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VIA Quits Motherboard Chipset Business
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Aug 11, 2008 08:02 AM
from the sea-change dept.
from the sea-change dept.
arcticstoat writes "Following the media hit that was VIA's Nano processor, VIA says that it's now quitting the motherboard chipset business that used to be its bread and butter product for years. VIA's vice president of corporate marketing in Taiwan, Richard Brown, explained that: 'Intel provides the vast majority of chipsets for its processors and, following its purchase of ATI, AMD is also moving very quickly in the same direction.' VIA will still be developing chipsets for integrated motherboards featuring the Nano CPU, but will no longer produce chipsets for Intel and AMD CPUs. Was this the right decision, and where does this leave other third-party chipset manufacturers such as SiS?" Seems like this is a tough business to stick around in.
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Technology: NVidia Reportedly Will Exit Chipset Business 173 comments
xav_jones sends along a story from X bit Laboratories claiming that NVidia is ready to quit making chipsets. That story links one from DigiTimes, which reports that NVidia has denied that it's getting out of the business. "[NVidia] is about to quit chipset business, which automatically means that the company's much-hyped multi-GPU SLI technology is either in danger or re-considered. Moreover, several mainboard makers have already ceased making high-end NVidia-based mainboards. [NVidia has]... reportedly decided to quit core-logic business to concentrate on development of graphics processors and following failure to secure license to build and sell chipsets compatible with Intel Corp.'s microprocessors that use Quick-Path Interconnect bus."
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too bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:too bad (Score:5, Insightful)
competition is a good thing.
Especially in the bottom layer of a vertical market that is so critical to our everyday lives. I fear a world with one dominant processor manufacturer. Much as I fear a world with one dominant software manufacturer.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In this case, you have 3 companies making binary compatible "platforms". This is direct competition with the added benefit of less hardware quirks and incompatibilities from trying to support everyone else. This is the very reason why Apple is hesitant to vary their hardware.
If you fear one will dominate than the others, Intel won that fight with it's partner Microsoft in the 90s.
I think my only question in this is where nVidia will fit in? All three companies (AMD/Intel/VIA) make their own integrated every
Re:too bad (Score:5, Interesting)
Average Joe doesn't buy a video card upgrade anyway, so nvidia's market there shouldn't be too badly affected. Of course, if AMD/ATi decide to introduce incompatibilities into their chipset that make it hard for other video cards to work, that's another matter. Also don't nvidia do integrated graphics? They might have a problem there.
Perhaps we'll see nvidia entering the CPU business some time soon... Maybe they'll be the new AMD, who knows?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, nVidia makes integrated video chips chips.
Actualy, nVidia, VIA and SiS each shared one advantage over AMD and Intel - namely they made chipsets for both major platforms. AMD and Intel only make chipsets for their own.
Of course, of the three, I've only like nVidia (their onboard video had passable 3D unlike SiS and VIA, and I found they had better stability too).
An nVidia CPU...
That thought made me very happy. It'd be nice to have a 3rd CPU in the performance market, to compete with AMD and Intel.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ach. Ich bin ein schesskopf.
I forgot, there are AMD made chips for Intel CPUs, but I don't know if there are plans for new chips, or if they are ATi legacy.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Perhaps we'll see nvidia entering the CPU business some time soon... "
Nvidia *IS* in the CPU business. We call their products GPUs, and we try to limit their use to display adapters, but GPUs are really slightly specialized CPUs. Go on, split the hairs, but it's way more true than false. There is even clustering [umd.edu] and app [slashdot.org] s/w for GPUs.
Not at all a shocker if Nvidia starts marketing a specialized 'C'PU. Something either low power, graphics-enhanced or graphics-embedded, or maybe a one-chip solution. Not
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
NVidia stumbles in the chipset arena because they just have too god-damn many of them. The process goes like this:
Q. How many video cards do you want to SLI ?
A. 0 -> get a 610/630 board
1 -> get a 650 or 750
2 -> get a 650 Ultra or 680
3 -> get a 780 or 790
Beyond the SLI madness, they all support the same processors - at least on the Intel side, I'm not up to date on AMD. I realize the "need" for segmentation, but that inevitably l
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps we'll see nvidia entering the CPU business some time soon
I guess you missed the memo. nVidia are an ARM Cortex A8 licensee. Their platform contains a multicore ARM CPU, an nVidia GPU and a few other things on a single chip. This is the kind of product you see in the fastest-growing part of the computing market.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I for one, welcome our new racing-to-the-bottom overlords.
