Industry Update - Q4-2004: AMD adds SSE3 Support, Intel's 925/915 not selling and more
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 3, 2004 1:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
ATI vs. NVIDIA
Just a couple of years back and a motherboard manufacturer producing both ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards would find themselves kicked off of the nForce2 partner list. These days things are very different, most manufacturers are producing both ATI and NVIDIA cards thanks to around 12 months of NV3x slip-ups. That being said, there are still incentives for a manufacturer to only deal with one of the two companies. For example, ATI is only willing to share a certain amount of information with their partners if the partners in question happen to produce NVIDIA cards as well. If you are ATI-exclusive, then you get more information. Makes sense, right?
Despite having access to more information, there's little I could find out about what's coming next for ATI and NVIDIA. Despite close relations with their partners, ATI and NVIDIA can keep their board vendors in the dark for much longer than Intel can, for example. The reason being that most of the time ATI and NVIDIA simply hand their vendors a reference design, and the vendors do nothing more than duplicate the relatively simple design. In some cases with NVIDIA, the board vendors must purchase both the GPU and the memory from NVIDIA, leaving very little work other than assembly for the board manufacturers to do. Combine that with very short product cycles and you can see why there's not much information floating around.
The big discussion in Taiwan about ATI and NVIDIA is with the current state of PCI Express. Without a doubt, Intel did a wonderful job of convincing all of their partners that the transition and ramp to their 915 and 925X platforms would be extremely aggressive. The reality obviously was completely different, as 2004 has almost come to a close and the only demand that we've seen for the latest PCI Express platforms comes from the OEMs themselves. Intel's efforts are very evident from the most recent product releases we've seen from ATI and NVIDIA; the GeForce 6600GT and X700 XT were both PCI Express-only parts initially, with AGP versions due out in the coming weeks.
The supplies of PCI Express graphics solutions from both ATI and NVIDIA are limited as you've heard over the past several weeks, and unfortunately there were no signs of a fix from the manufacturers in Taiwan. We received varying explanations for the shortages - with everything from low packaging yields to demand miscalculations. There is light at the end of the tunnel and most manufacturers were optimistic that PCI Express graphics supplies should pick up in the new year, until then we can expect sparse availability of the more desirable PCI Express GPUs.
Memory
The memory market is pretty unchanged from what you'd expect, the strengths are definitely in DDR sales right now. With poor 915 and 925X sales and no AMD support for DDR2, there are simply not enough platforms out there to drive up DDR2 demand. The only real demand for DDR2 comes from, as you can guess, the OEM platforms.
We would expect better adoption of DDR2 in 2005 as more 915 and 925X platforms make their way into the hands of more and more end users. Towards the end of 2005 Intel will have DDR2-667 support on their platforms, and without AMD here to force an early adoption of DDR2 standards we can expect that Intel's upcoming Glenwood/Lakeport platforms will be the only driving force behind DDR2-667 adoption.
Final Words
I hope you enjoyed this little update on the industry, if you'd like to see more of these types of articles just let us know - the flight to Taiwan isn't too bad and the information is usually top notch :)
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AtaStrumf - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
Great info Anand! More of that whenever possible.He, he, we thought 2004 was gonna be slow, but it turned out quite nicely, but 2005, man, that is gonna be SLOOOOOOW! Only one new desktop CPU per company before dual core madness begins in late 2005. The biggest story in GPUs is gonna be SLI and we will be watching chipsets mature and GPUs become more available and affordable. None of these things are gonna be terribly interesting be it for eighter speed, price or bugs. I guess I wont be pulling out my wallet all that much in 05, but hey, that's a good thing right?
The biggest drawback for new Intel's platforms is not PCIe graphics, its DDR2. It's slower and more expensive. Don't these people learn anything? RDRAM anyone? That was at least faster! This is bad even for OEMs, who don't care if nothing is compatible with previous HW since they build whole new system, but they sure as hell care if they have to pay more for less. But then again, they can sell it as if it were faster, but it stil automatically puts PC based on DDR2 in a higher price class and shrinks their profit margins.
blckgrffn - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
Go to Taiwan more often, for sure! I love this kind of stuff :-)Nat
dextrous - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
Great article Anand! I think more of these gems would be awesome.Dasterdly - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
Good article, just go to taiwain when theres much good info. Hire some locals to cover the rest.All the people Ive seen interested in the new intel chipsets want the 925XE. Why are they so excited about ati/intel? Did they hire the soundstorm team or something?
MAME - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
I was reading reviews about the Intel P4 3.x GHz chip on newegg. One user review said (I sh!t you not):"I heard somewhere that AMD's are better for gaming, but they run at suck low clock speeds, maybe they meen the 64 bit version at 2.2 GHz. Why not get a P4? 800FSB HT. If you ever want a 2.4 Ghz Amd prepare to pay $750+"
With morons like this, Intel is not going to lose much market share.
manno - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
About destop replacements. I have a laptop that is just that it literaly replaces my desktop. It has a HUGE screen, good grafics card. I played through Doom 3 and FarCry on it, and it stays in my house exclusively. I like it because it has the power I need, I can use it in any room in my apartment (wireless network) and I don't need to be tethered to a desk to use it. It's an emachines m6805 with a 754 A64 @ 1.8 GHZ with 1MB of cache. It's surprisingly cool, and I frequently use it on my lap without a problem, unlike my Dell 1.6 GHZ P4M that gets extremly hot. Is it like an imac? I guess you could say that. But it's very convenient for me because I can move from room to room without needing the space required by a huge desk somewhere. It never leaves the apartment though, and I could loose the batery and not notice the difference, so maybay that's where the incongruity between the laptops they're thinking of, and the "laptop" I'm thinking of. They think people are getting laptops to take the computer with them out of the house/office. I bought my laptop to stay in my apartment but to let me use it away from my desk. I know for a fact that 2 of my brothers are looking for DTR's, and not desktops, because they have the same user habbits as me, so from personal experience I don't see the market dissapearing. Though I also see the usefulness of a laptop that could run for 24 hrs on 1 charge, that's 12' x 9' x 1' and weighs just a pound. But I realy don't see me leaving the apartment to go surf the net. I leave it to get away from the computer, not to use my computer in new places.-manno
emailauthentication - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
great article, its good to know what the people that actually produce this stuff have to say, instead of just feeding us press releases, more articles like this would be greatly appreciated. keep up the good work and thanks for the imformative article.4lpha0ne - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
Here is a small list of possibly fixed bugs:http://aceshardware.com/forum?read=115106142
4lpha0ne - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
Am I blind or why am I inable to find any mention of fixed bugs in the former article (Oct 14th) except in the related discussion thread on aceshardware, where Dresdenboy brings up this idea?See http://www.aceshardware.com/forum?read=115105861
ceefka - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
Great article!I see again bad news for Intel. They are still big, but this must hurt some way. Intel wouldn't want you to know of course.
#11 There are also totally ignorant users that buy AMD64, like a few of my neighbours.