Did ASUS simply buy off the Nforce4 competition?

[Jim Bancroft]

Oy vey.

Must be great fun in the ASUS marketing offices right now, throwing paper airplanes at each other while the competition paper launches board after board with nothing hitting the resale channels. High-fives all around and a great time had, I'm sure.

It makes perfect sense: why release your non-SLI product when you've got the market to yourself and can subsequently charge an arm and a leg for an A8N-SLI? Yes, Gigabyte has started to release their low-end board but good luck finding it on Newegg or most other sites....AMD must be less than thrilled that Intel's had PCIe to itself lo these many months.

MSI? DFI? Abit? Any of those guys plan to release nforce4 or VIA K8T890 boards soon? There've been plenty of notices on their websites but precious little PCB to back it up. I wonder if that Commodore64 I've got in the closet can be modded to fit a 6600GT.... </end rant>

 

[Peter]

ECS are apparently shipping their NF4 stuff now.

 

[SkyBum]

According to the MSI rep I spoke with at CES last Friday, the MSI SLI board will start shipping in quantity sometime next week (her actual comment was 1-2 weeks).

No idea whether to believe her or not but we'll see soon enough......

 

[sreams]

AMD must be less than thrilled that Intel's had PCIe to itself lo these many months.

I doubt they care much. PCI-e is neat... and will be a great thing down the road. As of this moment, however, the only cards available are video cards... and those don't really see a performance boost (yet). The one exception is SLI... which is only available on AMD platforms anyway. So maybe its Intel who's less than thrilled.

-S

 

[Insomniak]

Originally posted by: SkyBum
According to the MSI rep I spoke with at CES last Friday, the MSI SLI board will start shipping in quantity sometime next week (her actual comment was 1-2 weeks).

No idea whether to believe her or not but we'll see soon enough......

ATi's X800XL will be available at the beginning of January, quoth ATi...





Point being, I'll believe they're out there when I see them. ALL the major companies have had a lot of trouble shipping things over the past 12 months or so...

 

[JMag]

Originally posted by: sreams

AMD must be less than thrilled that Intel's had PCIe to itself lo these many months.

I doubt they care much. PCI-e is neat... and will be a great thing down the road. As of this moment, however, the only cards available are video cards... and those don't really see a performance boost (yet). The one exception is SLI... which is only available on AMD platforms anyway. So maybe its Intel who's less than thrilled.

-S

Well Intel Has had a dual PCI-E board out for like 8 months...

Anyway the nforce5 is already taped out. I wouldn't be shocked if you see it in the next month or two, but who wants intel anyway? I mean JEEZUS, my $150 Proc (a 3000+) overclocked at 2.6ghz can easily whoop a stock p4 Extreme Edition in Games.

 

[Digex]

What does it matter. There are no video cards ready for PCI-E. They are either really expensive and not worth the upgrade or not even in abundance so price gouging is rampant. I think they are testing stability on SLI boards so they taking their time since no cards are really out there.

 

[sreams]

Well Intel Has had a dual PCI-E board out for like 8 months...

...and no SLI support at all. "Dual" PCI-E isn't very useful until there are cards that take advantage of it. Intel users, at this point, are not using more than one PCI-E slot... because they can't. The only way to SLI is an nForce4 board.

-S

 

[sreams]

Originally posted by: Digex
What does it matter. There are no video cards ready for PCI-E. They are either really expensive and not worth the upgrade or not even in abundance so price gouging is rampant. I think they are testing stability on SLI boards so they taking their time since no cards are really out there.

PCI-E 6600GTs are out there in abundance... and are probably the best performance per dollar of any video card available. Beyond that... an SLI 6600GT setup is the -only- way to get the performance it delivers without spending more than $400.

-S