Maybe that way, the gaming software people will focus on gameplay innovations, instead of making ever larger and slower eyecandy
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't mean "also" do you?
Because that would mean you would fear a world with ONE dominant processor manufacturer who make the whole motherboard. That's what the parent said.
We currently HAVE two, and VIA intends to make it three.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My point is that the deeper the integration goes the less chance there is for real competition. If each CPU maker does their own chipsets, audio and video then eventually there'll be no room for substantive distinction between motherboards and those manufacturers will either disappear or just produce a bunch of exact implementations of a reference design from the CPU makers.
After that the rate of innovation will flatten out and we'll settle into a yearly cycle of rehashing the s
Re:too bad (Score:5, Interesting)
They are getting out of this market, because it's not going to exist for much longer.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
To survive it's sometimes best to be good at what you are doing. But being too specialized isn't good either because then you will become extinct as a dinosaur because you suddenly find yourself left behind in a swamp of old technology.
VIA are good at producing low-power devices with reasonable performance for general use. There is competition from Intel now, but since the environmental concerns are growing over time VIA has a place in the server room for some applications that doesn't require a lot of comp
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Hard to make a buck (Score:3, Interesting)
The chipset business has gotten to the point that it is hard to turn a profit in that business. Especially when you need an R&D budget to stay competitive. I'm guessing VIA just does not have the margins to compete in the chipset business anymore, they probably were deciding if they should spin their next generation chipset and came to the conclusion to give up.
VIA claims that they believe the third-party chipset market will disappear, and they may be right. But I think their decision was based entirely
Best decision Via ever made. (Score:3, Insightful)
Via's whole weakness has been this bi-polar nature where their bread-and-butter was the chipsets that made them have to kiss ass to Intel to make sure they were privy to the proprietary data they needed to keep their chipsets compatible. That left their own CPUs and boards as the ugly step-daughter.
I remember when the Epias first came out here in Taiwan. You had to order them from England. There was no retail channel effort at all. I got really frustrated at this and went all over the island trying to get a
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:too bad (Score:5, Informative)
Complete opposite experience here. I admit I haven't used the old slot A KX1xx athlon chipsets KT133/A or the original KT266, but I've run several motherboards on the Apollo Pro 133, KT266A, KT333 and KT400, and haven't had any problems. I even ran several of them overclocked, on XP, 2000, and Linux. In fact, the machine I'm typing this on is a KT400 with 1GB RAM and a 2GHz Athlon XP running vista, with no stability issues whatsoever, it's a bit slow but I put a lot of load on it and there are server apps running in the background too.
The KT266A board that I had (Epox 8KHA+) was one of the fastest boards I ever owned, for its time. And it never had any problems, even overclocked.
I can understand that people have had issues with several VIA chipset revisions. But they were in many instances a lot better than the alternatives. They were much better than intel during the i820 fiasco and have always been somewhat better than AMD's native chipsets (until the K8 chipsets that is).
In fact, until nVidia came along with the nforce, they really were the only option for athlons. I'll admit that the nForce/2 offered some stiff competition and was good, and that nVidia eventually did usurp via with the nForce3 Ultra and beyond.
You speak as someone who has limited anecdotal experience with a few via chipsets. Well, here I'm offering mine, with a few facts to back it up, as well as the experiences and opinions of many I've met over the years.
VIA definitely played an important role in the game. For one, they were partially responsible for the Athlon's ascendancy. And second, they provided competition for Intel's chipsets when those were lacking. It is sad to see them exit the business.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Goodbye VIA (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't understand making that move at all.
Sure there may be competition in the market, but at least it's a market they're already a big player in.
Attempting to jump into the CPU business (almost) exclusively is likely to kill them, since AMD and Intel have the market fairly well tied up.
Re:Goodbye VIA (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't understand making that move at all.
