i doubt competition rules would allow the worlds bigget graphics maker(Intel as in extreme graphics) to puchase it's next biggest competitor

Nothing can be predicted.

I think they could argue that ATI is still credible competition, particularly as it just merged with AMD.

Moreover, Intel competes only in the low-end integrated arena, while NVIDIA tends towards high-end discrete cards. A merger seems like a natural alliance.

I see where reply #1 is coming from, but there have been plenty of bigger mergers between competitors. Like GR said, the real competition was from ati/amd, not the junk that intel made. So you still have a fairly evenly divided market.

Actually, couldn't NVidia make the point that pairing with AMD gives ATI an advantage regarding onboard and bundled deals? One would think this would be more of a correction of that problem.

Let's hope both AMD and Mvidia get a grip and start making good drivers for the OTHER OS out there.

"Let's hope both AMD and Mvidia get a grip and start making good drivers for the OTHER OS out there."

Why? Oh, I have sympathy for the Linux folks, but honestly when you decide to use Linux you've set yourself down the road of limitation and annoyance. People who use Linux really need to be tinkering people who enjoy such, or they won't like the OS experience anyway.

If they add up the cost of developing Linux drivers, and then add up what they'll make on the low number of Linux users who buy their cards, I have a feeling it won't be much of a profit. Linux is in a bad position, because without the hardware, no one is going to point many games in their direction, but without the games, there isn't much demand for the hardware.

Well I'm using Linux to avaid using a pirated copy of XP. And your wrong. Linux folls don't need to be the tinkering sort. I'm just gonna stop here because I can see you don't know much about what Linux is really about and how it works. That's OK though.

The problem is that Intel are the worlds largest maker of graphics chips regardless of which end of the market they dominate, nvidia and ati also make integrated chips and AMD could buy ati because of their small size and low market share and because THEY DON'T MAKE GRAPHICS CHIPS! Intel does so it IS anti-competitive for them to buy Nvidia , I see where you're coming from BakerStreet with the amount of dodgy mergers that have happened but this one will not and it looks just like a story leaked to sell shares. The real truth is that nvidia have been very up front about their plans to build a CPU
and the only stumbling block seems to be an X86 license WWW Link