Intel spurns Nvidia

[AmbitV]

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5092299,00.html?chkpt=zdhpnews01

 

[Noriaki]

link fixed

I think he's right. There's really nothing this chipset offers that the AMD760 doesn't. The SiS735 should also be right up there. The Ali Magik1 has some performance issues, and Via seems to have some stability/compatiblity issues with the KT266. But really I don't think the nForce is anything revolutionary.

It's a bunch of integrated stuff that this market segment doesn't need or want. Will it help push the Duron into the home market? Maybe...but the SiS730S and Via KM133 are more than high enough performance for the home market, and the 730S at least should be noticeably cheaper.

 

[Topochicho]

I see a fair sized market for the nForce. It doesn't do anything for the extremes of the market, but what about the wide middle?

I'm talking about people who aren't looking for cutting edge but want something more than prepackaged boxes o crap. These are the people who have custome machines built buy little shops, becuase thay don't know enough to do it themselves. They are exactly the clientel that keeps these shops open now. These shops will be able to market the systems as upscale systems for the cost of cookie cutter systems. The shops will love the chipset, anything that allows them to turn out quick, simple, cheaply suppoorted systems (which is what completely intergrated system offers), but offers the performance and therfore margin of an upscale sytem is a wonderful thing.

Infact I don't see why more of you aren't interested. Sure we all want top end systems, but what about 2 or 3. I've got my system(best i could afford) and 2 other crap ones. I have freinds come over and we game, but the other systems bite. to be able to buy and build a integrated sytem (that performs better than a cookie cutter system) for chump change is a really pretty cool. hell with money I spent on my system, I could have bought 2.5 integrated systems.

I also hate my parents system... when I have to use while at their house, it drives me nuts. To be able to replace the whole damn thing for $350 and have it perform on par with mine is bad ass.

integrated systems that perform WELL, not the best but good... thats a cool damn idea.

 

[Noriaki]

But the thing is, it's an integrated chipset that performs well *now*.

The Ali Alladin TNT2 was a pretty good performing chipset when I had a Voodoo3. The nForce's performance is going to suck in 9-12 months.

This isn't the video card market, nVidia isn't going to come out with an nForce2 in 6 months...

A medium performance integrated chipset is a nice idea, but the performance picture changes so fast by the time this chipset is in use and getting out in boxes to people, we'll have redefined medium performance and these will look pretty shabby.

Doom3 is going to run pretty poorly on the nForce for example.

 

[pidge]

This is a response I would expect from Intel however I really hope they do not honestly believe this. The hardware is amazing and it gives so much more than what the 815 chipset does for around the same cost. You can bet the OEM's will be all over this and Intel knows this. They better have a product to comete or else its gonna be a bad Christmas for Intel.

 

[Windogg]

I think the thread title should be, "ANAND CRAPS ON VIA, NVIDIA CHIPSETS!!!"

 

[ElFenix]

what are they saying about the 815? don't push on integrated graphics alright, the nforce is cool because it has a kickass ddr controller and sound. the integrated graphics will be better than previous ones at 3d, but it will still be below geforce mx/sdr levels. of course it won't help out dvd playback like the other chipsets tend to do.

intel is spreading FUD. tech companies like to do that.

 

[pidge]

And Intel likes to blow up Via balloons at trade shows.

 

[sandorski]

Let's ignore the integrated part of the Nforce for a moment. Now check out the other things this chipset does. Now understand why it is something new, something revolutionary.

 

[Wingznut]

pidge, you really think the nForce will be priced around $100?

And regarding the "needs of the market", what price range and demographic of OEM PC's do you guys think the nForce fits into?

 

[Bloodybrain]

It would be nice to see some all-in-one FlexATX mainboard equipped with the nForce for VHS-like boxes. With TV-out and a DVD-ROM, it would make the perfect slim computer to hook up to your TV and stereo. I see a market for this kind of device, not like the crappy webTV set-up boxes, those are so useless. I'm talking about a full-fledged and powerful entertainment computer.
Now the Duron still requires too much power and dissipates too much heat for such a platform. It would be interesting to see how the Morgan core does in this situation (is it still .18 micron?)

