Nvidia also moves over to ACC (OC-Phenom)   Posted on 20/08/2008 at 14:18 by Nicolas

	test

Third party chipsets: VIA confirms its pullout   Posted on 11/08/2008 at 21:22 by Nicolas

	Richard Brown, Vice-President of marketing at VIA, has confirmed to his compatriots at Custom PC that his firm would no longer produce chipsets for Intel and AMD processors and that it would now concentrate on its own platform and Nano processors. He defends this move as being a natural evolution and explains that this is the reason the Taiwanese company launched itself on the x86 CPU market. However, some will point out that with the buyout of Cyrix and Centaur almost 10 years ago, the licensing problems with Intel for Pentium 4 chipsets with DDR support and the arrival of Nvidia on the AMD platform, VIA were never really able to make a comeback (and its controversial reputation didn’t help). The departure of 40 or so of its technicians last year also seems to have dealt a fatal blow to its former main activity. Now we will just have to see if the Nano and latest S3 GPUs will be profitable and if Nvidia will stay on the chipset market...

AMD lauches its 790GX   Posted on 06/08/2008 at 19:19 by Marc

	Yesterday, AMD launched its new IGP, the 790GX, destined for the Phenom platform. For the northbridge, of course the 790GX has HyperTransport 3 support as well as 22 PCI-Express 2.0 lanes, 16 of which are attributable to 1 or 2 graphic ports. The DirectX 10 graphic core, named the HD 3300, in fact has all the characteristics of the one used on the 780G except for the frequency which increases from 500 to 700 MHz. Obviously, Avivo HD as well as Hybrid CrossFire are included and the chip also has DVI Dual Link, HDMI and DisplayPort support. For the southbridge, we find the SB750 which is more or less an SB700 with RAID 5 support on 6 SATA ports. It also features Advanced Clock Calibration, a technology which enables (as mentioned in this news ) overclocking the Phenom to its limits. This processor can also be combined with a 790FX which has double the 16 PCI-E lanes for CrossFire; however, it remains to be seen if manufacturers will update motherboards which aren’t necessarily best sellers. In terms of prices, the 790GX is a notch below the 790FX and it should therefore be found on motherboards costing around 100 €. Given the positioning of the chipset, manufacturers can therefore integrate it to µATX mobos destined for HTPC or others for advanced users (CrossFire, ACC).

Nvidia continues with chipsets   Posted on 05/08/2008 at 12:02 by Marc

	Nvidia has put an end to the rumor started by Digitimes which said that it would quit making chipsets in the near future. To the contrary, this manufacturer indicated that it would continue to launch new MCPs for AMD and Intel platforms while adding that it has a 60% market share of chipsets destined for the AMD platform. So here the speculation ends as well as sparking hope for a potential opening up of SLI to other manufacturers. However, despite everything when AMD and Intel are putting an accent on the platform, Nvidia’s efforts on the chipset market appear more and more taxing.

Nvidia: $30 for SLI with the Nehalem   Posted on 11/07/2008 at 21:02 by Nicolas - source: Expreview

	While according to the latest news Nvidia will obtain a license for the QPI bus (enabling it to offer chipsets for the Nehalem), it seems that the firm with the green chameleon intends on cashing in on SLI support on one of Intel’s flagship platforms, as was the case with the Skulltrail. Given that the Intel X58 should be ready at the end of the year for the launch of its new architecture and that Nvidia has nothing to rival it before some time, the latter will offer the nForce 200 (aka BR04) for roughly $30 to motherboard manufacturers which can then add the SLI logo. This solution is doubly inelegant because not only will the chip be expensive but also it will have to be integrated on the PCB requiring the design of a new layout. With profits and the same percentage of taxes added on, the difference on the final price should be high. In addition, as compatibility was far from being optimal with the Skulltrail, we may wonder what it will be this time. At a time when ATI is making a comeback and a CrossFire Radeon HD 4800 offers a more than competitive performance/price ratio compared to the GeForce GTX 200, the creator of the GeForce probably would have more to gain by opening up SLI (maybe for a small licensing fee) rather than trying to sell off bridges in the name of increased SLI support.