Nvidia about-face brings questions

Update at 6:45 .p.m. with additional information about QPI licensing.

Nvidia's last-minute conference announcement has turned into a bit of shocker.

Despite all the chest thumping at its gaming conference this week, the high drama of Nvision reached its denouement with a waving of the white flag. The world's largest graphics chip supplier announced support for high-end gaming graphics using Intel silicon. This has raised doubts about its clout in the gaming PC industry, based on the reaction at many hardware enthusiast Web sites and at least one PC maker.

Representative of the shock expressed after the announcement, a headline at AnandTech said: "Hell Freezes Over: Nvidia Announces Native SLI Support for the Intel X58 Chipset." Translation: Nvidia must use Intel supporting silicon to get its technology into future gaming systems--not its own.

One PC maker agrees with this sentiment. "When they were top dog they could have gotten away with this," a representative said, alluding to the Nvidia nForce 200 chip that, until the about-face Thursday, was required to enable high-end Nvidia graphics on future Intel Core i7 systems.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the representative said Nvidia was quickly getting boxed out by AMD's ATI graphics unit at his company. Though there are also performance reasons for this newfound preference for ATI graphics over Nvidia, in this specific case PC makers, and users alike, don't want to add a special Nvidia chip to enable graphics on high-end gaming systems, he said.

And this reaction is echoed at Anandtech and other hardware Web sites. "We heard from the very start that most motherboard manufacturers weren't going to use the nForce 200 + Intel X58 combination," according to Anandtech, referring to the i7's supporting silicon, the Intel X58 chipset.

At issue is Nvidia's Scalable Link Interface, or SLI, a critical technology for game enthusiasts who want to use more than one Nvidia graphics board to power the most demanding PC games like Crysis. Nvidia had been saying that the only one way to get to high-end game nirvana was by using its own supporting silicon.

But the Thursday announcement changed all that. Now users can configure SLI systems for Intel's upcoming Core i7 processors "natively" as Nvidia puts it. That is, without the Nvidia nForce 200 chip. "That's (the nForce 200) been the only solution. And that's been a very, very high-end solution," said Tom Peterson, director of Technical Marketing for MCP production at Nvidia.

All of this can be traced back to an earlier issue centered on whether Nvidia would make chipsets based on Intel's QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) technology to work with the i7. The company has indicated that it will not. "When we go to Bloomfield (i7 processor) we've already announced that we have no intention of building a QPI-based chipset. Because of that, we've offered only nForce 200," Peterson said.

(Correction: Nvidia maintains that it has a QPI license but has elected not to make a QPI chipset.)

This, in turn, has fueled speculation that Nvidia will get out of the chipset business. "I can see where some people would think that in the longer term, especially with the (i7)" said Dean McCarron, principal and founder of Cave Creek, Ariz.-based Mercury Research.

But McCarron thinks Nvidia will stay in the business in the near term. And this is borne out by Nvidia's indication this week about an impending announcement of a new integrated graphics chipset for Intel's current Core 2 architecture--not the i7.

[Mr. Dee]

nVidia, improve your drivers for Vista and stop whining!

[Penguinisto]

Translation: "Oh, Crap - Nehalem is gonna destroy us!"

In NVIDIA's defense, I don't think that anyone can make a working driver worth a damn for Vista without a 2nd GPU and at least 1GB of onboard (the card) RAM.

[wolivere]

I think the reality is the last chipsets from NVIDIA where pure crap VISTA or not they where just bad.

[i_am_still_wade]

The correct translation is this: "Oh, crap -- we have lost the chipset wars and we now need a backup plan." Intel has a better chipset, AMD has a better chipset. Unless they open up SLI to all chipsets, AMD/ATI will be the only video card company in town. This is the first step.

[Penguinisto]

ATI/AMD has Crossfire. What would they want or need with SLI? ;)

BTW, You've otherwise got a good take on it too.

[wedding-planning]

It's about time other chip manufacturers get their shot at the big time. Nvidia has been at the top of the stack for a very long time.

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[Sativaa]

I run Vista with an NVIDIA Card. No problems ever. I am a gammer and everyday user. All my old apps work, Not one problem ever. I think that all this Driver arguments are comming from not sure Tech savy users. There was an "Adjustment" stage for me, however when i sat down and tried to learn how to use Vista I have learned its actually much better then XP. ( If your Computer is older then VISTA, then maybe your computer should not have it on it.)

[rickbarrett]

Sativaa, Please say which version of Vista you are using when you post. I use Vista Ultimate on a 2.8 GHz dual core machine with a current ATI video card and I don't have many problems either. But, my friends on the Home version seem to have many more problems... When someone says that Vista is a problem, in my experience is they are not using Ultimate. Likewise, when they say they are fine it seems like they are almost always running Vista Ultimate.

[Plus_Size_Dresses]

Nvidia GForce 8600 SLI 2 cards w/Vista. Works perfect. Had Crysis, and the game ran flawlessly with only one 8600.

[CigarJack2]

Nvidia has always been better than ATI if you ask me. They were the first to come out with real linux drivers too.

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[iLindadotcom]

I agree that Nvidia has a great reputation about game card. I am using this brand from last couple of years without any problem.
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