I'm sorry it's been such a gap (four months) since my review of The Legacy of Oblivion. I had meant to get this latest tome from Kentinel Studios read and reviewed before the end of March but tax year end put paid to that idea, and then a whole different kettle of fish arrived in May. But here we are now with the Martin Gamero Prieto's history of Nvidia and ATI, the final two mainstream graphics card companies to survive "The Great Graphics Purge", albeit with the latter being purchased by AMD.
This is another hefty volume, coming in at over 530 pages, but as with the previous entries, the production values are reassuringly high. Text is neatly spaced, there's full colour for imagery, diagrams and the like, and for those who like stats and tables, you'll be in seventh heaven here.
After a brief introduction, the first 240 pages or so provide a history of both companies from their initial foundations in the 1980's/90's to the culmination of the AMD purchase of ATI in 2006, as well as a run down of the various lawsuits that affected each company. There's clear descriptions of technical items, and as a history of how today's graphics card market developed, I have yet to read better. Each generation of card is covered in great detail, and both strengths and weaknesses are clearly noted with a fair and even hand.
The use of the two company's technology is covered next, with arcade use and home consoles receiving a proper appraisal. This not only takes in the usual suspects of the early 2000's, but also the Indrema, which although only given a handful of pages, provides a really interesting snippet on a machine that never made it to market.
The professional sector and the prevalence of capture cards comes next, before we get to integrated solutions and the use of Nvidia/ATI tech in laptops. The various technologies used in computer graphics is given a lot of space to breathe after that, and if you weren't familiar with "transform and lighting", "shaders" and "PhysX" before, you will be after this section.
The history and uses of the various connectors and buses takes up eighty-odd pages, and a highly informative inclusion it is too, before the various appendices, a bibliography (via QR code), and twenty or so pages of hardware titilation round off the book.
As a singular volume on the subject, The Legacy of Nvidia and ATI is a superbly written and intellectually stimulating read. The period it covers not only defined the Windows PC's journey to being the graphical powerhouse it is now, but also howthe symbiotic relationship between the PC graphical realm and home consoles began, one that in firmly entrenched to this day. However, this book's true value lies in it being part of the complete series by Mr Prieto, a quartet that delivers the most highly researched, well presented history of personal computing graphics I believe is out there. I've said this before, and I'll say it again: if the topic appeals to you, you need to pick up a copy not only of this book, but also its predecessors.
And to do so, check out Kentinel Studios here.
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