Nvidia chipsets are history
THERE ARE A ton of 'rumors' floating around about Nvidia giving up the ghost on its ailing chipset division. Nvidia is desperately trying to deny it, but don't believe the spin, the division is deader than an Nvidia mobile GPU.
Just over a week ago, Nvidia's maximum leader, Jen-Hsun Huang, held a meeting with Taiwanese mobo partners. He directly asked them if there was a reason why Nvidia should stay in the chipset business. You could hear the crickets chirp.
In mainland China. No one came up with a reason, so the division was officially killed, and the teams will be rolled into GPU projects.
Nvidia PR is having the proverbial hissy-fit, but ignore it, they do that a lot. The INQUIRER has talked to people who were at the meeting, and they confirmed the reports, and are dead convnced that Nvidia chipsets are a thing of the past.
This is not to say that there will be no new chipsets from today. Things currently done or almost done will be out, but new designs won't be started, and early-stage projects are not likely to continue. Deep breaths people, projects on the near term horizon are safe, or at least safe from that paticular axe.
This mercy killing was strongly hinted at during Cebit in March, and was likely a done deal back then. If you look at the abysmal performance of the group, from the laughable 780i and the highly dropped 790i to being six months late to PCIe2, you understand why things are going away. The division basically couldn't engineer their way out of a paper bag, and have had their sales figures covered by the GPU side.
The problem with axing the chipset division is that it also axes their SLI lock-in lever. Nvidia has long used SLI to squeeze partners for cash, and the partners are not particularly happy about this. Now that Nvidia chipsets are going away and the GPU lead is lost, partners are about to put the boot in.
Nvidia's current plan is to put the singularly awful NV200 PCIe decelerator and latency multiplier on Intel x58 motherboards in order to pretend that there is a reason other than sabotaged drivers for SLI to work.
Polling OEMs, this is not going to get any traction, a view backed up by Nova's polling the other day. Having to beg when your twisting brings smiles to your partner's faces is not where Nvidia wants to be. What comes around....... If you want to know how desperate they are to try this, notice they did not co-announce that little deal with Intel.
Nvidia AR/IR is more than happy to say that they won't bother with a CSI chipset for financial reasons, but will do an MSI chipset later on. Putting aside the blatant NDA violations they get for publicly giving Intel's long term roadmaps to anyone who will listen, engineers tell us that Nvidia does not have the process technology and engineering prowess to compete at that level. This is backed up by how increasingly late Nvidia is with each new technology, and all the chipset slips of late.
The next master plan is to try and artificially make up a 'reason' to lock out those who don't tithe from SLI 'technology'. Large mobo makers openly laughed at this plan when asked by The INQUIRER about the possibility of paying. The memory of how Nvidia is currently screwing Intel over SLI on Skulltrail, with the same NV200 chips is still fresh in OEMs minds. Without a lock and a halo card, things could be very bad for for Nvidia marketshare.
So in the end, Nvidia chipsets are history. You will see a few more trickle out mainly because they are already done and dusted. Mobo makers are taking the attitude of "don't let the door hit your ass on the way out", while laughing of f future marketing initiatives. Game over. µ
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why not post every day something bad about nvidia?And give it a spot on this site?
Something like:"our daily nvidia gossip"...?
Btw what is "paticular"?...
lol
The only and by far the most obvious reason for axing nVidia at the moment is that US is on a big hurry to raise money for its goventment projects of doing warfare, so any industry that is even remotely close to the US of Amnesia, is doing anything they can to favor those same native companies, including Intel, Microsoft, and so on..
Its very easy to see the increased flow of spam from US founded companies in the mailbox these days, lurking to get you to buy their shit, be it security software-ish malwarescanners, PC checkup thingies, that by the way ofcourse phones home about users content on the HD, making those same companies aware of future spamming oppotunities..
Theres a lot of those firms that reside in the US these days that are really into squizing out as best as they can, any abroad firm that might be a potential competition, and we can actually see it.
Then add up the US intertainment industry, of who is lobbying fiercefully in europe for making complete tracing and conviction of fileshare users possible, so they can reach out all over the world, and lock people into buying their shit, instead of leeching it.
Ah.. some might think, hey he must be on something, but fact is, any little bashing here and there by fuckedup writers on newsboards like tHe iNQuirer help to make the average user think nVidia is giving up, and is helpless againts might US Intel, and so on and so on.. well.. You are out of luck, and europeans can and do take notice.
Soon we might be more keen to buy technology in China, another upcomming reason for the big industrial paranoia in the States.. and so the bashng will get worse and worse.. we ll see just wait and see ;)
He is starting to affect the price of nVidia stock now. I think it is time for Charlie to get sued.

