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
No, it won't. KT880 chipset is for K7 (socket A) processors. You probably thought about K8T800 chipset, that doesn't support 939 socket. Only K8T800Pro and K8T890 are supporting 939 and none of them dual core. Even a bios update won't help. Via works on revision of the chipset that should allow dual core CPUs.xsilver - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
Will the kt880 chipset support dual core? (asus a8v, abit av8 etc...)many of us owners would like to know :)
Viditor - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
Nehemoth - I'm pretty sure that's not an official roadmap. It looks like an educated guess on VR Zone's part as to what's happening based on the analyst meeting from Friday.One thing they missed was the mobile sector. At the meeting, AMD said they were coming out with dual core Turions next year as well...
One other thing I think they might have wrong is the 65nm parts not coming out till 2007, though they didn't list anything for H2 06...
Viditor - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
"You can go to HP or Compaq and order a Turion laptop right now. So they are out there, just not pushed real hard right now"That's true, but notice that they only have one Turion designed notebook...
This was a very late arrival and it's not very well integrated. You can say there aren't many models because it's not being pushed, or go the other way and say it's not being pushed because there aren't many models...
It is a fact that unless a design is locked in by January, you will have very few models available for that year...
Marlin1975 - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
You can go to HP or Compaq and order a Turion laptop right now. So they are out there, just not pushed real hard right now.knitecrow - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
I love these industry update articlesNehemoth - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
If you go herehttp://www.vr-zone.com/?i=2328&s=1
Are The Manila And Windsor Cores
and see the new AMD roadmap, you can see the new core with integrated graphic..
Viditor - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
ElMoIsEviL - "marketshare figures taken from Mercury show results that differ greatly from these"Marketshare numbers from Mercury show the previous quarter...
Beenthere - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
Industry figures can be twisted to say whatever you want them to say and they are typically 3-6 months behind current sales. With AMD selling more desktop CPUs than Intel over the past several quarters and Mobo production being ahead of sales, you can be pretty certain AMD's sales and market share gains are very real. Even Intel's 10Q's show major drops in CPU sales and Intel is actually BUYING all the sales they are getting. If the shift is from 80/20 to 60/40 or 50/50 it's still a Helleva coup for AMD and the hand writing is on the wall for Intel, who's arrogance got the better of them.As for SLI - it's a technology few need and only enthusiasts will pay thru the nose for. Even if SLI Mobos get down to $100 which they will, you still need two over-priced graphics cards to use SLI. Even power PC users don't need SLI and few consumers will throw good money away like gamers do.
yacoub - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
So is that actually a saying in Taiwan or just creative journalistic license? ;)