Sure there may be competition in the market, but at least it's a market they're already a big player in.
Attempting to jump into the CPU business (almost) exclusively is likely to kill them, since AMD and Intel have the market fairly well tied up.
That's just the thing: they seems to have the resources for competing in only one of the markets. They choose the market that will offer them the most freedom of innovation. Additionally, it is a much more visible market, arguably a more critical market, and a market that is expanding faster than Intel and AMD can keep up (at least for small, handheld devices). Better to have the #3 slice of a huge pie than the #1 slice of a smaller pie.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't understand making that move at all.
It's a LOT easier to make parts for your own stuff. I'm sure it's quite a fracken battle to get the specs out of intel and AMD on their new CPU's while their also completing against via on the chipsets that the cpus will run on.
If you were trying to make a competing part for a car I was making, which I was also selling parts for.... I would definitely put up every barrier possible.
With an 18 month turn around on CPU speed, I bet it's VERY hard for via to keep up with intel and amd on the chipset front.
This puts VIA in good shape (Score:3, Insightful)
> I can't understand making that move at all.
It makes a lot of sense. They were always chasing tail lights when developing chipsets to support Intel + AMD CPUs, whereas now they'll be in exclusive control of their device interface specifications and no longer be competing against chipsets from those other manufacturers.
It's good on all fronts for VIA.
It's less good for customers of Intel and AMD since some competition disappears, but I don't think that that will really matter. Both Intel and AMD make t
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The low power CPU market, where Via is quite strong, is currently expanding a lot, in contrast. It makes sense to leave a shrinking market for a growing one. Their main competitors are likely to be peop
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Attempting to jump into the CPU business (almost) exclusively is likely to kill them, since AMD and Intel have the market fairly well tied up.
It's a good thing the folks at AMD didn't think like you when considering taking a leap at Intel's customers years ago.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not just competition, and Via hasn't been a big player in years.
Via hasn't had good penetration in the Intel market since the Apollo Pro 133 days. The P4 era all but locked them out.
Via did pretty well (and at times, utterly dominated) in the AMD market until nForce4 came along--while it was common knowledge that nForce4 was horribly buggy, nVidia had better name recognition, was first to market with PCI-E, and had SLI. But Via managed to stay afloat despite this; they had a distinct budget niche. This
Re:Goodbye VIA (Score:5, Interesting)
The end came when AMD's acquisition of ATI put Via in the same position they were in with Intel. To be fair, nVidia got stabbed in the back the same way. Both Via and nVidia had their turn as the de facto standard AMD chipset manufacturer, and the switch between them happened natrually; AMD buying ATI took it away from both of them by force. AMD's betrayal of their third-party chipset makers was galling. Not only is Via quitting, but there are rumors of nVidia doing the same thing.
AMD didn't betray anyone. Via hasn't released a chipset with any innovative features in years, the only reason they had any products were to cover the legacy (AGP) and low-end markets. Their changing market focus has been obvious. nVidia has released a number of products with very high-profile defects, such as chipsets with severe data corruption bugs, and GPUs that fail prematurely due to packaging issues. nVidia chose to gamble that keeping SLI proprietary wouldn't piss Intel off enough to deny them a Nehalem bus license, and they lost. nVidia makes chipsets for extreme gamers who want SLI, and those consumers will buy Nehalem platforms because they are the fastest. If all nVidia has left is the AMD market, they really have no reason to keep making chipsets. The fact that their chipsets have a reputation for running hot and having issues doesn't really help at all.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sure it makes sense. Via's constantly having to chase Intel and AMD in order to license the interconnect bus changes. On several occasions Via's had to reverse engineer the bus without a license; and, as a result, run into trouble. It's in Intel's best interest not to keep advance specification updates flowing to the 3rd party chipset manufacturer's because it gives them a head start with their own chipset. Same applies to AMD. Intel and AMD have seen the light and are now producing chipsets targetting
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
For a while, north and south bridges from a manufacturer like Via communicated with the same inte
Seems like the right choice (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a sensible choice for VIA, for the reasons they have given. It's been on the table for quite some time I imagine.
However a big thanks have to go out for them for their initial support of the AMD Athlon platform back in the day. Even if they had chipset problems since then...
