Nvidia denies planned MCP exit

August 4, 2008 | 10:59

Tags: #geforce #graphics-cards #mcp #nforce #rumour

Companies: #digitimes #nvidia

Nvidia has been quick to dispel rumours that it is planning to exit the motherboard chipset business, concentrating instead on its core graphics chipset market.

A report in Digitimes claims that the company “has decided to throw in the towel and quit the chipset business”, quoting “sources close to the situation at one of Taiwan's top motherboard makers” as the originator of the rumour. It seems that this un-named motherboard manufacturer is claiming that Nvidia called a meeting to gauge the level of support motherboard makers would offer should the company continue creating its popular range of nForce chipsets. A deafening silence from the OEMs has lead to the conclusion that Nvidia has just been granted the go-ahead to drop out of the motherboard market altogether.

However, Nvidia was quick to debunk the rumour. When queried on the subject by ExtremeTech, Nvidia's Bryan Del Rizzo stated that “the story on Digitimes is complete groundless,” and went on to assure people that “[Nvidia has] no intention of getting out of the chipset business.

According to Del Rizzo, it wouldn't make financial sense: “our MCP business is as strong as it ever has been for both AMD and Intel platforms, [with] Nvidia market share of AMD platforms in Q2'09 [at] 60%.” Speaking as someone currently using an AMD-based system on an nForce-based motherboard, I have to agree with him.

Although the article at Digitimes has since been updated, the reasoning behind its original post remains: with “some makers” cancelling their nForce 7-series products and “lukewarm” reception for the nForce 200 chipset's ability to use SLI graphics technology on Intel X58 motherboards, the report of reticence from a single manufacturer was enough to form visions of the entire Nvidia MCP platform tumbling down. Let's hope that Del Rizzo's comments are evidence that there's life left in the nForce platform yet.

Anyone here think that nForce chipsets are the bee's knees, or has Nvidia been surpassed in the motherboard chipset stakes by other companies? Would it really be that much of a mistake for the company to pare back on its MCP efforts in order to concentrate on its line of graphics cards? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
Discuss this in the forums

Posted by [USRF]Obiwan - Mon Aug 04 2008 10:19

I said it before and again. SLI and CrossFire setups are useless because within a year there is a new single card that out weights the expensive SLI / CF setup. Secondly the consumer choice is very restrictive, you either choose a mobo with SLI support or CF support. A better way is no SLI/CF controller on the motherboard at all and let two or more cards work with each other another way. Remember the 3DFX voodoo cards you could link up. You did not need any special motherboard for those.

Posted by kylew - Mon Aug 04 2008 11:19

[USRF
Obiwan]I said it before and again. SLI and CrossFire setups are useless because within a year there is a new single card that out weights the expensive SLI / CF setup. Secondly the consumer choice is very restrictive, you either choose a mobo with SLI support or CF support. A better way is no SLI/CF controller on the motherboard at all and let two or more cards work with each other another way. Remember the 3DFX voodoo cards you could link up. You did not need any special motherboard for those.
You don't need 'special' boards for crossfire to run, the only requirement is to have the right PCI-E slots. It's nVidia that want to make people buy their own SLi boards to run SLi.

While I disagree that dual GPUs are pointless, I think that when some one buys the top end graphics cards and runs them in crossfire/SLI modes, that is pointless as you'd be paying a huge amount for something you don't really need and wouldn't see the benefits of until way down the line, when a single card comes out that's faster or at least just as fast.

Midrange cards though? Definately. I think the 4850s have been some of the best cards to come out since I got into computers.

They're cheap but very fast, and when combined in crossfire, blow away nVidia's cards for even less of the cost. Or the 9600GTs, they worked very well in SLi, and were fairly cheap to buy two of too. :)

Posted by mclean007 - Mon Aug 04 2008 11:20

[USRF
Obiwan]...the consumer choice is very restrictive, you either choose a mobo with SLI support or CF support. A better way is no SLI/CF controller on the motherboard at all and let two or more cards work with each other another way....
There is no SLI/CF controller on motherboards - the PCI-E standard is used for communications between cards on both dual/multi-GPU implementations. The trouble is a driver issue - nVidia artificially prohibits the nForce drivers from enabling SLi on non-nVidia chipsets. I'm sure I've heard of Crossfire running on nVidia boards, but why would you spend the extra for a SLi board if you didn't plan to run SLi? - better just to get e.g. an Intel P45 or X48 or whatever.

Posted by azrael- - Mon Aug 04 2008 11:29

As far as I know a special "controller" isn't really necessary, either for CrossFire or SLI. That's one of the reasons that Intel chipsets can do CrossFire. I believe EPoX even managed to make both CrossFire and SLI run on a i945 chipset some time back. HP/Voodoo have done something similar with the Blackbird 02 system (although I believe it's based around a custom version of the ASUS Striker mobo).

That being said I find that nVidia chipsets have been quite innovative in the past. However, this innovation has always come with a number of bugs, which nVidia usually can't be bothered fixing. The prime example for that would be the NV firewall. Great idea, bad execution. How they ever got it certified by ICSA Labs with all those obvious flaws is beyond me. I, personally, have also had other problems with my nForce3 and nForce4 mobos (malfunctioning USB ports for instance). Never had similar problems with Intel chipsets. I have no first-hand experience with AMD chipsets, although I'm bound to get some, since I've recently built a HTPC around a 780G mobo for a friend.
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