January, 2010 | DriverFinder - We Make Drivers Work for You

ATI Technologies was a global leading developer and distributor of motherboard chipsets and graphics processing units. The manufacturer is perhaps best known for its extensive line of computer graphics chipsets. Some of the most notable products include the Rage and Radeon series, Rage Mobility and the ATI Crossfire. After acquiring ArtX, ATI would also go on to produce console graphics products for the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft’s X-box 360.

The company was originally founded in 1985 as Array Technologies Incorporated, mainly producing integrated PC graphics cards for manufacturers such as Commodore and IBM. At the dawn of 1987, ATI had evolved into an independent graphics cards retailer, unveiling its popular Wonder graphic card product line that same year. Leveraging the success of its cutting edge products, the company finally went public in 1993, having stock listed on the NASDAQ and Toronto Stock Exchange.

The 1990s were all about innovation. In 1996, ATI introduced the All-in-Wonder product line. This franchise represented the first combination of graphics chips integrated with a TV tuner card as well as the first chip capable of displaying computer graphics on a television set. These ATI graphics cards featured 3D acceleration powered by the company’s second generation of 3D Rage, which was originally launched a few years prior. ATI continued to enjoy market success into the millennium but eventually fell on hard times and merged with AMD in 2006, the same year it officially became defunct.

AMD still sells ATI graphics chipsets as therefore, they utilize the same corporate name. The company has made a number of ATI graphics drivers available for download on its website for Windows Vista and XP, Mac OS X and Linux.

It was certainly a good run for ATI and its line of high-performance products. In the end, the domination by AMD and NVIDIA proved to be too much to compete with, forcing this influential company and several more into less visible roles.

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Based in Taiwan, ASUS Computer Incorporated is a prominent company that manufactures a wide range of computers and computer components. Its massive portfolio consists of motherboards, optical drives, graphics cards, network servers, notebooks and mobile phones just to name a few. The company produces components for a who’s who list of manufacturers that include Apple, Alienware, Falcon Northwest, HP and Palm Inc. It also makes a number of components for Sony’s Playstation 2 game console. This company’s name is one that rings throughout the industry as approximately 33% of all desktops sold in 2007 where integrated with an ASUS motherboard.

ASUS was founded in 1989 by four computer engineers who worked for Acer. In the early 1990s, the company formed a profitable relationship that would inevitably help it to achieve global success. At the time, Taiwan manufacturers were not the motherboard leaders in the computer hardware market they have become today. Intel was stomped after finding that its 486 motherboard did not function as intended. To their surprise, ASUS had designed a 486 prototype, one they took to Intel’s Taiwan lab for testing. Intel found that the ASUS motherboard worked perfectly, a discovery that lead to an informal partnership between the two entities. ASUS has since become a major supporter of Intel’s Common Building Block initiatives and has the luxury to obtain Intel engineering samples before the competition.

ASUS has garnered much recognition during its tenor in the computer hardware business. In 2007, the manufacturer was recognized by Oekom Research as a “Highly environmental-friendly company” in the computers and peripherals market. In addition, ASUS was honored with numerous EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) Gold Awards for its product line of N-Series notebooks. The company has a regular spot in Asia Top 10 IT Companies and Business InfoTech 100 rankings. Boasting an estimated $1.324 billion in total brand value as of 2008, ASUS is showing no signs of slowing down soon.

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