 

[Gstanfor]

<< I think he's right. There's really nothing this chipset offers that the AMD760 doesn't. >>


Just one simple example: You are playing a 3d game (on either the integrated graphics or an AGP card it doesn't matter which), and the cpu and the GPU both want to access memory at the same time. Under most chipsets today, the GPU will be forced to wait for the cpu. On the nForce, both the cpu and the gpu will be able to acess memory without holdups or stalls thanks to the dual, independent memory controllers. This should help AGP 4x cards actually reach the potential of the bus, where they don't at present.

Greg

 

[Wingznut]

It's a good theory, gstanfor... But how much it will really benefit is arguable. Especially considering that most high-end cards have 64mb of memory onboard anyway. And therefore have no need to access over the bus.

 

[Gstanfor]

Even if it does not boost texture transfers, which I am sure it will - games are getting more not less complex, it will help the flow of T&amp;L data.

All of this is before you even begin to take into account that the chipset will provide older athlons and durons with hardware prefetch capabilities, that things like USB will finally be able to use most of their bandwidth without affecting the rest of the system as much, etc, etc.

nVidia has done a brilliant job of taking traditional PC bottlenecks and showing them the door. we should finally be able to see what a modern, fast system is capable of achieving when the bottlenecks of yesteryear are removed from it.

Greg

 

[Wingznut]

And back to the original topic... Of what benefit would it be to Intel, for nVidia to build motherboards for Intel? For AMD it makes sense, considering what they have now for chipset supplier. But Intel's chipsets are as solid as they come.

 

[shathal]

I have to agree with Wingznut (once again) .

On-board GFX is really mostly something for &quot;low-end&quot;/low-cost systems. Especially since NVIDIA put the GeForce2 chip on there, I doubt they'll be selling it for cheap. So - what is it going to be? The &quot;High end&quot; segment then?

Can't be - High-end segments tend to not use integrated GFX - integrated NIC, yes, but not audio and GFX.

As such - I think it's an interesting experiment, but I doubt it will be a huge success, to be honest.

Also - Intel doesn't need NVIDIA's fabbing-capabilities for chipsets - it's got its own. I think Intel is quite happy making more money from the boards it produces itself, rather than outsourcing or contracting that sort of thing out. .

 

[Bremen]

I think you all are missing the point. Most people who buy from OEM's wouldn't even know what 'integrated' anything meant. So the OEM can advertise a top of the line graphics solution (after all this person's geek friends undoubtably advised the GeForce II, and look! the computer they're buying has it. Not to mention a top of the line sound system (I've never liked integrated sound, but I can't find any add-on cards that offer a better sound system than whats onboard). Plus a LAN connection to connect to that old computer you want to transfer files from.

Now as for why geeks would buy it. Forget the graphics (or maybe not, I'm still happily using a TNT2 card after all), but heck how many of you actually care who made your LAN card? and can you find a better sound card that what the nForce offers? Plus look at all the other special features, like hardware prefetch <drool>. Dual channel DDR!! I'm waiting for them to make it an SMP chipset <massive drool> ok, I know I'm probably dreaming there, but really, AMD isn't stupid, they have to realize giving each chip a memory controller can only help to improve performance, after all one of the major bottlenecks in an SMP system are the proc's fighting over memory bandwidth.

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

Why don't we all just wait for a few boards sportin' the new chipset to come out, be reviewed, and then we can continue this thread. It's too hard to speculate on a board when you don't know what it can do. Would the Twinbank DDR be a way for the P4 to use cheaper RAM? If so I think they(Intel) would want this. I realize that RDRAM is serial and specialized for the P4 but still...I'm starting to have doubts that the industry will support more than one type of memory (SDRAM vs. RDRAM).