Consumer Electronics Show 2005: AT's Coverage

The CPU and Chipset Marketplace

When given the opportunity to sit down with the leaders of the Taiwanese motherboard market we're always able to get a good idea of who's really leading in terms of industry marketshare. We asked our contacts at all of the motherboard makers we met with what they were seeing in terms of CPU marketshare and chipset marketshare in 2005.

We talked to one motherboard manufacturer whose motherboard shipments were 60% AMD and 40% Intel. The rest of the motherboard manufacturers in Taiwan are still shipping more Intel than AMD but we're seeing a continued shift towards a 50/50 AMD/Intel split when it comes to motherboard shipments. By the end of Q2 all Socket-478 CPUs will have dried up, meaning that anyone looking for an Intel platform will be forced to move to 915 or 925X(E), which should obviously increase shipments of those two platforms but may also increase the number of AMD platforms sold.

ATI's chipset penetration is basically nothing amongst the Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers, despite ATI's efforts to brand the Radeon Xpress as an enthusiast solution. Part of the problem is ATI's previous history of chipsets and the other part of the problem is NVIDIA - the Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers are quite happy with nForce4 on the AMD side and they'd rather not produce any more Intel motherboards that won't sell, so ATI loses out.

VIA's best ally among the Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers is currently shipping around a 60/40 split when it comes to VIA vs. NVIDIA chipsets. The rest of Taiwan however appears to be more along the lines of 50/50 between VIA and NVIDIA. The manufacturers we talked too indicated that as soon as nForce4 was available on a more widespread basis that their AMD motherboard shipments would soon be much stronger in favor of NVIDIA.

VIA appears to be focusing on their Pentium 4 chipsets which we didn't hear or see much support for from the Taiwanese makers when we met with them at CES. Right now it seems like NVIDIA will be the chipset maker to watch out for in 2005, especially with the introduction of their upcoming Intel chipset.

NVIDIA's Intel chipset will support DDR2 and may actually bring some much needed excitement to the Intel platform. The entire Sound Storm division at NVIDIA has been shut down and thus NVIDIA's Intel solution will have HD Audio support, but we will not see the return of Dolby Digital Encoding support or NVIDIA's Sound Storm DSP.