NVIDIA nForce Computex 2001 Preview

I'm not a player, I just Crush a lot

With the launch of nForce, NVIDIA has made a major leap from being the top dog in the graphics business to a player in the intensely competitive chipset market. Without any prior experience, they've launched a chipset that appears on paper to be more powerful than anything on anyone's desktop chipset roadmaps at this point in time, making them an immediate threat to all chipset manufacturers right off the bat. And that's not even comparing to other integrated chipsets, but just chipsets in general. The nForce absolutely demolishes anything with integrated video here now or in the foreseeable future.

At the same time, they're only launching the nForce with support for AMD's EV6 bus, which then becomes a major selling point for AMD's Socket-A processors, especially in OEM systems where this will be immensely popular.

This is despite the fact that NVIDIA has obviously already designed a similar part compatible with Intel's GTL+ since the XBOX uses a Pentium III processor. Whether NVIDIA will launch a GTL+ version of the nForce sometime in the future is unclear right now.

In fact, NVIDIA's presentation of the chipset offered an interesting jab at Intel that went as follows: "NVIDIA's DASP technology dramatically enhances CPU performance well beyond other X86 architectures - even those with substantially higher 'published' core frequencies."

Meanwhile, by launching an APU that's the first fully DirectX 8 compliant audio part is a direct attack on all the sound card manufacturers out there. Add in the fact that they're the first with the ability to encode Dolby Digital AC-3 on the fly and NVIDIA is suddenly worlds ahead of everyone in the sound field as well.

It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out, because right now, NVIDIA probably has raised plenty of eyebrows around the industry. The idea of an almost all NVIDIA PC suddenly seems like a very real reality. In fact, the NVIDIA of today sounds a lot like the Intel of a few years ago.