The battle between nVidia and ATI for video card dominance has long been the cause of much debate amongst the computing community. The struggle between the two companies has been a ping pong match of hardware heavy hitters. No company has been able to gain a clear lead in the market share long enough to be considered “the best” or the most popular. However, the entire struggle seems to have been a giant marketing maneuver, as it has been discovered that both companies are in fact part of the same company.

Years back when Voodoo lost it’s grip on the graphic card market, a single company started up with the intention of dominating the entire video card industry. The founders knew that maintaining a lead in such a market would be extremely difficult, since up and coming hardware companies were all jockeying for position. This is when they realized they could make two companies with two different cards that would compete in the consumer’s eye but really be working towards the same goal; make lots of money while squeezing out the real competition.

With the plan laid out, the key people decided to keep the entire process a secret for obvious reasons. As such, most employees for each company are completely unaware of the farse they are a part of.

For the last few years the release of new video cards has been staggering. Most attribute this to the competition between the two companies. With that, consumers have basically been forced into upgrading their video card on a much quicker time table than would be necessary had the fake competition never been created.

nVidia and ATI have successfully fought off real competitors while tricking consumers into upgrading video cards at a much quicker pace. It has yet to be determined how the courts are going to handle the monopoly since breaking it up immediately would have adverse effects on both the employees and the consumers.

Tags: nvidia, ATI, video cards