nVidia exits the chipset business
- Thread starter Mercutio
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udaman
Wannabe Storage Freak
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- Sep 20, 2006
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Do U always get UR news from the Enquirer, Merc? 
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2353939,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03069TX1K0001121
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2353939,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03069TX1K0001121
sechs
Storage? I am Storage!
Perhaps nVidia determined that they don't make CPUs.
If Intel doesn't want you and AMD is your mortal enemy.... There's not a lot of room there.
If Intel doesn't want you and AMD is your mortal enemy.... There's not a lot of room there.
Bozo
Storage? I am Storage!
Good!
Maybe this will get AMD to think about producing their own motherboards.
Maybe this will get AMD to think about producing their own motherboards.
Sorry to disagree but I think of this as generally bad. For the same reason I really don't want AMD to die, is why I don't want Nvidia to fail. Competition is good, and monopolies are generally bad for society. This is definitely heading in the direction towards a monopoly.
I really really wish they would.
Tannin
Storage? I am Storage!
What Mark said.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
There's nothing keeping nVidia from making AMD chipsets except the fact they don't want to. Plenty of judgment-impaired people would surely pair an nVidia-based card with an AMD CPU and an nVidia chipset.
Tannin
Storage? I am Storage!
Count me amongst them, and stick your "judgement impaired" where the sun don't shine. I have probably built thousands of systems using that combination, with considerable satisfaction.
Not too long ago, Nvidia chipsets were clearly the best available. Over the last two or three years, we have seen a couple of changes:
(1) VIA are no longer competitive (are they even making chipsets still? We don't seem to see them at all anymore.)
(2) ATI/AMD chipsets have become common. After the inevitable period of well-earned suspicion, the ATI mainboard chipsets have proved themselves to be everything you could want: they are pretty much completely trouble-free.
On the graphics card side of things, the great black/white divide that saw Nvidia provide close to 100% of our cards has faded away, mainly because ATI drivers have finally become more like the Nvidia ones - pretty much fuss-free and lacking the stab-you-in-the-back gotchas that ATI driver software was notorious for until not so long ago.
We still prefer Nvidia-based cards (MSI. Gigabyte and Leadtek), of course, but no longer experience that all-too-familiar and always unwelcome feeling of impending dread whenever we have to work on an ATI-equipped system. These days, you can pretty much plug an ATI card in and expect it to work first time, and go on working every time, just as Nvidia cards have done snce they got the old TNT drivers right back about the time that the Voodoo III was released and AGP was still the new kid on the block.
All these comments apply only to the AMD platform. What Nvidia Intel-platform chipsets were like, I can't really say - we havn't found any need to sell Intel desktop CPUs on a regular basis since the Pentium III 1000 was one of our favoured units - and that's a long, long time ago now.
Not too long ago, Nvidia chipsets were clearly the best available. Over the last two or three years, we have seen a couple of changes:
(1) VIA are no longer competitive (are they even making chipsets still? We don't seem to see them at all anymore.)
(2) ATI/AMD chipsets have become common. After the inevitable period of well-earned suspicion, the ATI mainboard chipsets have proved themselves to be everything you could want: they are pretty much completely trouble-free.
On the graphics card side of things, the great black/white divide that saw Nvidia provide close to 100% of our cards has faded away, mainly because ATI drivers have finally become more like the Nvidia ones - pretty much fuss-free and lacking the stab-you-in-the-back gotchas that ATI driver software was notorious for until not so long ago.
We still prefer Nvidia-based cards (MSI. Gigabyte and Leadtek), of course, but no longer experience that all-too-familiar and always unwelcome feeling of impending dread whenever we have to work on an ATI-equipped system. These days, you can pretty much plug an ATI card in and expect it to work first time, and go on working every time, just as Nvidia cards have done snce they got the old TNT drivers right back about the time that the Voodoo III was released and AGP was still the new kid on the block.
All these comments apply only to the AMD platform. What Nvidia Intel-platform chipsets were like, I can't really say - we havn't found any need to sell Intel desktop CPUs on a regular basis since the Pentium III 1000 was one of our favoured units - and that's a long, long time ago now.
You are behind the times: Intel current C2d and i7 CPU's are now significantly more powerful than AMD's offerings. That being said, AMD is successfully marking out territory in the cost-effective budget class. Perhaps your market is limited to relatively low-end machines and in that case your statement may be valid.
Chewy509
Wotty wot wot.
http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets/desktop-chipsets.jsp
IIRC, they don't have a license for current i5/i7 offerings, as nVidia doesn't either, (which is the main topic of the thread). They do a license for HT, but not HT3.0 which means they can make AM2/AM3 compatible chipsets, but will be lower spec'ed for AMD platforms.
Good to hear...
My AMD-8151/8131/8111 chipset combination is going strong, and has been trouble free, except for 1 incompatibility issue with AMD-8151 and certain late model AGP video cards. (The issue is with AGP video cards that use a bridge chip to convert a PCIe based GPU into an AGP one, like a nVidia 6600 or ATI HD3000 series card. AGP based video cards like nVidia Quadro AGP or ATI FireGL AGP cards work perfectly fine).
Now back OT. I can see why nVidia have done what they have done, BUT loss of another competitor as large as nVidia from the mainstream chipset market will be a blow. How big, I don't know, but it means for the current situation, running a AMD CPU and nVidia SLI is no longer an option, and for the Intel side, well, let's see what happens in the future... (Not that I placed a lot of value in current SLI/Crossfire configurations - I just don't see the cost benefit in the setup).
Tannin
Storage? I am Storage!
Powerful enough to justify the horrendous price premium? Powerful enough to justify putting up with Intel mainboard chipsets and drivers (which I have never, ever liked, not since the VX, TX, and BX)? I don't think so.
ddrueding
Fixture
Yup. When I went from a fast AMD system to a C2D I was blown away. There is a snappiness there that isn't elsewhere.
And the boards/drivers are excellent these days. The only things I buy are Gigabyte boards with Intel chipsets and Intel boards with Intel chipsets.
Funny, dealing with crappy motherboards is what drove me back to intel. You know, little details like having USB mice and keyboards work in DOS boot disk applications and having the motherboard be compatible with KVM switches. At the moment I am feeling like supermicro and intel branded motherboards are the only thing I really want to buy, I guess gigabyte as a distant third.
Never played with an ATI chipset machine though, just not daring enough to play.
Never played with an ATI chipset machine though, just not daring enough to play.
Absolutely! There is nothing in the AMD arena that is even close to the performance of the Intel i7 processors. The extreme top AMD processors are just now starting to get performance parity to the bottom-mid C2D processors.
time
Storage? I am Storage!
While true a few months back, I think that's overstating the current situation a bit. The latest AMD cores are within a few percent of equivalently clocked C2D cores and are now being sold at reasonable prices. The i7 is obviously a different story again, but I contend that non-geeks aren't remotely interested in them yet.
The exception is Photoshop, which seems to be explicitly designed to run slow on AMD machines. Adequate for most people, though.
Power differences are still dramatic, AFAIK AMD CPUs need about 50% more power than corresponding Intel CPUs, although less than this at idle.
time
Storage? I am Storage!
The current ones (last 12 months) seem pretty good to me. Smooth installation and no weirdness later. Obviously, the graphics are in a different league to Intel efforts and usually include DVI.
The graphics will only be short-term advantage to AMD once Intel gets their act together and Larrabee peeks it's head out into the wild.