ATI AMD's chipset business rockets sky high

WE MANAGED to see some Mercury Research chipset numbers. We were shocked and you may be as well. Like everyone, we expected that Nvidia is rocking Athlon market and that ATI might have a design or two.

It seems that Nvidia does rule the retail market as all we hear is Nforce 4 SLI, Ultra or plain, most of AMD motherboards are using these chipset. At least the high end ones.

Let's talk about some numbers of Athlon 64/Opteron based HT Bus chips. Nvidia shipped one million chipsets in Q3 2004 and had 43 per cent market share. ATI had zero percent market share, Via had 43 per cent with 950,000 chipset sold in that quarter while SIS had 11 percent with 250,000 chipsets sold. It was a slow quarter, I guess.

In Q2 2005, Nvidia managed to ship a sky high 2,500,000 chipsets but dropped to 35 per cent of the market. Via captured 23 per cent of the market with 1,600,000 chipsets while ATI as a newcomer to the arena manage to capture 27 per cent and to sell 1,900,000 chipsets. SIS sold a million chips and had 14 per cent of the market. Other vendors, probably ULI among them, shipped 100 000 chipset and captured one per cent of the market. They all together shipped a total of 7,100,000 chipsets.

Q3 2005 turned the market upside down. Chipset shipments grew but there were some major shifts in this particular neck of the woods of the market. Nvidia dropped to six per cent with only 500,000 chipsets shipped in this sector. ATI grew to 36 per cent and managed to ship 3,100,000 chipsets. Via is the leader with 42 per cent of market and 3,600,000 chipsets while plucky little SIS stayed at 14 per cent of the market but shipped 1, 200, 000 chipsets. The other vendors captured two per cent of market with 200 000 chipsets sold. In Q3 2005.µ