With Nehalem on the Horizon...

[rjc]

Originally posted by: zod96
I bet what is going to happen is, Intel will say you want to make chipsets for our cpu's then open up SLI to us Each has to give something..

I have read half a dozen posts where this swap is the outcome.

But nobody has talked about why intel would be interested in paying for SLI?

Some reasons about why they wouldn't care about SLI at all:
- Nvidia is in a strong position in the GPU market like >70% of the cards sold i think. Adding SLI will help sell more high margin cards for them, but few if any extra motherboards.
- The Nvidia CEO said just after the ati 3870x2 was released at the start of the year: "There?s no question that a single GPU is a better approach."
- He backed that up bigtime by producing a new >500mm2 chip.
- Denying cash to Nvidia via GPU sales would be a much a much bigger goal for intel so that Nvidia didnt have the resources to be able contemplate entering the x86 cpu market.
- The larabee stuff, looks like another way to achieve the above.
- Pushing crossfire via the chipset would help maintain a viable second supplier of GPUs also helping with the above.
- As well as the memory controller on chip, there are still rumors that the consumer version of nehelam and much more likely sandy bridge will have an igp on board. ie as time passes in the average pc more % spent on cpu, less on motherboard and gpu.

 

[Cookie Monster]

nforce boards for AMD were always more stable and more popular than its intel counterparts (i still remember nforce4s being really popular amongst enthusiasts). Why? because AMD didn't make chipsets in the first place. They allowed 3rd party chipset makers to come up with motherboards that supported their CPUs. There was no need to limit documents and data required to support the AMD CPUs because AMD never had any intention of designing and manufacturing its own chipsets.

Its a little different with intel. They not only manufacture CPUs, but also their own chipsets. Now let me ask you this. Would you want other 3rd party chipset makers to have a better chipset than your own that works with the CPUs that you've created? hell no. Firstly intel needs to give licenses for 3rd party chipset makers can actually go and design compatible motherboards for intel CPUs. Intel is in a position where they can give you the bare minimum data/documents required to design motherboards that are compatible with their CPUs. Now add in the business relationship between nVIDIA and intel, things go from bad to worse.

However that being said, i still think that the chipset market is more of a niche to them.

 

[Mr Fox]

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster
nforce boards for AMD were always more stable and more popular than its intel counterparts (i still remember nforce4s being really popular amongst enthusiasts). Why? because AMD didn't make chipsets in the first place. They allowed 3rd party chipset makers to come up with motherboards that supported their CPUs. There was no need to limit documents and data required to support the AMD CPUs because AMD never had any intention of designing and manufacturing its own chipsets.

This would not be correct.... AMD made the AMD 760 Series Chipset...(Circa Jan. 2002) To support Thunderbird Processors, and DDR. And were Rock solid stable... These were the last AMD Corelogic Chipsets until Last Year.

VIA came out with the KT 266, and it sucked badly... KT-266 A Came out in the Fall of 2002

NForce 1 Came out in Mid 2002 and had Integrated Video w/AGP Slot.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Thunderbird and DDR, how could i forget

 

[PeteRoy]

Originally posted by: Sable
Do you think that is what intel wants?

That's right, Intel should have condition Nvidia to enable SLI on Intel chipsets since day 1.