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
The Multi-GPU Battle: ATI vs. NVIDIA
ATI's recent entry into the multi-GPU market with CrossFire has created competition in both price and performance aspects of high end AMD and Intel chipsets.ATI continues to have problems with their South Bridges, and thus, they are turning to ULi to supply the South Bridges for motherboard designs based on their new multi-GPU chipset. ATI's closest partners are currently beta-testing their new South Bridge, but none of them have any confidence in ATI's ability to bring their South Bridges to market in time. While they are all ready to use ULi based South Bridges if necessary, in order to keep ATI happy, they are continuing to work with ATI's South Bridge in their designs.
Given the lack of interest in any of ATI's previous chipsets, ATI knows that in order to get CrossFire off the ground with any sort of success, they will need some pretty powerful partners in the Taiwanese market.
Thus, ATI is talking to VIA and SiS to license out their multi-GPU technology so that you will be able to purchase a motherboard based on an ATI, VIA or SiS chipset and be able to run ATI graphics cards in multi-GPU modes. VIA is particularly interested in this partnership as they aren't the biggest fans of NVIDIA at this point.
First availability of ATI's CrossFire chipsets won't be until July or August time frame from what we're hearing.
NVIDIA is very curious about ATI's CrossFire, as it will mark the end of NVIDIA's exclusivity on multi-GPU platforms. In order to help expand the SLI market, NVIDIA appears to be ready to drop the price of their nForce4 SLI chipset. While currently priced at around $80, the chipset will drop in price to close to $40 later this year. The goal is to enable SLI motherboards to be priced at $100 or less. We have even heard that some very aggressive motherboard manufacturers are looking to offer sub-$80 nForce4 SLI motherboards by the end of this year.
At $80, it would be senseless not to buy a SLI motherboard, which is exactly what NVIDIA wants.
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AnnihilatorX - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
#4ElMoIsEviL you obviously didn't read the article. It mentioned they asked many different motherboard manufacturers. The article ALSO pointed out the fact that it does not agree with the studies BECAUSE Intel STILL has the majority OEM shares. OEM outsale custom-built PC and enthusasist market by far much margin.
Nice to see competition heating up. Competition is what drives development
ElMoIsEviL - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
Those figures are BS. Which motherboard maker did you guys talk too? DFI?lol
Actual marketshare figures taken from Mercury show results that differ greatly from these.
Sorry to say but I call BS on this article.
Viditor - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
Well, remember that these are the independant mobo makers...that said, the huge shift is quite reassuring for my AMD stock...:-)Anand's comments on Turion are well taken. This has been the biggest discussion on most of the investment boards, and most people have a single theory. ODM/OEM manufacturers of mobiles usually require their designs to be completed by January each year. Most people I have spoken to (both Intel and AMD investors) agree that AMD probably wasn't able to get parts in to the designers in time for a January design release this year...
What that means is that AMD will probably lag quite woefully until next year for the mobile space.
Next year, we can expect both Turion64 and Sempron64 laptop designs coming out...until then, it looks like Intel will continue to run the table with Centurion.
cryptonomicon - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
And the one source that said 90% of server market? Heh...snedzad - Monday, June 13, 2005 - link
Wow, between 40 and 65 percent. Unbelievable. Congrats AMD.