You can only go so far.

Charlie I hope they sue you for everything you're worth.... which isn't much I'm sure.
Without your skill at cutting through the spin, we people at the end at of the supply chain would never know what's going on.
This is another typical Charlie-article. However, this one is 99% truth and only 1% favoritism. nVidia kinda burned some bridges along their way to the top, and now its time to cut the fat a little (or a lot).

I think my new 4850 will do what I need for years to come anyway.
This takes me back. Back to early 2005 when I built one of the most powerful workstations money could buy. Naturally, it featured the fastest Opterons of the time (252s), coupled with the mighty Nvidia nForce Professional 2200 chipset. How times have changed - how the mighty have fallen. #Oh Danny boy...#
Your articles are not worth reading anymore Charlie. I don't even bother having a look at them when I see your name above and I'm pretty sure most other readers feel the same.
Maybe you'd better just hide in your room and suck your thumb crying: "why doesn't nvidia like me mama ?..."
Good, I am glad. Too many issues with DATA CORRUPTION in recent chipsets should have been a sign that these chipsets sucked.
C'mon Jen... just can the stupid bridge chips. It's better for Nvidia and better for everyone else.
is that karma for nvidia? lol bye SLI, hello crossfire ^_^
Intel took SLI From 3,000 3d to 3K. Nvidia took SLI from 3K to 20,000, 3d. So Dumb? I Think NOT.

What We See Hear Is: FAILURE To Communicate. Internaly, that Is. Fundumentally Two is 1.5 & 3 still chipping at being full two.FUD Scale. Answer: Simply LARGER Slot multiplier. Say 24X so sli can Crossfire into 48X in Time, Plenty o' Time.Post Ultiee' Time.

If Nvidia Made 24X Gamer Card & 24X single Slot for it, it'd SELL Like 28K 3d, No More. Plus Cost Consumer LESS. Better than NO Consumers At ALL.

IS TOP END GAMER DEAD? Perhaps, Large Industrial mfgs have NO Use for it.
Happy Our National Hippo Needs NEW Home & So Do TOP Level Gaming Machines, In Fact: Ultimate Works Pretty Good, if You Assemble It YourSelf with Close Eye to Compatible Specs. Happy Our Hippo weighs 8,000 pounds & runs Good 25MPH, While Gamer Seeks 800 pound motorCycle that goes 180 mph, in effect. If 1080P & 40"+ Monitors HIT, Power Up on Power HIT. Yet, At Present, Its Unsettled World of MArs. War Over, Everybody Lost. Mass Conscription Won, Individual Lost.
Nvidia, Get Slide Rule Out & Prepare Coupon War. Theres BIGGER Future Ahead, Just Maybe NOT in SLI.
drashek
i guess this also means no nvidia chipset in the new macbooks.
As a victim of a NForce 680i chipset and a NForce 780i chipset (an attempt to save my gfx cards) I can definately say this is good for the industry.
More crap that nobody else is reporting on. I'll believe it when I see it printed on another site or two. Charlie seems to fantasize a lot these days. If I throw enough darts at the stock market I'll eventually hit one that makes profit...LOL.

Can't wait for the 12th though. We'll see what NV's quarter brings. I predict the company that charlie says is going out of business will make another nice profit...ROFL. Even with the charge it should be a break even quarter, and they'll get all that back in whatever lawsuit they file over the bad silicon. A delayed profit is still a profit in the end.

I'm more worried about AMD going out of business. I wish Samsung or IBM would buy them, pump the crap out of the cpu's/gpu's and put the hurt on Intel. NV was capable of buying them 6 months ago, but it's too late now. They may get another chance next year though when AMD is $2/share and NV is $35 again... :) Projected growth from analysts is 15%/year for 5 years. But I guess charlie knows more. /sarcasm 

If Intel gets out a decent graphics card (doubtful) AMD/NV need to merge is some way shape or form for AMD to live long enough to get 4-10Bil from Intel in like 2012 (court doesn't start on that case until 2010...AMD better get bought before then to stay alive). If they can live long enough on their own great, but I doubt it. They have nothing in the next year to save them. While their graphics pricing currently is great for users, it's not helping the company at all to charge lower pricing when beating NV in a lot of cases. NV won't be second for much longer (die shrink gt200 coming next month and party is over) so AMD should have made hay while the sun was shining.
Ok so Nvidia have obviously pissed on your strawberries. The only reference I can find to this is 1 story about one motherboard maker. FUD anyone?
i wonder if skulltrail will be revised with a genuine intel chipset, rather than the bunk nv200?
Nvidia's chipsets have been shit for years. My very first one was in a Shuttle system which continually corrupted my RAID array requiring a full re-format and re-install (the crooks at Micro Direct refused to give me a refund also).

