[DigiTimes] Nvidia to quit motherboard chipset business

[=98=]

Nvidia has decided to throw in the towel and quit the chipset business, sources close to the situation at one of Taiwan's top motherboard makers have revealed. As the story is told, Nvidia called a meeting earlier this week with its motherboard partners to gauge support for it continuing to develop chipsets in the future.

The motherboard makers' response? Silence.

It is still early days and not all the facts are known at the time of writing, but it is believed Nvidia will transfer the chipset team to working on GPU projects. On the motherboard makers' side, some makers have already canceled upcoming high-end motherboard projects based on the nForce 7-series chipset.

The loss of its chipset business is expected to have a significant impact on Nvidia's GPU business in the short-term. Reception to the nForce 200 chip (BR04) which will enable SLI technology on Intel X58 motherboards has been lukewarm at best, with many makers saying they will not bother adding the chip on their boards. This means Nvidia needs to find a way of licensing and enabling multi-GPU support on motherboards using Intel and/or AMD chipsets fast. Otherwise it will have to cede the top-end of the graphics card market to AMD, which now has the benefit of Crossfire.

The news would also debunk any recent speculation that Apple will be adopting Nvidia chipsets for its upcoming notebook products. It would be unfortunate if Apple really has poured water on the close relationship it has built with Intel over the past few years, only to have its new best friend exit the market before products are even announced.

This is massive news. Will Intel be the only company in the market or will ATI step up the game?

Tech forums are putting the blame down to poorly working chipsets (we all know nForce chipsets never worked well) and a massive batch of faulty laptop and 790i chips. Whilst it does amount to a massive amount of lost revenue, it also frees up research and development revenue budgeted for chipsets.

Perhaps this new revenue will be used to help fund new graphics designs as we clearly see ATI is growing stronger by the day.

Source: http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20080801VL203.html

[Shawn Zipay]

Re: [DigiTimes] Nvidia to quit motherboard chipset business

Hm. I'm a bit bummed out about this as all I've used in the past 7 years or so now have been motherboards with Nvidia chipsets.

They've served me well.

[Wizrdwarts]

Re: [DigiTimes] Nvidia to quit motherboard chipset business

false rumors.

http://www.dailytech.com/NVIDIA+Denies+Reports+That+It+Will+Leave+Chipset+Business+/article12563.htm

[Hellsent 2.0]

Re: [DigiTimes] Nvidia to quit motherboard chipset business

false rumors.

http://www.dailytech.com/NVIDIA+Deni...ticle12563.htm

Yep just came on here to post same thing....

[AvalancheDiode]

Re: [DigiTimes] Nvidia to quit motherboard chipset business

Every rumor has its root of reality. Taiwanese motherboard makers are VERY unhappy about nvidia. They want to make money as well, but nvidia's pricing policy gives them only knife edge profit margin. Most motherboard makers have X58 boards ready and under test now, and Intel is so confident that they believe they can launch Nehalem 2 mouth later, one month ahead of schedule. The schedule is so tight that nvidia actually screwed them around with releasing nForce 200 support to X58. If you're a motherboard maker, you'd be like WTF!? Why don't they tell us EARLIER. They can't, because they just bowed down to mighty Intel two month ago due to pricing and manufacturing mess now on their hands. nForce 200 is a crappy chip that requires rework of motherboard cooling. On the other hands, nvidia's AMD chipset is good, and their new generation mGPU chipsets are very good. They are not the fastest nor most overclockable, but they serves the purpose right with right software and hardware package. 790i is actually very good chipset that is almost as good as X48, if done right. It isn't the horrible days of 680i anymore. However, no matter how good their products are, it always comes down to how it is put into practice. Some nvidia mobos are crap, but some others are pretty decent. In practice, they need Taiwanese OEM giants, such as Asus, Foxconn and MSI, to support their products. As long as there is a market for their products that is profitable, the question will always be how much for you and how much for me. Now nvidia is no longer king of graphics card, so why not use this opportunity to make new deal with nvidia that makes ME more profitable? Sure nvidia is having a hard time, but who didn't except Intel and Microsoft (actually, each have their own bad time as well)?

[=98=]

Re: [DigiTimes] Nvidia to quit motherboard chipset business

Every rumor has its root of reality. Taiwanese motherboard makers are VERY unhappy about nvidia. They want to make money as well, but nvidia's pricing policy gives them only knife edge profit margin. Most motherboard makers have X58 boards ready and under test now, and Intel is so confident that they believe they can launch Nehalem 2 mouth later, one month ahead of schedule. The schedule is so tight that nvidia actually screwed them around with releasing nForce 200 support to X58. If you're a motherboard maker, you'd be like WTF!? Why don't they tell us EARLIER. They can't, because they just bowed down to mighty Intel two month ago due to pricing and manufacturing mess now on their hands. nForce 200 is a crappy chip that requires rework of motherboard cooling. On the other hands, nvidia's AMD chipset is good, and their new generation mGPU chipsets are very good. They are not the fastest nor most overclockable, but they serves the purpose right with right software and hardware package. 790i is actually very good chipset that is almost as good as X48, if done right. It isn't the horrible days of 680i anymore. However, no matter how good their products are, it always comes down to how it is put into practice. Some nvidia mobos are crap, but some others are pretty decent. In practice, they need Taiwanese OEM giants, such as Asus, Foxconn and MSI, to support their products. As long as there is a market for their products that is profitable, the question will always be how much for you and how much for me. Now nvidia is no longer king of graphics card, so why not use this opportunity to make new deal with nvidia that makes ME more profitable? Sure nvidia is having a hard time, but who didn't except Intel and Microsoft (actually, each have their own bad time as well)?

Please, use the "Enter" button :shock:

Yes, apparently a few motherboard makers have pulled their 790i boards due to that faulty batch.

[Shawn Zipay]

Re: [DigiTimes] Nvidia to quit motherboard chipset business

Well then, horray for false rumors then!