NVIDIA: New nForce4 Chipsets
by Gary Key & Wesley Fink on January 17, 2006 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Our Take
Motherboard shipments with the new chipsets are expected in the next few weeks. The introduction of these new nForce4 chipsets into the marketplace will offer competition across the board to Intel desktop chipset offerings. The only area in the desktop market not addressed by NVIDIA in the new chipset line is integrated graphics. We can only wonder at this time if NVIDIA will release an integrated video solution into the Intel market space to complete their product lineup, or whether there may be agreements in place that will exclude NVIDIA from the Intel integrated video segment. Intel has recently entered a partnership with ATI for integrated video products, and any new introductions by NVIDIA in integrated video has the potential to impact both ATI and Intel sales.
Since NVIDIA has talked for months that their Intel offerings were "top-end only", these new mainstream chipsets challenge Intel's dominance in the chipset market for Intel processors. It is difficult to see how Intel would welcome this move by NVIDIA. This could also impact the ongoing negotiations between Intel and NVIDIA for Intel licensing of SLI. Currently, Intel has a licensing agreement with ATI to provide ATI Crossfire support, but there is no licensing agreement for NVIDIA SLI. This could set up an interesting showdown between Intel/ATI Crossfire and NVIDIA SLI in the Intel market, in addition to the developing ATI Crossfire and NVIDIA SLI war in the AMD market. NVIDIA owns the current AMD chipset market, but the upcoming RD580 chipset and the introduction of the new AM2 socket could change these dynamics quickly.
From the perspective of the end-user, this looks like good news on the surface. It has been quite a while since Intel has had a real competitor in the chipset market. With NVIDIA charting new Intel CPU motherboards from $89 and up, there could be price competition in the Intel segment again. All of this assumes that the NVIDIA chipsets are worthy competitors to the Intel chipset line. Based on the performance that we have seen with the current NVIDIA chipsets for Intel, we would expect the new NVIDIA Intel chipsets to be very competitive. Motherboards are expected in the next few weeks and we look forward to comparing NVIDIA's new Intel line to motherboards based on Intel's chipsets.
Motherboard shipments with the new chipsets are expected in the next few weeks. The introduction of these new nForce4 chipsets into the marketplace will offer competition across the board to Intel desktop chipset offerings. The only area in the desktop market not addressed by NVIDIA in the new chipset line is integrated graphics. We can only wonder at this time if NVIDIA will release an integrated video solution into the Intel market space to complete their product lineup, or whether there may be agreements in place that will exclude NVIDIA from the Intel integrated video segment. Intel has recently entered a partnership with ATI for integrated video products, and any new introductions by NVIDIA in integrated video has the potential to impact both ATI and Intel sales.
Since NVIDIA has talked for months that their Intel offerings were "top-end only", these new mainstream chipsets challenge Intel's dominance in the chipset market for Intel processors. It is difficult to see how Intel would welcome this move by NVIDIA. This could also impact the ongoing negotiations between Intel and NVIDIA for Intel licensing of SLI. Currently, Intel has a licensing agreement with ATI to provide ATI Crossfire support, but there is no licensing agreement for NVIDIA SLI. This could set up an interesting showdown between Intel/ATI Crossfire and NVIDIA SLI in the Intel market, in addition to the developing ATI Crossfire and NVIDIA SLI war in the AMD market. NVIDIA owns the current AMD chipset market, but the upcoming RD580 chipset and the introduction of the new AM2 socket could change these dynamics quickly.
From the perspective of the end-user, this looks like good news on the surface. It has been quite a while since Intel has had a real competitor in the chipset market. With NVIDIA charting new Intel CPU motherboards from $89 and up, there could be price competition in the Intel segment again. All of this assumes that the NVIDIA chipsets are worthy competitors to the Intel chipset line. Based on the performance that we have seen with the current NVIDIA chipsets for Intel, we would expect the new NVIDIA Intel chipsets to be very competitive. Motherboards are expected in the next few weeks and we look forward to comparing NVIDIA's new Intel line to motherboards based on Intel's chipsets.
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Cygni - Tuesday, January 17, 2006 - link
Sorry that your experinces werent stellar, but your results arent typical, nor are they "FACT". Other reviewers have gotten excellent overclocking results from the Nvidia Intel chips:http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articl...">http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.aspx?articl...
http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&nu...">http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getart...ber=1&am...
It seems to depend heavily on the motherboard mft, just as with 945 overclocking as well. Early revision Abit boards, for example, proved to be poor overclockers, while the latest are much better. Simple BIOS upgrades as well have proven to do wonders for some. Really, if you jumped on the first gen board from ANY builder, you are likely going to get burned, regardless of the chipset builder. i820 anyone?
As it stands, the Nvidia boards are poised to make a serious run at intel's offerings... including the high end. They have the performance, they have the stability, and they have all the high end features, including overclocking. It will be interesting to see if intel has anything up their sleeve.
BATCH71 - Wednesday, January 18, 2006 - link
No, every review I have read except for one has made claim that the Nforce chipset sucks at very high bus speeds compared to the 955 or 945. Yes the 800FSB OC like crazy because they will never get to the very high bus speeds required for the high end 1066 chips. Sorry.I did read one review and the reviewer made claims that the P5N32-SLI "overclock real good" with the Award bios, to bad it uses AMI bios, Pfft.....
Cmon Intel 975xx crack that Nvidia SLI code ;)
Slaimus - Tuesday, January 17, 2006 - link
I hope these new chipsets fix the compatbility problems with the low end Pentium D chips that the original SLI had.Gary Key - Tuesday, January 17, 2006 - link
Those issues are gone with the two new releases today and the nForce4 SLIx16 chipsets.Slaimus - Tuesday, January 17, 2006 - link
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/200505240...">http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/200505240...http://theinquirer.net/?article=25036">http://theinquirer.net/?article=25036
hans007 - Tuesday, January 17, 2006 - link
look at the size of that heatsink fan unit on the chipset in the pictures.that thing is huge
Joepublic2 - Tuesday, January 17, 2006 - link
It's bigger than the HSF on my old coppermine P3. I wonder how large the die is, and what process it's being built with. Nvidia has a long way to go before they can compete with intel in the chipset market. Intel's chipsets might not have as many features, but at least the ones that they do have work properly.Furen - Tuesday, January 17, 2006 - link
No Active armor on these? Isn't that a good thing? I suppose getting a quirky feature that you can disable is better than not getting it at all but not having to pay for it is nice... as is HD audio.LoneWolf15 - Tuesday, January 17, 2006 - link
Good report, Wes.What I'm really annoyed by is that it appears that I will slowly be forced into buying an SLI mainboard if I want all the features. I don't WANT SLI. I don't NEED SLI. I'l NEVER USE SLI. I find it a costly waste of my money when I can wait for the next performance graphics card and buy one good one at a time. Boards with SLI are also less likely to have three standard PCI slots, which I still have use for.
But, it appears that if one wants an Intel mainboard with the hardware-accelerated firewall, they'll have no choice. This causes me concern, as I'd be willing to bet nVidia will go the same route with AMD boards at some point. Whatever happened to those who want all the features, but think SLI is a gimmick designed to upsell video cards (specifically, nVidia cards)?
ottawo - Tuesday, January 17, 2006 - link
Nvid can take thier chipsets and throw them into a gameboy. After my experience with nForce4 chipsets I would never choose nvid- at least not until they really mature and fix thier core logic bugs. Unless your building a gaming rig AND know how a little about how a motherboard/system works, stay away from these chipsets is my advice to my friends.