The age long debate between
Nvidia and
ATI.
Nvidia:
Nvidia, is a multinational corporation, which specializes in the development of graphics processing units and chipset technologies for workstations, personal computers, and mobile devices. They are based in California. The company has become a major supplier of integrated circuits (ICs) such as graphics processing units (GPUs) and chipsets used in graphics cards, and of video-game consoles and personal-computer motherboards.
Notable Nvidia product-lines include the
GeForce series for gaming, the
Quadro series for computer-aided design and for digital content creation on workstations, and the
nForce series of integrated motherboard chipsets.
Graphics chipsets
* NV1 – Nvidia's first product, based on quadratic surfaces
* RIVA 128 and RIVA 128ZX – DirectX 5 support, OpenGL 1 support, Nvidia's first DirectX-compliant hardware
* RIVA TNT, RIVA TNT2 – DirectX 6 support, OpenGL 1 support; the series that made Nvidia a market-leader
* Nvidia
GeForce - Desktop-graphics acceleration-solutions
* Nvidia
Quadro – High-quality workstation solutions
* Nvidia Tesla - Dedicated GPGPU processing for High Performance Computing systems
* Nvidia GoForce – Media processors for PDAs, Smartphones, and mobile phones featuring nPower technology
ATI:ATI Technologies Inc. (
ATI) was a major Canadian designer and supplier of graphics processing units and motherboard chipsets. In 2006, the company was acquired by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and was renamed the AMD Graphics Product Group or ATI Technologies ULC, although the ATI brand was retained for graphics cards.
The AMD Graphics Product Group is a fabless semiconductor company conducting in-house research and development and outsourcing the manufacturing and assembly of its products. Its main competitor is NVIDIA in the graphics and handheld market. The flagship product, the Radeon series of graphics cards, directly competes with NVIDIA's GeForce. These two companies' dominance of the market forced other manufacturers into niche roles.
* Rage Series - ATI's first 2D and 3D accelerator chips.
*
Radeon Series - Launched in 2000, the Radeon line is ATI's brand for their consumer 3D accelerator add-in cards. The original Radeon DDR was ATI's first DirectX 7 3D accelerator, introducing their first hardware T&L engine. ATI often produced 'Pro' versions with higher clock speeds, and sometimes an extreme 'XT' version, and even more recently 'XT Platinum Edition (PE)' and 'XTX' versions. The Radeon series was the basis for many ATI All-In-Wonder boards.
*
FireGL - Launched in 2001, following ATI's acquisition of FireGL Graphics from Diamond Multimedia. Workstation CAD/CAM video card, based on the Radeon series.
* FireMV - For workstations, featuring multi-view, a technology for the need of multiple displays for workstations with 2D acceleration only, usually based on the low-end products of the Radeon series.
