Nvidia can't shake MacBook, chipset unit rumors

Nvidia has become a Silicon Valley hot spot for rumors. One is tied to an analyst downgrade Monday, the other to the rumored Apple MacBook refresh.

An analyst rekindled speculation Monday that the world's largest graphics chip supplier would sell off its chipset business, while rumors persist that the company would play a larger role in an expected refresh of the Apple MacBook.

Nvidia graphic on its notebook home page

(Credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia shares fell Monday after a Pacific Crest analyst issued a negative report on the company's prospects. In the report, the analyst said "our checks confirm" that Nvidia will exit the chipset business next year.

Nvidia chipsets--sometimes referred to as MCPs--serve as supporting silicon for the company's graphics processors. In the past, Nvidia has denied that it will exit the chipset business.

The analyst also speculated that Nvidia will pre-announce negative results for the third quarter (ended October). Nvidia has been dogged by negative press and analyst reports after it disclosed issues with its processors and chipsets back in July.

If that wasn't enough, Pacific Crest said Nvidia may see share loss in the notebook market next year as a result of a future refresh of "Montevina" graphics silicon from Intel.

But not all is lost. On the upside, rumors persist that Nvidia will play a large role in an expected MacBook refresh this month. The latest rumor holds that Nvidia is showing off prototypes internally of upcoming MacBooks with new Nvidia silicon.

Some are even pointing to a graphic on the Nvidia notebook home page of a slim notebook design as a possible MacBook design--though a more plausible explanation is that it's simply generic artwork.

Apple uses Nvidia graphics chips in its high-end MacBook Pros, but the MacBook and MacBook Air use Intel integrated graphics silicon. One of the latter two could be recipients of new Nvidia graphics chips.

Nvidia would not comment on the rumors.

[Mr. Dee]

I have an update for my nVidia Geforce 6200 card available in Windows Update (Vista) since July and I am not installing it. Thats just how unstable nVidia drivers are.

[3rdalbum]

Mr Dee, your post is a bit off-topic, but Nvidia's drivers cause 90% of all system-wide and Xorg crashes on my Linux computer, and are well-known as the cause of corrupted video playback on Linux. I don't think the poor quality of their drivers are causing them to sell their chipset business though.

[Signal-Support-System-Spc]

This entire article is retardation at the highest level. If Nvidia is losing any money at all, then it's clearly due to Bushonomics and not their company's model. Nvidia is the industry leader in chip technology. I don't care what nm manufacturing process they are currently at. They have a dynamic and intrinsic understanding of what market needs and they have always made products that surpass that demand. Not only have they been collaborating with NASA for quite some time but they just recently released pro-types for motherboards on a chip. This supposed "analyst" most likely is working for Intel in some lesser or greater degree, only because AMD doesn't have the brain power to redirect attention from its old rival. If and this is by far and large a great 'if" Nvidia does anything with Apple, then it is to invest in Apple shares so that it will have total control over the MAC OS and in short order put Intel in the grave of greed where it belongs.

[gerrrg]

And yet, Nvidia's got manufacturing problems, they might be selling their chipset biz even though they were trying to leverage their video biz to push the chipset...and then they openly trash talk about Intel?

That's about as obvious of a failed biz model, if not just plain stupid.

Instead of focused on the competition, Nvidia should have been focused on their own business and sending out their engineers to work with others to develop close relationships, even begging for others to adopt their chipset. Problem for Nvidia is, they only want to play the game one-way, to their advantage. All you need to do is look at how they handled the manufacturing defect of their video cards. Have they come out of denial yet? Have they made it an open offer to replace anyone's card? Seems more like they've gone back to attacking Intel instead of taking care of business.

[Vegaman_Dan]

I do believe you forgot to mention Elvis, Bigfoot, aliens, and the mafia in your conspiracy theory posting there. If you're going to post a nutball comment, please sure to be complete.

[Vegaman_Dan]

It would seem that in light of nVidia's recent problems in the manufacturing area and chipset drivers for notebooks that having such in your new product would be a *liability* and not something you would really want to promote.

I'm not clear how this will affect Apple's product, but these Macbooks may be 'those laptops with the nVidia chipset' that later people try to avoid once they start melting down or crashing. They could also work great without any trouble, but recent issues tend to dispute that.

[Zaunto]

That isn't all.

Have you noticed the steep discounts that 9600GT cards are going for these days, with the advent of ATI's 4670 series? The huge injection of cash into AMD + Spinning out the fabs + Dubai assumption of 1.2Billion of AMD debt doesn't make things any easier for NVidia, particularly if they get out of the chipset biz. AMD will have a complete platform to strengthen (CPU+Chipset+GPU) and NV will not. BIG PROBLEM for NV.