The Last Stand

Computer-related markets weren't always dominated by two opposing forces. But today all we see is Windows vs. Mac OS X. Intel vs. AMD. AMD vs. NVidia. Alternatives exist, of course, but they are niche, and have no intention of coming out of their corner of the sandbox.

The past was a smörgåsbord of competing brands, quite different from today.
Transmeta, IBM, and NEC got out of the x86 CPU business. Centaur and Cyrix were acquired by VIA, which is still around - focusing on the low-power embedded x86 market. PowerVR now designs for others for embedded graphics - phones, some chipsets, arcade cabinets; Matrox moved to workstation cards; SiS founded XGI, which bought Trident, which was reabsorbed into SiS and now makes legacy/server graphics chips; VIA acquired S3 and makes embedded graphics for industrial applications, store displays, cash registers, etc.; ATi was acquired by AMD, which recently retired the brand name (so now it's AMD Radeon); 3dfx properties (though not the company itself) were acquired by NVidia (which reintroduced SLI).

Some of these companies made bold "last stands" some years after the industry's practical duopolies emerged. The VIA C3 processor is compatible with Socket 370 boards, with somewhat worse clock-for-clock performance compared to a Pentium III, but lower power consumption and the possibility of passive cooling as selling points. XGI tried to make a push into high-end gaming with the Volari Duo cards, but its most powerful - the Volari Duo V8 Ultra - was only comparable to mid-range mainstream cards, while priced as an enthusiast card.

These "last stand" products are what I'll be focusing on for my first few weeks. Wishlist Rig #1 will be named Alamo in commemoration.