Just to balance things out, I had an nforce 4 based mobo (ASUS A8N-E) and it was great. No problems, no compatability problems, rock solid stable board with no oddities whatsoever.
Also had an MSI K9N platinum board based on the nforce 570 ultra chipset that was every bit as good.
I'd still happily be using them both now if AMD had made faster processors to use in them.

Their integrated GPU and SLI are the two advantages for the Intel chipset market.
On the AMD side there is 780G that is a strong competitor to Nvidia, but AFAIK Nvidia's chipset is still competitive. But I can see that OEMs would prefer a combined solution with AMD if the price difference is small so one less supplier to deal with.
With ATI/AMD no longer providing chipsets for Intel, and Intel/SIS with a fairly weak integrated GPU, is the Nvidia chipset for Intel so poor that their powerful integrated GPU not enough for them to have a profitable market?

Point 2c. doesn't jive well with this from the Saturday shortbread: http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/07/31/nvidia-790i-... perhaps that's got something to do with the mobo maker's leaks.

Also how does this
customers will find value in Nvidia "motherboard GPUs" once Intel releases Nehalem processors with built-in graphics cores
make sense? I find it unlikely that NV and Intel got so chummy all of a sudden that they're doing some kind of hybrid GPU scheme where they can work together. The only possibility I can see there is if one is a dedicated physics GPU and not installed as a WDDM display driver but that would mean using a relatively poor-performing integrated GPU in a physics-capable gaming machine which doesn't make much sense.

Maybe their CFO resigning has something to do with it:

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/08/01/nvidia-cfo-r...

Or maybe it has to do with them selling millions of faulty GPU's.

I'm thinking that instead of leaving the chipset business they are being forced out. AMD no longer needs them to make chipsets so maybe they'll revoke the license and bye bye Nvidia. Not like Nvidia was good to AMD recently anyways. They have been releasing Intel based chipsets ahead of the AMD versions I believe.

Intel doesn't want Nvidia in the chipset business so they won't give a license either and poof Nvidia is out of the chipset buisiness instantly.

I couldn't care less. The nForce 4 based mobo I have now has been the most horrible I've ever had. No more nVidia chipsets for me, until other manufacturers start to suck even more (highly unlikely).

This sortof flies in the face of the nVidia-based macbook refresh rumor. Is it TR's policy to give ink to stories that are 60%+ bunk?

of course they're not making any more chipsets.

From here on out, they're making motherboard GPUs.

I am not surprised, especially when sli is locked only to their chipset.

The real revenue in chipsets is OEM sales. The only justification for getting out of that business would be that they were losing OEM business and saw no way to turn that around. Obviously this recent overheating debacle leaves them with a bit of a black eye with the major OEMs, but -- as long as nVidia addresses it promptly and adequately -- that in itself shouldn't erode that business to the point of making it a dead end. Nehalem poses a bigger challenge: if nVidia can't get the bus license it needs to work with QPI (or it can't reverse-engineer it in a lawsuit-proof way) then it is locked out of 80+% of the market going forward. Of course DigiTimes was reporting a couple of weeks ago that nVidia had obtained such a license (also based on "sources at motherboard makers"), though AFAIK no one else has confirmed that. So I don't know how much credence to give that report or this one.

Geez, it seems like Nvidia is taking the beating from every front.

I can understand why their chipset division is hurting. On the Intel front, they only got SLI for an inferior performing and less stable platform. On the AMD front, it is mostly the same except AMD's integrated solutions are kicking Nvidia's tail.

Most companies have PR policies that they state they don't respond to rumors. I guess Nvidia works a little differently.

SLI is still the preferred multi-GPU platform thanks to its stellar scaling, game compatibility and driver stability.

If by stellar you mean +50% tops, then yes, sure.

I do however agree wholeheartedly with the game compatibility bit - shame on you, AMD, with your weird Crossfire drivers.

third option : sell the IP and desgins and some team members to apple ... get kickbacks and cross license some of apples IP to fight intel.

Yes, nVidia has been a strong chipset supplier for AMD core logic for a long time--longer than ATi, obviously. I would expect the 60% share number to shrink rapidly now, though, as AMD's ATi chipsets and their new IGP's have matured nicely, especially for Phenom, and are ramping up in production. The problem with SLI, of course, is as it has always been--it's proprietary. I agree that the notion of nVidia dumping its core-logic business is very unlikely to be true.

I will engage in a bit of speculation, however, that this announcement might have its roots in the sour grapes of some motherboard vendors stung by the recently well-publicized problems nVidia's had with other products. If nVIdia upsets some of these people by stalling on warranty replacements or stonewalling on other fronts, I can definitely see this attitude toward nVidia chipsets coming out of Taiwanese motherboard makers. They don't much care who you are--if you piss 'em off, they'll come back at you...;) They've done it often enough in the past with Intel--there's nothing about nVidia they find particularly intimidating, either. One of the reasons nVidia and AMD-supporting chipsets have done so well in the past has been the gusto with which the Taiwanese mobo makers used them to circumvent the will of Intel. If they feel nVidia is getting too big for its britches, too, they'll give nVidia the same treatment. Rumors like this reflect that nVIdia's definitely got some PR problems with some of these companies, imo.

I just dont see Nvidia getting out of the chipset business. They have some really good products for them to bail out on that side of the business would be nuts.