More recent systems that I've owned have all had stability and memory issues. These days I only buy Intel chipsets, which have always been 100% stable for me and the RAID works well.
.. is that Intel has paid you to disrupt nVidia's image.

What is really happening is that you are destroying your reputation as a journalist, if there was ever a reputation.

That's it.

From now on I'm considering other web sites as sources of unbiased information, like this one, for example:
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=601
NVIDA AMD and Intel are developing Chipsets, Physics/Maths tech, CPUs and GPUs (or some of) for a reason.

So they can survive when the technologies fully converge!

If NVIDIA throw in the chipset business they may as well dissolve the company now or go the same way as SGI, any executive that mentions this needs carting off to the funny farm.

Charlie you really write som rubbish, you hate NVIDIA Egon hates all non-open source. It really gets tedious sometimes.
To think that the Inq could be affecting nVidia's stock prices is ludicrous. You need to take a step back, take a deep breath, and realize that you're making a complete dodo of yourself. If you don;t like what the Inq writes don't read it. The beauty of this site is that they get stories out well before any other tech site and that is because they base a lot of their stories on rumors and marginally reliable sources. I mean, it says 'News, reviews, fact, and FICTION' in the header. Deal with it.
That nVidia would stop making chipsets for Intel based CPU's doesn't seem that far fetched. It would be cheaper to allow SLI on Intel boards just like Crossfire is now.

But if you mean ALL nVidia chipsets than AMD has a problem. nVidia provides chipsets for AMD CPU's on any level (notebooks, HTPC, desktop, workstation and server) If nVidia would dropout, who would replace these chipsets ? AMD ? VIA ? If you look at the server chipsets (still the place where AMD is doing good) most (if not all) chipsets are from nVidia. Thus if nVidia would go, so would all servers based on AMD CPU's..

I don't know what your gurdge with nVidia is, but in the end you will only hurt AMD....
That nVidia would stop making chipsets for Intel based CPU's doesn't seem that far fetched. It would be cheaper to allow SLI on Intel boards just like Crossfire is now.

But if you mean ALL nVidia chipsets than AMD has a problem. nVidia provides chipsets for AMD CPU's on any level (notebooks, HTPC, desktop, workstation and server) If nVidia would dropout, who would replace these chipsets ? AMD ? VIA ? If you look at the server chipsets (still the place where AMD is doing good) most (if not all) chipsets are from nVidia. Thus if nVidia would go, so would all servers based on AMD CPU's..

I don't know what your gurdge with nVidia is, but in the end you will only hurt AMD....
There is a saying in our country that if you throw stone on dirt, dirt falls on us..... nV went on throwing stones on Intel(Which is worse than dirt), now the dirt have splashed on them.....
your articles are some of the best i ever read in the enquirer, funny and instructive and interesting


forget about all the arseholes slagging you off.

the facts are clear

nvidia lies . spins and screws everybody as much as they can, supliers costumers and competition 

they got away with it until now because of market share.

they did nothing for 2 years and now Ati has catched up with them with comparable stuff for less money.

i have no simpathy for them, 

when they sell a gtx280 for $650, and then 2 weeks later have to lower the price $200 becouse of competition.

WHY WOULD ANY OF YOU DEFEND NVIDIA?

is beyond my reasoning




the same happened to AMD before the core duos, they sat on their laurels and intel kicked their arses, probably forever now.
Well big suprise.... Intel has boxed nVidia out of the market, you can be mad at charlie for stating facts all you like, but at the end of the day if nVidia gets in serious trouble and the end is looking near most of you will be sucking your own ***** and chocking of chipsets sludge puppys. 

Where the hell was I going with this????
You Nvidia fanboys may whine and slobber all you want, but Charlie does his homework. Unlike most "journalists", he doesn't depend on a vendor's public relations department to write his stories, he contacts people on the inside to get more information so that you people can make "intelligent" decisions.