Now, however, they are quite a bit behind in terms of chipsets for desktop systems.
I'd like to see a Nano with built-in chipset (memory controller, GPU at least) or even a SoC (Nano, Memory Controller, GPU, USB, Ethernet, SATA, Audio, ...) in the future, and now they can allocate resources to achieve this.
Tough business? Not as tough as you think... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems like this is a tough business to stick around in.
Considering Nvidia reject the reports of its exit from the chipset market out of hand and demanded a retraction from the original source (Digitimes), I don't think that story is worth linking to...
Where does this leave SiS? (Score:5, Insightful)
My guess is occupying the same sub-par penny-pinching section of the market they always did. Save $10, and in exchange you got to deal with chipsets that often had fundamental flaws, known bugs, and drivers that fixed some problems while causing others.
But don't worry, because said chipsets were often located on "high quality" boards that could always be counted on to be constructed in the cheapest manner possible. Bad caps? That's too easy; I want heatsinks that fall off the chipset, voltage problems on PCI slots, and physical layout that looks as though it was designed by a blind man using NASA's English-to-Metric conversion tools.
To this day I am convinced that a large amount of the "Windows Sucks and always crashes" reputation in the post-9x era is due largely to VIA, SIS, and (God help us) Acer Labs (ALi) coupled with the sub-par manufacturers that leaned heavily on these chipsets.
Don't forget lousy drivers (Score:3, Informative)
I have one older PC that had this sort of problem - until a driver update that brought a workaround.
AFAIK the VIA chipset had a fundamental flaw in the first place (data loss on the PCI bus under high load) but such flaws happen to other vendors too and a workaround in the driver is usually acceptable. In this case, the problem showed up in the field and VIA only fixed it after getting bad publicity.
Re:Where does this leave SiS? (Score:4, Informative)
Wow, way to miss the point. I've worked with plenty of Intel-based systems and in the post-Windows 2000 world, they're generally every bit as stable. Say what you will about security and usability (there's plenty to complain about there), but I don't hear a lot of people complaining about stability much anymore. That simply wasn't the case with Via's 4in1 trash or SiS's, well, anything they built.
You're right in that Linux sometimes survived on the same box; after garbage chipsets had been on the market long enough, the kernel developers had figured out which features would and wouldn't cause problems. Kudos to the developers for having the time and drive to write proper drivers when Via never could be bothered to do so in the first place. Windows did, at points, have patches to fix issues with Cyrix processors (for example), but it's a little ridiculous to expect Microsoft to go write workarounds for sub-par gear. Likewise, it was a little unfair to blame them for what was really the fault of uber-trash drivers and physically faulty hardware.
Parent
Re:Where does this leave SiS? (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay, so PC Hardware is never broken? Cheap-ass power supplies that don't actually deliver 12V, caps with bad fluid, or shoddy connectors don't happen? I mean, at a basic point, you're essentially asserting that PC hardware doesn't break. Clearly, because Linux, FreeBSD, etc. are capable of running on "any system," even one where voltage levels are below the required specs or PCI buses don't actually work according to spec.
There are three levels to flawed hardware. One is the "fundamental flaws," and you're right, they're not as common as some would have you believe. I can only think of a few off the top of my head: Via had an issue with PCI buses on their systems that basically dropped data when under heavy load. ALi had a problem with early AGP implementations where the voltage was actually well below the maximum required by the AGP spec, thereby causing crashes with some video cards. I've seen mainboards where USB sound "cards" were drawing power on the same bus that was supposed to be connected to front USB ports - if more than two bus-powered devices were connected, the sound card didn't work correctly. That strikes me as a fundamental flaw, although admittedly one caused by the mainboard manufacturer and not the chipset manufacturer. I'm surprised that given the number of design flaws in any field you believe that the PC mainboard industry is exempt from this issue.
