You will have to excuse the fact that this is off-topic for the ati,
nvidia groups, however I would argue that competition in the high end
PC graphics arena from PowerVR should impact the quality of sucessive
GPUs/VPUs from Nvidia and ATI.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12637

quote:
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We've been following the progress of PowerVR'5 Series 5 graphics
technology for some time, often wondering if it will actually reach
the market and if so how – given PowerVR's reluctance to do anything
along the fab-less semiconductor business model, instead stick purely
to an IP model. With no semiconductor licensee's it appeared that
Series 5 would stall, however last time we saw news of Series 5 it
was. We presume, for an announced deal with SEGA's arcade division.

More recently Imagination Technologies, the parent company of PowerVR,
has put out a new financial statement and within that a few references
have been made to the progress of state of Series 5. Here are a few
elements of the statement that may be pertienent:
" We are close to delivering our very high-end next generation
graphics technology that targets arcade, PC and console. We have
already licensed this technology to SEGA for use in arcade systems and
intend to explore relevant partnerships for other markets."

"Developments with Renesas/Sammy, and the latest SEGA partnership are
expected to lead to volume shipments in the amusement machine market
starting from the second half of this year and early next year
respectively."

"5 partner devices in or close to production (compared with only one
in production at the beginning of FY03/04) and 2 in prototype
silicon;"
So, it would seem that in the second half of the year, which begins
fairly soon, PowerVR will be ready to show of Series 5 in an arcade
guise at least, however given their business model this still leaves
some questions as to how, if at all, this will be brought to the PC
market without any semiconductor licensees – if PowerVR are reluctant
to go to a fables semiconductor it may be a tall order to ask a board
vendor to become one by effectively paying for the production
themselves and giving royalties back to PowerVR. Hopefully, though,
this will still prove to be an interesting solution and something can
be worked out.
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