Good for you, Charlie, don't let the fanboys bother you (you won't, I know).

Nvidia may have decent financial results for some time yet, depends on how this business with mobile M84/86 chips works out, but it will be interesting to see if the right people start leaving Nvidia before too long.

Patience, children, the answers will be all too clear before long.
to MAX: If you dont like it here, be good, get lost and go elsewhere. 

I like facts AND friction. It's why I'm reading the inquirer. I might not agree on 100% of the opinions expressed here but it's alway at least minimally infotrmative and a lot of fun to read anyway. 

NVIDIA attitude suck, they are in a bad position right now and the future look grim for them. That's fact...

Ramon
Well this was all reported last week on other sites. Nvidia not making chipsets is a good thing. They need to focus on video solutions and let intel do all the chipset work.... Though I will miss using Nvidia chipsets but Intel basically shut down their chipset business with the upcoming Nehalem chip stuff. All in all it's no real loss.
I feel that main page of Inquirer has a typo. It should read
The Inquirer - News, reviews, facts and "fiction".

Readers are not fools, especially when there are other sites ( like http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=601) that are talking more on facts than a jumble-mumble of words. 

Not sure whats going on between Charlie and Nvidia, but surely this does brings the credibility of "The Inquirer" overall at stake. Hoping to soon see a article from Charlie that refutes the facts pointed out by PC perspective to prove his point that Nvidia is indeed closing down MCP business.
Next Charlie will report on the super secret talks between Emperor Huang and Chuck Norris so he can roundhouse kick Nvidia's staff into order and Intel's Larrabee into dust. I expect big changes soon...
i think facts would have bigger impact on us readers if they were not put in hate-their-guts manner. because then it sounds personal=unprofessional. i dont know why nvidia is particularly hated so much? like in fudzilla website, number of articles went on with mocking attitude about how nvidia are re-branding their 9 series cards. and then one day they post an article about amd rebranding HD3000 cards and it was rolled out just as "news", wanting if able.. to say that's just great of amd!! Intel has their extreme CPU's which are overpriced, usualy for no extra manufacturing costs, but left un-attacked.
articles (here and especially in fudzilla) that tell us how crippled all new products are, and how companies that made them are stupid.. are way way more than articles that tell us what technologies are in them and how they perform.
Wow... Now if Intel would enter the desktop display card market, that would rock!
XPS top-of-the-line 730 uses NV 790i
(uhhhhh look who we have here..):
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/xpsdt_730?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&ref=dthp

XPS nearly-top-of-the-line 630 uses NV 650i:
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/xpsdt_630?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&ref=dthp

Precision top-of-the-line T7400 uses skulltrail, that of course has a couple of
NV 100 SLI chips.

So either Dell is totally crazy... or...
what was written here is just false.
Clearly the goat Charlie has his eyes on is still not interested in his services or otherwise he would have stopped writing nonsense

Pretty interesting to see how a desperate person starts hallucinating because he cannot get laid.

May be he should try a turtle who cannot run away that fast from him
It is fairly obvious that Charlie has a bias against nvidia. You can argue that until blue in the face, there is no way to quantify it to support my claim, but I think most people would agree.

I don't call into question any claims made in any articles. Obviously bias can be very subtle. Not even any single article among all those written have to themselves be biased for the reporting to be biased.

I don't really care, but I just find it interesting. I would be interested to understand why he is this way biased.

Secondly, whether the facts (that can be discerned) in this article are true or not, this is not really journalism. Not even the bastardized web-journalism.

Journalism is allowed to contain conjecture, unconfirmed claims, and nobody expects a journalist to be completely objective.

But this article is just like a long rant, name calling, not-quite claims, snide little side jabs "order to pretend that there is a reason other than sabotaged drivers for SLI to work" etc., lots of "insider said this", "unnamed person said that" etc.

Actually a couple of the previous ones about the chip defects were much much worse in terms of ranting and raving, but I finally decided to comment on this one.

What's really funny is the classic Charlie "I know more than you do but I can't say right now, but if you scoop me then actually you didn't because I already knew and I'll drop lots of hints as to what I think will happen and use them to claim I knew all along in the case I was right, but be able to distance myself if I get proven wrong".

Doesn't anybody find it interesting that for somebody who engages in so much speculation and relies on so many "sources tell us" is *never* wrong? Never ever wrong about anything ever? It is like the sickening political doctrine of never admitting a mistake, lie if you have to, even if it means contradicting yourself or contradicting unquestionable evidence etc etc (like the futuremark thing).

