NVIDIA's Bumpy Ride: A Q4 2009 Update
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 14, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Chipsets: One Day You're In and the Next, You're Out
Presently, NVIDIA’s chipset business is far from dead. They are in nearly every single Apple computer on the market, not to mention countless other OEMs. I’m not sure how much money NVIDIA is making from these chipsets, but they are selling.
NVIDIA won Apple's chipset business, Intel was not happy
Long term I don’t see much of a future for NVIDIA’s chipset business. NVIDIA said that they have no interest in pursuing an LGA-1156 chipset given Intel’s legal threats. Even if NVIDIA had a license to produce DMI chipsets, I’m not sure it makes sense.
NVIDIA's Advantage: A single chip GeForce 9400M instead of a dated Intel solution
Once the ‘dales hit, every single mainstream CPU from Intel is going to come with graphics on-package. Go out one more generation and Sandy Bridge brings the graphics on-die. AMD is doing the same thing starting in 2012.
It’s taken longer than expected, but there’s honestly no need for a third party chipset maker anymore. Most of the performance differentiation in chipsets has been moved onto the CPU die anyway, all that’s left are SATA, USB, and a bunch of validation that no one likes doing. NVIDIA is much better off building a discrete GeForce 9400M GPU at low cost and selling that. There’s much less headache involved with selling discrete GPUs than selling chipsets, plus graphics is NVIDIA’s only value add when it comes to chipsets - everyone knows how to integrate a USB controller by now. I’d say the same about SATA but AMD still has some AHCI silliness that it needs to sort out.
NVIDIA committed to supporting existing products in the channel and continues to poke fun at AMD with lines like this:
“On AMD platforms, we continue to sell a higher quantity of chipsets than AMD itself. MCP61-based platforms continue to be extremely well positioned in the entry CPU segments where AMD CPUs are most competitive vs. Intel”
As successful as NVIDIA’s AMD chipsets are today, AMD is telling us that nearly all OEM designs going forward use AMD chipsets. Again, NVIDIA’s chipset business is quite healthy today, but I don’t see much of a future in it - not that it’s a bad thing.
The only reason NVIDIA’s chipset business has lasted this long is because AMD and Intel couldn’t get their houses in order quickly enough. AMD is finally there and Intel is getting there, although it remains to be seen how well the next-generation of Atom platforms will work in practice.
A pair of Ion motherboards we reviewed
The main reason Ion got traction in the press was because it could play Blu-ray content. If Intel had done the right thing from the start and paired Atom with a decent chipset, NVIDIA would never have had the niche for Ion to fit into.
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Finally - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 - link
[img]http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/ATI/behi...[/img]Yes, I agree. Covering 18% of the market is definitely more important than covering only a mere 82%..
Zingam - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 - link
Yes but you should consider the profit margins too. You could sell ten graphics cards with a profit $1 or sell two Teslas with a profit $5. What would you prefer to sell then?JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 - link
I'd prefer to sell hundreds of thousands of Teslas with $1000+ profit margins, personally. I'm just not sure who's going to buy them!AnandThenMan - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 - link
Nvidia claims that Fermi will scale down "easily" to all price points. I am highly skeptical of this myself, I have the same mind set that the non-graphics related portions of the chip will make it difficult to compete with AMD in the mainstream market.The compute sector they are going after is a market waiting to happen really, does that mean Nvidia is counting on substantial revenue from a market that still has to mature? Seems dubious.
haukionkannel - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 - link
I am sure that Fermi will scale down easily to all price points. It just does not mean that it's competitive in all price points!The high end Ferni can most propably beat 5870, but it will be more expensive (it's bigger so more expensive to produce), but in any way they would have the fastest GPU around, so they can sell cut downs versions, to all ignorant people who don't read all reviews, but who knows that the "Ferni" is the fastest GPU you can get...
But I really hope that it will also be competitive. In that way we will see cheaper GPU's from both companies!
Zingam - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 - link
IBM sells big machines with various architectures for decades. Maybe that's where NVIDIA is trying to compete next?That market is there and it was before PCs anyway. Perhaps the journalists do not present us the whole story properly???
Zingam - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 - link
We actually do need NVIDIA to do well. I'll need a new GPU soon and I want it to be powerful and cheap! Competition does matter!:D What about VIA buying NVIDIA :) What I say might be a heresy but if the x86 license is not transferable, can't they do the other way around? That way we could have three complete competitors who could offer a full range of PC products.
Griswold - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 - link
Considering that VIA belongs to the Formosa Plastics Group, there is easily enough money in the background to take over nvidia if they wanted to. Still unlikely to happen.samspqr - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 - link
crappy GPUs on crappy CPUs: way to go, INVVIDIAA!!guywithopinion - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 - link
CD and the campaign against Nvidia is just dumb (IE "bumpgate"). I seriously wonder at this point why they don't just cut the loss and put the legal screws to him, bury him in court for a few years. The cost would be well worth it and the online community would be better for it. I so miss Mike M, he seemed to know how to publish the unfaltering without it degenerating into to mindless partisan garbage.