nForce3 Ultra cancelled?

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

From The Inquirer, so take it with a big grain of salt.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20959

The most interesting part is this:

"Mainboard companies are said to be increasingly unhappy with Nvidia's attempts to make money 'any way they can', according to murmurings from one key partner. The $20 SLI premium, as well as the SLI brand tax that the INQ reported last week, are putting a giant's squeeze on manufacturers in an industry where margins are increasingly on a knife edge. Whilst DFI and MSI have already announced SLI-hacks, we hear that Asus and Gigabyte are also readying their own devious solutions."


If they were really pissed with nVidia maybe they should pay attention to other chipsets, huh? How about ATI+ULI, or K8T890, or SiS756. MSI for example has made an OEM-only ATI board, and postponed their K8T890 board indefinately.

 

[MarkM]

I think the mb makers are just responding to consumer demand. nvidia is doing a great job adding high profile features to their chipsets (good sound, hardware gb lan, hardware firewall, active armour, now SLI, all that), which is IMO giving them a "brand name" that is atypical for a component company -- not unlike what Intel did with their "Intel Inside" campaign. It is only the technically informed minority that know that AMD actually sells a superior product, not the "knock off" that they have the established public reputation for.

Since I believe that, what I found to be teh most intersting comment was this:

Other partners tell us that the lack of chips isn't just restricted to SLI hackers. Unpredicted high demand and an Ent-like slow roll out of chips have caused a shortage of NForce 4 boards across all partners, according to them.

We all knew here that there have been a LOT of people delaying purchase to get mbs with these chips.

ADDED: I just realized, maybe this explains why DFI has been so inexplicably slow with the 939 AGP lanparty board, which would have to use nF3u? I mean, their nF4 pcie lanparty boards have come out alread! If thiis rumour is true, I rpedict it will never see the light of day. Glad I already quit waiting.

 

[Slaimus]

Nvidia may be looking to get rid of AGP as soon as they can, since they are no longer making any new AGP cards.

EDIT: There may also be yield problems for the Ultra as well. Many NF4s failed at 1GHz HT and were relabeled NF4-4X

 

[Insomniak]

First off, it's the INQ, so let's all bear that in mind.

Secondly, it wouldn't surprise me. Intel and AMD both wanted the transition to PCI Express to be FAST, so now that PCIe chipset yields are ramping up for AMD, I wouldn't be blown away to discover that they're pushing NF4 Ultra/4x into the place of NF3.