Industry Update - Q2-2005: Chipset wars, AMD's growing market share and more...
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 13, 2005 4:34 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
VIA
The word around Taiwan is that many of VIA's engineers have left as the company's chipset business is struggling.All of the motherboard manufacturers that we've spoken to have agreed - VIA has seen much of its market share eroded because of the strength of NVIDIA's nForce3 and nForce4 platforms. Currently relegated to low-cost Socket-754 and integrated graphics solutions, VIA isn't the AMD chipset provider that they used to be.
The K8T890 chipset, VIA's first PCI Express Athlon 64 chipset, was announced to have full support for dual core Athlon 64s two months ago. However, motherboard manufacturers are telling us now that the current revision of the K8T890 doesn't support dual core AMD CPUs properly and that a later revision of the chipset, due later this month, will add working dual core support.
Luckily, no Socket-939 K8T890 motherboards will ship based on the current version of the chipset that we know of. A few manufacturers have stated that they will be shipping Socket-754 motherboards based on the current chipset, but since there are no dual core Socket-754 CPUs, it isn't such a big deal.
VIA has seen much success with their low power CPUs, however, and thus, they have put even more focus into selling these CPUs into emerging markets such as India and China.
ULi
The saying in Taiwan goes something like this - "There are three Taiwanese chipset manufacturers (ULi, SiS and VIA) and only one of them is making any money - ULi."ULi's business is profitable because they are only providing South Bridges and as such, they can piggy-back off of ATI's marketing by providing South Bridges to OEMs interested in using ATI's Radeon Xpress 200 chipsets. Unfortunately for ULi, this isn't a very good long-term business plan as there will come a day when ATI's own South Bridges are perfected.
ULi is therefore trying to make their way into the high-end chipset market, but with NVIDIA and Intel as the chief competitors there, it will be an uphill battle. Many manufacturers expressed interest in ULi, but we will have to wait and see to find out if it actually translates into a viable competitor.
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snedzad - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
Not quite, #23. Pro edition of K8T800 chipset supports 939 sck., and non pro doesn't (intended for sck 754).Here is the evidence:
http://www.asustek.de/products/mb/mbindex.htm
Ciao
patrick0 - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
I don't care about on-die Graphics, prefer if they just add some PCIe lanes on-die (at least 17).I/O controller on-die is a great idea.
overclockingoodness - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
#15: I think you are wrong. The K8T800 Pro is for K8 Socket 754, so it won't support DC.Windaria - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
You know... I still can not understand why anyone would really like the BTX format. From everything I have read, it seems as if it is specifically designed for air to be blown in the back and out the front.The problem is that, while that sounds great, it appears to compeletely fail to take into consideration the environment that a PC is in. Every time I have ever had fans on a computer suck in the back and blow out the front... they get clogged with dust in no time because the rear of the computer tends to attract more dust. As a result I always have to switch them around.
nserra - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
Uli is profitable because they have very cheap to manufacture single chip designs, and they do a lot of chipsets for USB2 external HD, …..I am waiting for Uli come out with their SLI chipset with REAL AGP that can be a good buy, even without the SLI. I didn’t buy right now one of the 3 ASROCK ULi based boards just because of that.
I think that Uli, sis, via aren’t bad, the problem is the “effort” that mobo makers have with them. If they could do the same they do with intel chipsets…. I won’t even talk about the quality of components they use on those chipset companies…..
Nayr - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
Actually #15, the K8T800Pro will support Dual-Core CPU's. VIA is only having a problem with the K8T890 Chipset and DC CPU's. It was on the front page a while ago.All in all, a good read and an interesting view on what's to come down the pipe line.
coldpower27 - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
You can probably take this article regarding the marketshare figures for AMD chipsets with a grain of salt, with the anonymity of these figures.Yes AMD was/is, a leader of the US retail desktop sales, however current retail US desktop marketshare figures for H1 2005 are not unknown.
If they asked, motherboard manufacturer's primarily interested in retail sales, than these figures would be inline with the gains in the US retail desktop market.
Though the OEM would be a different story, Dell would probably get most of it's mobos from Intel itself.
Sunbird - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
mmm, new movie,Chipset Wars, set on a island far far away...
Uli: "Sis and Via, I'm am profitable, come over, and we could rule the motherboards together!"
ceefka - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
The shift with Taiwan mobomnfs is of course very nice for AMD, but doesn't Intel also make its own motherboards? And lots of them while we speak? How does that add in the total of motherboard making/selling?Anyway, you cannot expect the whole industry to go to sleep when so much speaks in favour of the Opteron and A64 especially since they are both coming in dual core also. AMD's growth is well deserverd.
The Sempron going 64-bit was expected and needed. This will give room for:
1. Hardware developpers to come up with the missing 64-bit drivers.
2. Software devoloppers to release some more 64-bit applications.
3. MS to eventually drop 32-bit support in favour of a full 64-bit (only) version.
The less manufacturers hanging on to 32-bit apps the faster the transition to 64-bit.
#9 Nice one. That Windsor core looks promising.
xsilver - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
#15oh my bad -- yea I meant the s939 k8t800pro -- names are too damn similar :)
I have the abit av8
hope it supports dual core