“If your arch-rival buys one of two highly competitive graphics chip companies, what else can you do but acquire the other GPU maker? That’s exactly what it was yesterday claimed Intel would do: snap up Nvidia after AMD’s move to acquire ATI,” Tony Smith reports for The Register.
Smith reports, “The Wall Street rumour put $2.32 on Nvidia’s share price and saw stock trades double in volume on average. That said, some analysts were anticipated an evening announcement of the deal, Reuters reports, but that doesn’t appear to have happened. NVDA shares closed at $31.08.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “LinuxGuy and Mac Prodigal Son” for the heads up.]
I believe Intel should acquire NVidia, in all fairness. Intel’s graphics side really needs improvement.
I prefer NVidia over ATI any given day. I’ve used their cards on the Windows and Mac sides. Never had a problem with NVidia. I have used ATI very cautiously and always had problems. Buggy performance and crashes always pissed me off.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
and so we enter a new era, back to they way it was, before 3D gaming, built in graphics?
Wonderful, more monopolies on the way…
Man, all this sucks. I don’t want these video card manufacturers being bought up by CPU manufacturers, although it may lead to less expensive/better integrated components. It sucks because it forces people to choose their video chipset based on their CPU vendor. Less choice is bad.
It is important to Apple that Intel get more competitive in graphics. If Intel does buy Nvidia, I just hope they put the Nvidia guys in charge of Intel graphics and not drive them off by making them second class Intel employees.
I see nothing wrong with this, i like intel and i like nvidia, would make for some killer integrated graphics (ok not for gaming but then agian that’s a special case).
That’s exactly what it was yesterday claimed Intel would do…
Ghostwriting for the Register now is Yoda doing. mmMMmm
Oh, and buy or buy not. There is no claimed.
Isn’t IBM the chip maker for Nvidia?
It doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t have a choice. Intel could still develop NVidia cards for AMD users, it would mean more money in their pocket. And vice versa.
They need to buy Nvidia because the Integrated graphics they sell and push suck. GMA 950 is garbage and im sure the if it ever shows GMA 3000 will be 1 small step up from garbage, In other words Intel needs someone who can make a decent graphics chip. Apple should pull that crap out of Macbook,Mini and iMac jr because the gma 950 sours the whole machine.
I havd a Core Solo MacMini. I don’t do gaming but I do edit video, make DVDs with my external LaCie DVD burner, multitrack with a ProTools 002R, rip with iTunes, compress video for my 5G iPod, download TV from the iTune store and get all over the internet.
When I read all these complaints about the Intel integrated graphics or how sucky the Core Solo CPU is, I don’t believe the folks who say these things have ever even used the hardware, it’s just a geek fad to put these system components down, because I can tell you from real world experience that it’s not bad. Perhaps these machines don’t benchmark like a G5 Quad but they sell for under $600 and are full of real Apple goodness.
I also have a G5, a DP G4, a couple of G3 iMacs and three G4 laptops, my MacMini boots to the desktop in 17 seconds and feels plenty fast.
To all those folks who are putting down systems without even spending serious time on the machines, GET A LIFE!
Folks,
This rumor is bogus. Wall Street overwhelmingly (i.e. both buyside and sellside) doesn’t believe INTC would benefit by buying NVDA. Needham, Merril Lynch, and others all dismiss this because:
1. INTC has no need to follow AMD’s acquisition. AMD wanted a workable platform strategy, whereas INTC already has a strong business selling supporting chipsets.
2. INTC and NVDA have widely disparate manfacturing models. INTC is all about high volume and relatively long product cycles. NVDA and other GPU manfacturers have much lower volume, and relatively short product cycles. Integrating these manufacturing operations after an acquisition would be difficult, expensive, and risky.
3. Microsoft’s Vista release in 2007 is likely to spur add-on purchases of graphics cards, which means NVDA shareholders and managers are unlikely to agree to a company sale in 2006, except at a very high price, which INTC is unlikely to offer.
4. The US government would raise anti-trust concerns in any proposed acquisition of NVDA by INTC. A market leader in one market segment buying another market leader in another will tend to attract the attention of the SEC and the Department of Justice.
So why did NVDA rise in today’s trading? Because the price action in NVDA today was all due to a short squeeze. The trigger for the short squeeze was … wait for it … this very same rumor that INTC would acquire NVDA, which (as shown above) is entirely bogus.
If you wonder who started this bogus rumor, and why, well now you know. This is how Wall Street works, and it ain’t a pretty site.