The second level to flawed hardware is the driver problems. You've got new systems running older versions of Linux. Congrats. I'd first wonder if you were trying to use anything more advanced than network support on those systems, but I'll leave that for another discussion. Can I recompile the kernel with whatever slap-dash, shoddy binary blob driver I want and expect your systems to run correctly? That's the problem Via continually plagued the world with on its chipsets - I don't doubt that most of them, hardware-wise, were as decent as any other randomly selected chipset. Their drivers were simply awful, though. If you caught them a year and a half after release, yeah, they were probably okay. When you first got a KTxxx, you could end up with something that worked fine or you could end up cursing the day you were born. You don't need OS-level workaround to fix a problem, just a halfway decent driver. On-board sound drivers: garbage. Conflicts with sound cards: guaranteed. Issues when PCI slots four or five were filled: common. None of them were likely hardware-level problems, but they were just as bad. At a certain level, they were fundamental flaws in that chipset drivers are as much a part of the system as the chipset itself. I wouldn't buy Via stuff at all after NVidia filled the hole in the AMD market (and Intel always had pretty solid stuff), but it doesn't mean I didn't have to troubleshoot it for others. If you've got older versions of Slack that aren't attempting to use ATA-133 (or hell, ATA-33 at that age), sound at any level other than SB emulation, or USB anything, I'm not surprised you aren't seeing problems (note: I'm assuming here that you're using whatever version of the kernel shipped with Slack 3.3). Those of us who bought or worked on Via boards and tried to use such features, though, were greeted with the Sisyphean task of hoping that Via's latest 4in1 driver would fix whatever bizarre problem they'd introduced last month.
The final level to flawed hardware is the cheap components used by manufacturers who sourced Via or Sis or ALi chipsets. It did no good to save a couple of bucks on the chipset if you didn't slash costs elsewhere to compensate. You ended up with sub-par equipment all around. Perhaps Via products would have a better rep if they weren't constantly relegated to the $60 mainboard (although the early days of the Athlon and the boards from quality manufacturers say otherwise). As it was, though, cheap chipsets went hand-in-hand with lousy mainboard build quality and quality control. Not Via's fault, necessarily, but it wasn't making me any happier with their product.
I'd close by asking what Windows update is for if Microsoft refuses to acknowledge Windows has any bugs, ever.
Parent
Maybe a brilliant move (Score:5, Interesting)
The ultraportables is a fast growing market, and if, as I suspect, VIA focuses on cheap low-consumption CPU + chipset, they are in a great position to capitalize from this market.
Re:Maybe a brilliant move (Score:4, Informative)
Only kinda. I'm yet to see a cheap Mini-ITX, Nano-ITX, Pico-ITX board from Via. They're always very expensive. Especially when you compare them to the Atom options today. The cheapest Via I can find is their EPIA ML8000AG with an 800 MHz C3 processor costing almost twice as much as Intel's D945GCLF with a 1.6 GHz Atom or Intel's D201GLY2 with a 1.2 GHz Celeron.
Back when Via were the only ones with Mini-ITX boards the premium was somewhat okay, but not any more.
Parent
i think it was the right time to get out... (Score:4, Interesting)
...I'm not sure how they'll do without, but look at what's happening with the latest processors. The memory controller and more and more other things are moving into one and the same chip. it won't be long before laptops are essentially one chip with traces going out to all the accessories = much simpler than today because almost all the heavy lifting is inside the chip.except memory and the only reason I don't see that going in is because none of the players have taken any interest in that.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That trend has been happening for the past 40 years. If you looked at a 1990's graphics accelerator card (Hercules Graphics Station Card [uni-marburg.de] or a Voodoo 5000/6000 [sudhian.com], you would see that all the different components (RAMDAC, graphics processor, memory controllers) were all on different parts of the circuit board. Now, most of that logic is within a single chip Geforce 9800GTX [legitreviews.com]
Memory chips keep changing as rapidly as the CPU's do. Assuming that a CPU manufacturer wanted to enter the memory chip market, by the time th
My nemesis is dead! (Score:4, Funny)
I hate VIA if you didn't gather that already. I've spent more time puzzling over ACPI, bus mastering, faulty IRQ sharing, piss poor drivers that VIA has made than all other OEM's put together. Even if you have a fully functional Intel chipset board
The KT133A chipset scared me horrendously. (Score:3, Interesting)
I was so badly 'wounded' by this chipset as most enthusiasts were that to this day I've never considered a VIA chipset since, most likely an irrational fear but one thing I can't stand is an unstable computer.
