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| Tomorrow has Arrived...... Welcome to CALROG.COM! | Jul. '01 Headlines |
Nvidia Enters Motherboard Chipset Market with nForce By C. Rogers, 07.01 Through the mid 1990's up until present day, Nvidia has grown exponentially in the realm of PC technology. Introducing such video chipsets as the TNT2, GeForce2 and GeForce3, Nvidia has raked in more money than most competitors in due time. With the thoughts of expansion flooding the minds of Nvidia Corporation, it seems natural that motherboard chipsets would become another venue for the giant to improve. Lo and behold, the nForce chipset is the newest offspring in Nvidia's line-up. This motherboard chipset is a completely integrated solution, which at first may sound like a low-end product. Since Intel has made the public look "downwards" to integrated boards (because of i810 "de-celeration", and screechy AC '97 audio codecs), many individuals probably first took this solution as a shock. However, the nForce chipset should yield surprising results when it becomes released to the open public. Nvidia's nForce is actually comprised of two separate chips, the Integrated Graphics Processor (IGP), and Media Control Processor (MCP). For those familiar with motherboard chipsets, these are just generic examples of northbridge and southbridge chipsets. The nForce IGP features the GeForce2 MX engine, a strong performer for entry-level gaming. 3D-gaming will benefit from the GeForce2 architecture, and suffice for moderate home users. The IGP supports a feature called TwinBank Architecture, which allows two separate channels for video processing and DDR system memory. Hopefully, on future roadmaps, Nvidia will release an integrated solution supporting GeForce3 graphics, which can cater to high-end gamers. The Media Control Processor handled all peripherals, most notably, the integrated sound controller. Nvidia's audio-processing unit (APU) allows Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, and full compliance with DirectX 8. The pure sound quality and bandwidth may create competition with Creative Labs, creators of the SoundBlaster Live cards. Between the two chipsets, there is a hyper-fast 800 MB/sec pipeline from AMD called HyperTransport. This will allow communication between devices to run 6 times faster than the current standard on today's boards, which is limited to 133 MB.sec. As hinted in the above paragraph, the Nvidia's nForce will be a solution for AMD's Athlon and Duron CPUs. This may potentially help AMD steal even more market share from Intel, as the performance bar is expected to increase by a large margin. While on the marketing-end this sounds like a good solution, the real-world test will be determined in the coming months, when the public will see if Nvidia can prove the new technology can provide a world of difference. |
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