More NVIDIA products are on the way
Late yesterday, NVIDIA held its Q3'06 investor call. Although the discussion of the call was mainly financials and recaps of the GeForce 8800 launch, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang let everyone know the company is ready to play hardball with AMD/ATI. Specifically, Huang stated that NVIDIA would unveil its first Intel-based integrated graphics chipset early next year.
Outside of Intel-branded chipsets, ATI has traditionally dominated the Intel IGP market. However, with the shift of allegiances after the AMD acquisition earlier this year, NVIDIA has already set its targets on ATI's old turf. This past July Jen-Hsun Huang already declared NVIDIA the winner in the GPU market, claiming "I thought it was just impossible to get a gift like this. ATI is basically throwing in the towel, leaving us as the only stand-alone [graphics chip] company in the world." Huang made similar, less colorful comments about the chipset market before announcing the Intel IGP chipset.
In recent interviews with ATI partners, manufacturers have deemed that RD600 "the last ATI-Intel chipset." NVIDIA has had a presence in the Intel chipset market since the nForce 4 (or since the original Xbox launch if you look at it that way), but its products have generally been limited to enthusiast motherboards. ATI, on the other hand, previously manufactured chipsets that were even used in Intel-branded motherboards.
Additionally, during the Q&A section of the investor call, Huang also alluded to the fact that the company would announce no less than nine DirectX 10 graphics cards based on the G80 family of GPUs. Two G80 products have already been announced, the GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS. Last week manufacturers filled DailyTech in on the possibility that another G80-derivative product is on the way in February of next year. In a private briefing, DailyTech was then updated to the fact that there are three distinct products launching in February, each of which will be divided into three sub-products. NVIDIA's public and private roadmaps appear to coincide.
In March of next year, ATI is expected to launch the R600 graphics core. ATI's roadmap previously indicated that the RS790 IGP core would compete with Intel's Bearlake IGP chipsets, but there has been no indication that this project still exists since the AMD takeover.
Beyond3D also has more coverage on the subject.
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