AMD and Nvidia will make a show of nForce next week, News.com reports. The new Nvidia nForce chipset for AMD Athlon/Duron, announced in June, will make its debut next week in motherboards and desktop PCs, an Nvidia representative said. nForce takes risks in that it aims to create a market niche where none existed before, a middle-of-the-road between high-end chipsets with no graphics and low-price chipsets with integrated graphics. Past integrated graphics chipsets, whether for Intel or AMD, have been aimed mainly at the low end of the PC market, where reducing costs is the primary goal and performance is only a secondary consideration.
i thik Nvidia have the best graphics chips and AMD the best processors but i’m not sure that the point must be “low costs”. AMD has proven in the last years her superiority on pc/workstation processors at “acceptable” prices, Duron was designed for the low end and his performance is awesome. . . maybe “lower” end systems isn’t a good idea.
I don’t think the nForce’s performance will be that bad I saw some bench marks on, I think it was Anatech, and it kept up with a KT266A with the same set up. One of the reasons nForce boards will be cheap is because they only use a four layer PCB instead of six.
The Technologly used in nForce is from Nvidia’s work on the Xbox. The built in sound had more features than an SBlive (not sure about Audigy) and it’s CPU usage was about 3% compared to 28% on the SBlive. I can’t wait till I can afford one, it seems like the perfect upgrade from my 300Mhz P2. Later I can upgrade to a Raedon of Geforce that has more punch than the GF2MX.
It’s been hard to find a rock solid chipset ever since the BX days. Even time tested companies such as Asus drop the ball more often (A7A266 anyone?). One more chipset player is one more headache for everyone. Little Timmy thinks he can install it himself and fails. Mom and Pop demand the latest chipset and complain when system and software incompaibility leers its ugly head. nVidia needs to stick with what it’s good at.. maybe some of the staff from 3dfx can lend some advice in that area.
>Little Timmy thinks he can install it himself and fails.
What the hell are you talking about?
Companies tend to expand in to other markets to find new profits, for example Nintendo was once a playing card company.
Rock-solid chipset? I’ve played with the MSI board with VIA KT266A chipset, and all indications are that this chipset (or at least board) is very good, to say the least. Maybe the next BX?
The problem is that the success of this chipset depends much on the public adoption of Win-XP and the ability of PC makers to achieve a retail price point below USD 800. By now, alot of really smart kids out there are probably looking for a Celeron 800 based system running Linux.
cheaper motherboards, and more expensive OS’s
Computers cost the same, just a greater proportion of money goes to MS
>Nintendo was once a playing card company
Yes, and Nokia used to make boots and tires.
> > Nintendo was once a playing card company
> Yes, and Nokia used to make boots and tires.
And before that (around 1880) they made paper, one of the world’s oldest communications media.
Maybe that part about Little Timmy installing his gee whiz nForce mobo wasn’t a complete thought. Sorry :p All I’m saying is, expansion like this doesn’t make sense for nvidia. 3dfx thought they could expand and all we got were overheating, underperforming cards. nVidia will likely just add further complexity to system integration. Will this new chipset like the Geforce? Will it work well with games? It’s just another support nightmare. Let me get back to Timmy. Timmy buys an nForce based board because some website says it’s cool. Timmy promptly breaks board because A. He has no clue and didn’t think he needed one. and B. mobos and their chipsets are much more touchy these days. Let’s not give Timmy another expensive and unstable toy to return.
Little timmiy might want to do some research before he tries to build his own computer. Though you’re better off if you do, OEM stuff is expensive and crap. I will never again but a prebuilt computer the fun I had with the shody parts was endless.
> nVidia needs to stick with what it’s good at …
The trouble with this strategy, to which the article alluded, is that it would
consign them more and more to a high end niche market (Similar to Apple and the
print-based publishing world). In a slow-moving market that can be a nice,
cash flow generating business plan. But in the technology market you run the
risk that the niche contracts too quickly.
As chip circuit sizes get smaller and smaller integrated graphics are
inevitable. Let’s hope nVidia does a good job with this first non-lowend
entry.
personally I reckon nVidia will do very well in this market. It’s a natural extension for them, especially considering the work on the xbox.