Ever play the stock market Charlie? What's your batting average there?
Good job Charlie.
Your articles looks logical. Let all the flamers babble. If this article turns out to be the truth, all will be silent or saying the knew it from the beginning. If not, it was a nice reading ;-).

@Remco
There is no simplier thing for Intel to provide Crossfire on their motherboards - they have to do nothing. The AMD drivers is the guy who does the job. To provide SLI the bridge chip is needed at the moment.
And if Nvidia drops its chipset business, the Broadcom chipset for Opteron based servers will still be available. And I think that AMD has the possibilities to provide a temporary solution till their first real server chipset emerges on the market.

Best regards
If I owned nVidia stock, I would be demanding that Huang be fired. Under Huang, the company has completely lost their moral compass. He should have been sacked after releasing the broken nv40 chipset. NVidia is lucky that they were never sued class action style over that. I remember well that The Inq. was on top of that story. Thank you. 


I was actually surpised, not at Charlie's assumption that NVIDIA chipset division is about to take a ride on an express train to Loserville, but the fact that it warmed my heart as I read his article. Yes, Charlie is great at trolling NVIDIA followers, as I have fallen more than once for his outspoken remarks. But this article makes perfect sense! In my years as a system builder, I've never had a single problem with Intel chipsets. They just work, no questions asked (leaky caps aside). I can't say the same about NVIDIA ones... Their chipsets gave me nothing but repeated failures...

If your writings here are true, I'll have to take off my hat and wave NVIDIA chipset division goodbye.
By reading the coments I see that there are ideed people stupid enough to believe the fairy tales you are writing, Charlie. Try to write an article out of facts, not your hatred an sick imagination. If I were you, I would see a shrink, though I know no cure for beeing despicable.
Charlie:
I double-dare you to write an article that points out some faults with ATI/AMD and finds some good in nVidia. 

See the truth is that ALL companies have some good, some bad. If nVidia were as bad as you keep trying to convince us they would have been out of business years ago, and certainly not one of 2 world leaders in GPUs.

Charie you're obviously just another rabid fanboi just like the most clueless/unhelpful writers on the most low-brow "l33t teknikal" forums, and you write exactly the same rubbish as them.

And just like them you couldn't ever write a truly balanced or even credible article as that would have to include some criticism of ATI/AMD and some props to nVidia. Your tiny brain just couldn't handle the fact that the existence of the universe isn't solely thanks to AMD/ATI.

Go ahead, prove me wrong. Actually write an unbiassed article for once. I dare you.
JusNiz writes:

"I double-dare you to write an article that points out some faults with ATI/AMD and finds some good in nVidia. "

What a complete plonker....everyone knows there is anything good in Nvidia. 

You might as well have said 
"I challenge you to break the 100m hurdle record on the surface of the sun in a bikini" 

...at least that would be semi plausible to achieve.
To all those stupid people who say the author should be sued: GROW UP then WAKE UP you MORONS. 

It's people like these idiots who read these articles (voluntarily - no one dragged your dumb butt to this page), get upset because they don't like what they've read, and then contribute to the discussion with "sue, sue, litigate, litigate" who ought to be sued...FOR BEING STUPID AND LAZY. 

If you don't agree with what is written then A) don't read it or B) use the comments section for a contribution of your PROOF to the contrary. The only thing you've accomplished is wasting space on the page and convincing everyone else of your adolescent mentality. The government was right: YOU ARE A BUNCH OF WHINERS.
nvidia folks, stop reading Charlie's articles, let the ATI kids have their happy thoughs. DAMNIT folks, stop making stuff up and know about what you post. Nvidia won't be going anywhere any time soon, as much as youd like them too... but this company that is in dire straits apparently, is also Forbes Magazine's company of the year.
Does Forbes care about gaming? No, they could care less about FPS, or FSB... they care about profits and investments. At the end of the day, nvidia has 0 debt, and as they are able to operate on profits. AMD has major debt issues at the moment, and given the state of the economy right now.. thats not good.
SEPTEMBER 18, 2008—NVIDIA Corporation today announced a workforce reduction to allow for continued investment in strategic growth areas. As a result, NVIDIA expects to eliminate approximately 360 positions worldwide 


MCP 20+ layoff in TAIWAN
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mainboards/display/20091007123936_Nvidia_Halts_Development_of_Core_Logic_Sets.html
A year late to the table. Idiots.