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I don't know... I'm not really a fan of onboard-anything. I'd rather get specialized, replaceable PCI cards for added functionality than put yet *another* task on the CPU and eat into my main memory. I'm more into a piece of hardware doing one thing, not being weighed down by unnecessary burdens. Not to mention that I always liked nVidia products, and their drivers were always excellent (though it would be nice if they were open source for Linux and the BSDs).

And yes, I realize I'm just one person... but I'm one person who would not hesitate to get an nVidia GPU in my next machine (along with dedicated sound, ethernet, wi-fi, etc. cards) instead of going with the default Intel integrated video. I've done it before, I'll do it again.

The first time you see and AMD or Intel CPU with integrated graphics beat the pants off of an add-in card, I'd bet you'll be convinced.

If not, you are probably a member of a very tiny minority (and shrinking) of the enthusiast market that still upgrades your computer part by part over time.

I used to be that guy, but gave it up a while ago, because of the staggering pace of new tech. And the fact that if you time your upgrades to about a year and a half or so after the consoles refresh, you don't really need to stay on the treadmill. ;-)

When it comes to dedicated graphics, I've favored nVidia for quite a while. OTOH, I opted to go with integrated graphics with my last laptop. The reason is that the integrated card is better than my old dedicated card from 4-5 years prior, and can do anything but gaming. My priorities have also changed over time, since I now rarely play new games, and prefer open source drivers and better battery life. For me, a discrete graphics card was actually undesirable, although my reasoning only really applies to laptops.

That said, I think nVidia has some potential in the x86 market for gamers. With most games, there is no benefit for having a CPU beyond the recommended specification, but the visual experience scales up almost linearly with graphics card power. So I see a market for PCs built completely around graphics performance, with the CPU being basically an afterthought. Kinda the opposite of having a fast CPU and integrated graphics, which is better/cheaper for general computing.

You're one person indeed. But 95% of the market will do with anything that's cheap and that works. You just gave the best examples yourself: sound (and you can add LAN, IDE/SATA/USB/other-ports controllers etc). There isn't a need for dedicated HW expansion cards for 98% of the people. It's way cheaper with those integrated functionalities, consumes much less space/power than an expansion card and most importantly, it just works.

Currently NVidia is at the enthusiastics/specialized markets only, and almost by definition, it's a relatively small share of the market. Integrated HW sells to the vast majority of the market.

As a relative expert, gamer and developer myself, I can say that I'm quite happy with all my recent systems which had everything integrated less the GPU. Had there been a decent integrated GPU, I'd have probably bought it instead. It's cheaper and it works.

So integrated GPU has a huge current and potential market IMO. Possibly less profitable per system, but overall presents a very good growth opportunity for a company like NVidia. I wouldn't just dump the concept or potential market because some experts prefer discrete HW.

imho AMD is totally irrelevant.

If Intel keeps doing crappy GPUs, there's a (big) place for NVIDIA.

Until NVIDIA hw has good open source drivers then there is a large market for AMD (and Intel). I try my best to stay away from anything NVIDIA, especially GPUs.

Consoles and piracy are taking down the high end.

With more games being designed as multiplats there is less of a need for pc gamers to upgrade.

There's a degree of truth in that I think, but not entirely. It feels as though the hardware is lasting longer, but that really depends on your usage profile.

I'm only just upgrading from an Athlon64 3200+ 754 and have been playing Crysis, on lower settings of coarse and been more or less "happy" as I still got to play the game just with less candy.

No because the onboard graphics (integrated into a CPU) will never be as powerful as the GPU cards because of the power distribution and heat dissipation problems. By placing the GPU on the card they can have better cooling than if stuck inside the CPU die.

Of course things could be way better if there was a middle ground because placing the GPU on an external card also introduces many problems.

What you say about physics was true because the future consumers of physics cards had very little titles to induce them to buy one. The graphics card has worked its way up into the PC ecosystem such that almost every game uses it.