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Chipset Duel - VIA vs. Nvidia nForce
msolnik writes: "Tom's Hardware has put 13 motherboards to the ultimate test in their lab. The outcome? By and large, the VIA KT266A chipset knocks the stuffing out of the Nvidia nForce 420D. True bright spots were the candidates sent in by Soltek and Soyo."
Whether or not a chip is embedded has no bearing on how much CPU utilization is required for it to work. The video chipset on nForce boards, for example, is a GeForce2MX, a full-fledged chipset that does not heavily rely on the CPU. You can have dumb devices (i.e. WinModems) on PCI cards too. The complaint I have against embedded components is when they constrict upgrade paths (i.e. some motherboards with integrated graphics opt not to have an AGP slot). Additionally, I rarely find the provided integrated components sufficient, and don't want to pay the additional cost for something I plan on replacing immediately. Integrated is not the way to go for enthusiasts, typically, in the same way component stereo systems that can be mixed and matched are better for audiophiles than, say a bookshelf stereo.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
it's incredible to me that nvidia has produced
this competitve a product on their first go. if
you examine this review carefully, they place
within 10% on all the tests -- in fact, none of
the boards reviewed are that different from
each other (some surprise, they mostly use the
same base chipsets with different layout, etc.)
beyond that, this is nvidias _first_ mobo. i
can't wait to see what happens in a year from now.
though my bets are we'll see something which
looks a lot like an old sgi nt workstation
architecture. bandwidth is king.