It all seemed like a long bitter marketing battle involving ATI and Nvidia the end to which was far off though creating uncertainties giving the impression that Nvidia shall be winning, which in its reality proved otherwise.
These two happen to be giants sharing almost entire consumer GPU market. For the time being Intel’s onboard graphics alternative is being ignored and at the moment no prediction can be made in respect of Larrabee GPU, because there shall be different strategies.
Nvidia had opted for high end yielding high margins based on low volumes expected, whereas ATI had gone ahead the other way with consolidation on mainstream market.
This market is source of their bread and butter. Thus ATI was offering a better price and performance solution. The scenario changed with Nvidia faced with struggles due to insufficiency in product differentiation. Nvidia was compelled to engage in trick styled marketing by affecting renaming of the old product.
The ATI’s strategy met with great success to such an extent that their low end success was a challenge to high end by the ATI graphics card offering excellent performance besides being the cheapest for entering in the market. In the end Nvidia has no alternative till its ‘Fermi’ surrounded by speculations, gets released during this year.