High-end NVIDIA and ATI Chipsets for Intel CPUs

7/4 - The high-end gaming market--which uses state of the art technology--has long been dominated by a great triumvirate: AMD, NVIDIA, and ATI. AMD supplied the microprocessors, NVIDIA and ATI the chipsets and GPUs. Other CPU and chipset combinations couldn't keep up.

All this is getting ready to change, with the release of the Core 2 Extreme microprocessor, however.

Intel is releasing a processor, but the company has no current plans to release a chipset for the high end. This is a great opportunity for NVIDIA and ATI to continue doing what they have been doing: providing core logic for the high end.

Intel's aging 975X Express Chipset is getting long in the tooth. It supports dual graphics. However, support for the fastest memory is lacking. It also uses an older Input/Output Controller Hub (ICH).

Intel's 965 series of chipsets, on the other hand, support the faster memory, and the latest ICH, but not dual graphics. The 965, however, is a mainstream chipset series, not a performance series.

Moreover, Intel has no immediate plans to replace the 975X with a more modern equivalent. Intel has no plans "on the replacement of 975X".

Rather, the strategy appears to be to abdicate the high-end chipset market to NVIDIA and ATI. Let them duke it out. Intel is leaving the high end chipset market open "to ATi and nVidia".

For instance, the NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition supports 2x16 SLI graphics. The nForce 570 Ultra, however, "has no SLi function".

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