I've used nvidia chipsets, intel chipsets, even SIS chipsets but VIA only once and it stung, I have to wonder how many enthusiasts avoided them due to the 133a fiasco.
Godfuckdamn (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to be a big Via fan, back during the K7 and early K8 days. This saddens me, even though I buy 100% Intel nowadays (Intel CPU, Intel chipset, Intel motherboard).
Man, AMD buying ATI was possibly the worst possible decision they could have made. They raped their third-party chipset support, drove off Linux users en masse, and blew all their capital on an acquisition instead of the R&D they desperately needed, hence why Core 2 has lapped Phenom several times.
Re:Godfuckdamn (Score:5, Interesting)
"lapped" ... it's about 20% faster clock for clock, and the top clocks are about 20% higher, so that's about 44% faster at the most, and certainly not if you start scaling to multiple CPUs where AMD is still leading (check out the 4P 16C benchmarks for AMD against Intel).
AMD now have an in-house chipset maker who are making some very well received and functional chipsets (AMD 790GX for example), have improved Linux support incredibly (Day 1 Linux Support for HD4000 series graphics cards, drivers were on the shipped CD).
I think you are seeing the natural integration difficulties in 2007 and this year as a long-term issue, whereas it is clearly a short-term issue. Barcelona was flawed even before the acquisition, R600 was an underperformer before it as well. RV770 and the fixed Phenoms are good options now, and there are good vibes for the coming year as well.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
NVidia chipsets and their software drivers created such a complex problem that it took hours for a mega advanced low level hacker like Mark Russinovich to solve.
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/06/02/3065065.aspx [technet.com]
That is the only chipset competition Intel/AMD now have after VIA exit. A company which definitely have no clue about chipsets and what users/manufacturers expect from a chipset. It is basic: Stability and Performance, zero installation except well maintained, WHQL certified dri
Many years ago ... (Score:5, Informative)
In response to this fiasco, Intel engaged more directly with the chipset vendors; at the time, VLSI Technology was the leading one. Intel was in the process of coming out with the original Pentium, and VLSI needed detailed specifications so that they could have chipsets available when the processor debuted. Intel promised VLSI information as quickly as Intel's own engineers had it.
Since VLSI had an operation in Chandler, very near Intel's own chipset design operations, VLSI inevitably heard when Intel started up their own chipset team. VLSI was understandably concerned that they were becoming dependent on cooperation from a company that had gone into competition with them, and approached Intel. Intel reassured VLSI that Intel's team would not have any "unfair" advantage over VLSI's engineers, and reiterated that VLSI would have processor specifications as soon as Intel's engineers did.
So, VLSI worked away at their design. Intel released the final Pentium specs, and the Intel chipset engineers accomplished an unheard-of feat: they finished their design, streamed out the chip, fabricated it, packaged it, tested it, and released samples the same day!
Later, Intel found other ways to make life difficult for chipset companies, such as suing chipset vendors for using their bus designs or pricing the processor plus chipset at the same price as the processor alone. This has periodically led to chipset vendors deciding that the business isn't worth it, followed by Intel screwing the pooch with a chipset design, followed by Intel realizing that having more than one chipset provider is good for the processor business, followed by Intel making nice to the chipset vendors, lather, rinse, repeat.
Here we go again. This could be the last time around the merry-go-round, or maybe not.
Editors? (Score:5, Funny)
Although VIA will still be developing chipsets for integrated motherboards featuring the Nano CPU, but will no longer produce chipsets for Intel and AMD CPUs.
Although this contradicts the headline directly, but it is also gramatically incorrect.
BIM had this problem (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
For a while, Intel was using exclusively SiS chipsets on their low-end (read: developing countries) motherboards.
Their last SiS-based board, though, was just replaced with an Atom board with an i945. Which was a mistake, because the i945 guzzles much more power than the old SiS chipset. It's funny when you have a tiny little heatsink on the CPU that wouldn't look out of place on a southbridge, and then a big huge heatsink with fan on the northbridge.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
AMD are making chipsets (having consumed ATI who were making them before), haven't you read the reviews? Look at the AMD 790GX chipset, or the 780G ...