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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Wesley Fink - Tuesday, January 17, 2006 - link
Typo corrected. We were adding info to the front page when you spotted the error.Myrandex - Tuesday, January 17, 2006 - link
there seem to be some nad's in the article on the first page in bold here:nForce4 SLI x16 nad nForce4 SLI