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Computex: AMD CPU, AMD chipset for Gigabyte
>> Motherboards

Written by Damien Triolet
Published on June 3, 2008

URL: http://www.behardware.com/news/lire/03-06-2008/#9715

Gigabyte seems to rather like the latest AMD chipsets, the 780G and 790GX, especially the latter which is a high end variation of the 780G based on the same silicon but with a design featuring 2 PCI Express graphic ports. There is therefore a integrated graphic core accompanied by local memory of 64 or 128 MB.

The GA-MA790GP-DS4H is the most interesting motherboard found on Gigabyte’s stand according to the product manager in charge of it.
Of course, we were surprised to not find a motherboard not based on Nvidia’s 780a chipset for this manufacturer. Moreover, they told us not to be too interested in this chipset for several reasons: it’s a small market and therefore they have to concentrate on the essentials; Nvidia integrated graphic cores have lower performances in 3D; Nvidia asks for excessive prices for its components; and the various delays and small problems didn’t help their case.

It was the same with Nvidia chipsets for the Intel platform, esteemed to be of little interest by Gigabyte which in turn didn’t give them priority. So it seems that Nvidia’s chipset division has “missed the boat” these last few months with a strategy that was probably a little too based on marketing and not on the technical or reliability aspect. This ended up exasperating quite a few people.