Radeon & PCI-Express -- Bridge Chip?

DPGX

Im not sure how true this is, but I was having a conversation with a guy that came to one of our LAN's this past weekend, and he claimed ATi also has a bridge chip although its integrated into the GPU. How true is this out of curiousity? I had actually forgotten about it up until now but was curious if there was any truth behind this?

Thanks,

Mike

mkk

I think the status of that idea is on the rumor level, a rumor started at least in part by nVidia. The supposed evidence was a picture of the core layout with an area of the chip that could possibly be some kind of internal bridge or just something else. ATI denied the existence of an internal brigde and while that could be expected it is also safe to say that in general ATI has at least a little bit more credibility in overall given events in the past few years. So I think the issue stays in the unsubstantiated rumor section.

In effect I would say that it doesn't really matter either way, since PCIe has no practical performance advantage over AGP in todays world. And that argument is more of a boon for nVidia since they do use bridges.