Let’s get together!

Nvidia and ATi to collaborate on next graphics generation, reports Felicity Crossli

Who says computing is a cut-throat business? There’s a lot more love between competing companies than we often imagine. To prove it, Nvidia and ATi have announced that they will be coming together to create a new line of graphics chips. The joint venture is to be called NvidiATi, and resulted from a series of ‘double dates’ with their respective partners, Intel and AMD.

The first NvidiATi GPU to appear will be the GRRR666, which is expected to come to market as the NvidiATi RadioForce X98000XTXXXGTSS GTi. The new GPU will incorporate a 7D ALU Streamcessor Universally Shady ArchieTexture with 256 Streamcessors. These harness the power of Phase Space to confuse people into buying the product because they have no idea what the specifications mean.

The quad-core GPU will have a base clock of 2.666GHz. It will incorporate 1,666MB of GDDR7 memory with a 666-bit memory path running at 666MHz quad-pumped. The ALUs will be individually timed by Swiss watchmakers. A cut-down GRRR664 with 234 Streamcessors will also be available. Its core will run at 2.664GHz, with 1,664MB of memory clocked to 664MHz triple-pumped with a two-bit memory path, and the ALUs will be designed by Casio.

However, the GRRR666’s stunning performance potential is very much aimed at the future. The new GPU is primarily intended to accelerate Microsoft DirectX 11, the API everyone is expecting will have more features than DirectX 10. When asked about the benefits of DirectX 11 over the previous version, NvidiATi’s Adam Bania explained, ‘Previous graphics cards could only do DirectX 10, but this one goes to 11!’