it's out before we'll know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

[/dev/niall]

I believe that the R300 will use a completely new set of drivers, but of course we'll have to wait until it's out before we'll know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

It will; so much for ATI's unified driver scheme! ;)

The way I see it, my current video card does just fine for today's games. The R300 will do okay with tomorrow's games (new Unreal/Doom). The 2nd gen. DX9 cards from both ATI and Nvidia will be my next purchase... assuming I have enough self control to stick to my plan.

[Jonathon Watkins]

Hmmm, the Crucial world domination plan is right on schedule. :) Not that I'm complaining - I've been a fan of Crucial Memory for years and have been building and recommending their products for ages. I'm not convinced about ATI because of the drivers issue. The price would have to be very good to tempt me to get one of these new cards.

[st63z]

I think that Anand article mentioned that ATI's R300-based A-i-W (9700) will finally have full hardware MPEG-2 codec. Stick it in a Shuttle SN40, drop it next to your TV, bam! ;)

Before a product ships, I'm already wishing for more, wouldn't full hardware MPEG-4 codec be great?! That's encode/decode (simultaneous stream capable would be even better).

Too bad I just bought a couple of ReplayTV 4500 Series boxes (couldn't resist any longer), just to see the LAN networkability, broadband Internet Video Sharing, Commercial Advance, and MyReplayTV.com features in action. Now that I'm getting used to this, I just know SonicBlue is either gonna go bankrupt or is gonna get sued out of existence by end of this year by the evil RIAA/MPAA demons ( :) ). And once their program guide service goes belly-up, so will all the ReplayTV boxes :(

[Madoc Owain]

Crucial teaming up with ATI.. too funny. I was at a computer show picking up a new videocard last Saturday, ended up with a GeForce 4 Ti200, 64MB, 3DMark2001 scores annihilate those from my GF2 GTS/Pro 32MB card. The brand? PNY! Yep, "The other memory company", those of CompUSA/Best Buy special fame. NOW it all makes sense..

M.O.
http://www.madocowain.com