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nForce2 Preview
An anonymous submitter writes "I noticed that a review of NVIDIA's nForce2 chipset has been posted here. From what I can gather the chipset contains two 10/100 ethernet controllers, six USB 2.0 ports, UltraATA133 support, three 1394 ports, five PCI slots, and an integrated GeForce4 MX core including NVIDIA's nView technology and a TV Tuner." Tom's Hardware and NVNews also have looks at it.
When did chipsets start containing ethernet controllers, USB ports, PCI slots, and firewire ports in them? Last I checked, these are all contained in the motherboard, not the chipset.
Accuracy and Slashdot: Why do they never go together?
Opinions are not Informative, though they may be Insightful or Interesting.
Is it me or are the lackies being hired at Tom's are getting dummer and dummer with time? I don't have time to run down the entire list of inaccuracies and errors in the article, but according to them DDR400 "corresponds to a performance level that SDRAM could only achieve at 400 MHz," and best of all, Nvidia was "Founded in 1997 by a handful of ex-SGI employees."
Not that I'm one for integrated graphics anyway.
Exactly!! Anyone who cares about graphics enough that a GeForce4 MX is not good enough, will buy their own card to put in it. This is the sort of chipset you would put into a machine that will generally be not used for games, but when the need to play CS or quake3 comes around, a GeForce4 MX will be able to handle it. Yes, I am sure that Carmack doesnt sanction the GefroceMX line, however that is not the point. If you care that much, you will have your own GPU - the integrated grfxs are not for us!
As far as the dual network ports go, come on people, it costs the OEM no more than a dollar or two to add a second, and for those people who wish to hook up a cable modem, or DSL line, this is invaluable.
Intel has always been a little hostile to anyone else producing chipsets. I believe with the Pentium IV, Intel has forbidden any third parties from producing chipsets. They went after VIA hard over this issue.
Intel actually licenses the IP necessary to design chipsets for the Pentium IV. The reason that they went after VIA for making a Pentium IV chipset was because VIA didn't go to Intel to get a license for the technology. VIA claimed that when they acquired S3 they also acquired the license to utilize the Pentium IV bus technology (since S3 had a license), and it's been fought out in the courts since then.
Regarding Intel's hostility to third-party chipset makers, that only makes sense. After all, making chipsets for their CPU's is a large portion of Intel's business. By licensing their bus protocols to third parties Intel is making sure that they get a cut of every Pentium 4 chipset sold. They're also raising the costs of competitors chipsets to put them roughly in line with their own. Given the choice in that situation, most people would go with Intel.
Also keep in mind that controlling the chipsets also allows you to control the technology that is used in them. The Rambus memory fiasco is an excellent example of that. Rambus turned out to be an expensive dud on the early Pentium 4 systems, but Intel was contractually obligated to support only Rambus RDRAM memory and no other memory type on the Pentium 4 for a certain period of time. During that time VIA was producing a less expensive and better performing SDRAM-based chipset for the Pentium 4. Most people went for VIA chipsets on their Pentium 4 systems and that was hurting Intel's chipset business, so Intel of course attacked in any way it could.