Intel and nVidia Hop In Bed - Applications Won't Care, But Consumers Should
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As well, it's a niche market to begin with. Business applications probably won't care a lick about onboard graphics performance either, since all that's currently required for them is 2D, which is more a matter of the RAMDACs and drivers than anything else. That ATi's 9100IGP is much better in 3D games than Intel's ExtremeGraphics hasn't turned the tide there. This will matter for white box makers, or home PCs used for mostly media/Internet/minor gaming, and maybe they can make a few sales there. I'm not sure if that's going to drive CPU sales enough to empty out the warehouses though. In fact, I highly doubt it.
For the consumer though, this is a "no contest." It's definitely in their favor. Competition and choice always is. Initially, I'm not quite sure how much difference there is going to be between the "choices," but in the end the desire for market share will drive innovation, just as it has on the AMD side of the ledger. If things in the new year turn out the way they look right now, there will be three strong candidates for your chipset dollar in the Intel camp, and two, and quite possibly more if VIA and/or SiS get their act together, on the AMD side. While that's been the status quo from Sunnyvale, it's a whole new world in Santa Clara.
As I said in the opening, the last time I can remember anyone offering a serious alternative choice was the VIA Apollo Pro133. And that's only because Intel screwed up (sound familiar?) by offering Camino with RAMBUS that no one wanted, and the i810 with crappy integrated graphics and performance lagging behind that of the 440BX it was supposed to replace. This oversight was eventually corrected with Solano (i815E), and life moved on. Sounds an awful lot like deja vu to me. Perhaps Intel has another Solano up their sleeve, or nVidia is just going to dominate this market like they currently do with AMD. Time will tell.
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