Announcement

**GT98** · 4 June 2001, 12:29

I'm going to watch this Chipset pretty closely in the coming months. It seems like VIA still can't get its KT266 working right, and this is one of the first boards that supports AMD Lighting Data Transport bus or whatever...should be pretty interesting to watch...

Scott

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Abit BH6 rev 1.0 Celeron 2-566@877mhz,384mb RAM, Hercules 3D Prophet 4500,SB Live! with Klipsch Promedia v2-400, Optiquest V95 19in montor, Asus 40x CD-ROM, Aopen 5x DVD-ROM,HP9110i 8x4x32 CD-RW,SupraMax 56k modem,WinME on Western Digital 30GB drive

**RedRed** · 4 June 2001, 12:52

http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,44256,00.html

if you want some info......

looks like it includes a souped up mx card...

this looks like a scary prospect for Matrox, if its integrated into the OEM market for a while, it wouldnt take long to go further.

I have never been fond of integrated components on a mobo, however with pc's becomming consumables it could be the ticket... I like the idea of the pre-emptive memory processor and the integrated network/soundcard/graphics/SoftModem, HomePNA (what is this?) and USB communications, on this high speed bus...

I await with intrest the benchmarks of the mobo's with this new chipset.

**Technoid** · 4 June 2001, 13:10

It'l probably take a while before we see one with more than 3 PCI slots...

**DuRaNgO** · 4 June 2001, 13:29

Let me guess, there will be compatability issues when using "other" companies vid or sound cards on these boards

**Technoid** · 4 June 2001, 13:40

Without doubt!

**Nuno** · 4 June 2001, 14:21

Dual-channel DDR SDRAM... why nobody though of that before?

If Via upcoming DDR P4 chipset supports this, RAMBUS will die a ugly, painfull and slow death (a 128-bit DDR bus has even more bandwidth than a dual-channel RDRAM)

**isochar** · 4 June 2001, 14:53

nVidia has a big set of balls to start competing with all these companies at the same time:

- Intel (chipsets, and thus processor sales as well)
- VIA (chipsets)
- Creative (sound card)

This manuever also puts a few more nails in the coffins of other graphics manufacturers...

I have a hunch that nVidia can easily take that audio chipset and throw it onto a PCI board. We may actually have a superior alternative to Creative and their crapware!

Oh, about RDRAM dying, I really doubt it. It has been out for about 2 years now w/o any updates. Other memory technologies are now just catching up to it. (RDRAM has had the performance all along, it was the P3 that didn't do it justice) Expect Rambus's R&D department to release some improvements.
(RDRAM is already at 4.2gb/sec as of May)

[This message has been edited by isochar (edited 04 June 2001).]

**GT98** · 4 June 2001, 18:44

As for RAMBUS, they are going to be in serious trouble in the next couple months at the rate they are losing Court Cases...I agree that the techongy is going to be around but RAMBUS as a blood sucking company probly wont! :P

Scott

**RedRed** · 5 June 2001, 11:19

I think youve missed the point, DuRaNgO
. If this functionality is built into on mobo, abd all the bits are as good as the blurb and they are reliable, OEM manufacturers and Big Boys (Del, Compaq et al) will want these boards. The PC feak building his own PC with bits hand picked may not. (Though with that bus.....)

Sure its a GFMX, there are still PC's being sold in the magazines with TNT graphiv cards!

It has more than enough performance to be attractive to OEM.....

Add to that the fact that most PC Junkies probably upgrade in the following order, Ram, HD, CPU, Video, Modem/Cable/DSL, sound well down the list....

with many of these bits on the mobo, it wouldnt be an issue.... (every time you change your mobo, you change your USB and PCI bridge and HD controller and most of the rest, why not your soundcard or your NIC if its blows the competition away!), remember you used to HAVE to change the whole mobo to change CPU (286, 386, pentium 1, pentium 2(twice!) and P1V and you usually couldnt get the benefit of your mobo until you upgraded your RAM, even if it would fit!!!

PC motherboards have got so specific you have to replace most of your innards (except HD/Sound/nic and maybe scsi) that why not just replace the lot, if the price is right.

Think about the last couple of upgrades you did on your machine.... Upgraded CPU? Thats me. I moved from a P2 233 to a twin celery 466.... New mobo (slot to twin socket) Kept the memory and the HD and stuff, wbut If the upgrade had cost me a couple of quid more, and I got the latest fundango sound card thrown in, along with a new NIC and a decent video card, I would not have minded... (I would have built a second PC with the bits I had not needed to reuse....)

PC's are the new consmables... they are not the dark art the once were....

red

**Indiana** · 5 June 2001, 13:01

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by DuRaNgO:
Let me guess, there will be compatability issues when using "other" companies vid or sound cards on these boards </font>

The same as Windows2k had problems networking with other "evil" OSes? Do we see a pattern here?
Oh, no - this is not abusing your market-share, as we all most probably will learn from the revision of the M$ trial...

...still waiting for the release of MicroSofts "World Domination XP - final"...

**DuRaNgO** · 5 June 2001, 16:13

Keep in mind that this is just the MX version of the gf2

also, why buy this so that you can throw away your soundcard, videocard and motherboard in a year when one of them gets out dated? Integrated sux even with the option to add-in later

**Novdid** · 6 June 2001, 06:07

The sad thing is that the sites that get the preview samples almost always benchmark with a nvidia board. That is, if the board never gets into some reference system when they are comparing graphiccards.

We will probably be forced to wait till the board is available to see if the chipset is favoring nvidia boards.

**Thundrchez** · 7 June 2001, 18:30

This nForce is NOT what they are putting in the X-Box. Obviously, this is for Athlons, and the X-Box is going to be P3 based. However, the graphics really confuse me. Isn't the X-Box going to have the GeForce3 equivalent as a part of the integrated chipset, yet the nForce is GeForce2 based? And didn't I read somewhere that graphics in nVidia's integrated chipsets would lag their standalone cards by 18 months or so?

**Paulr** · 8 June 2001, 02:33

The X-Box is going to have the next generation of NVidia chaipset, the NV20 (The current GeForce 3 card is an NV15).
Quite how more advanced than the current GF3 cards that is anyone's guess.
I'm thinking GF3 Ultra.
The NV20 is going to be a nice graphics chipset, no doubt about that, I'm sure NVidia already have the cards, but as for us the public anything we say is really speculation until it's released.

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