Motherboards in 2000 Preview - Part 1: Chipsets

Summary

We all expected another BX chipset from Intel with the 820. Instead, we were left with a cost burden that not even the largest budgets would like to carry. We expected enormous support for the i840 platform as the true successor to the GX/NX chipsets, yet we've seen less than a dozen working i840 samples in contrast to the piles of i820 boards that we've managed to take a look at. Intel is not starting off the trek into the New Year very strong and it will take quite a bit in 2000 for them to fend of the competition in the CPU market, let alone the chipset market.

ALi and AMD are going to be remaining fairly quiet as we make the journey into the New Year, but for different reasons. ALi simply has very little to implement into the market and AMD is going to go back to concentrating on CPU manufacturing for at least a few more months, until they're needed again in the chipset market.

Another relatively quiet player, NEC, will be emerging next year with their DDR RCC chipset. This is a solution we know very little about other than it is designed for use with DDR SDRAM in a workstation environment.

VIA is going to have the biggest arsenal as they march into Y2K. They will become virtually the sole supplier of Athlon chipset solutions with the KX133 and its derivatives. They will be providing a very attractive alternative to the i820 with their Apollo Pro 133A. They will be offering low-cost chipset solutions, in addition to high-end DDR solutions, to the market, all with relatively little competition until Intel gets their act together.

For the sake of the consumer, let's just hope that power really doesn't corrupt.