Intel's Pentium 4 is looking to enter the lucrative mainstream PC market (priced at $1,099-$1,499 US). That is going to be difficult considering that Pentium 4's use the expensive Rambus memory that pushes the price up closer to two grand. Of course, AMD is already fairly entrenched in the mainstream PC market because their systems have used DDR for most of the year. Intel, once the leader, has been forced to play catch-up with their competition. Even worse for Intel is the fact that PC video leader Nvidia has gone into the chipset business and sided with AMD. Nvidia's new nForce chipset is a highly integrated board running the AMD Athlon/Duron processor that could rock the mainstream market.

Previously, using integrated motherboards (cheap all-in-one solutions with video, sound, network connectors and modems built onto the board) in mainstream computers was distasteful to say the least. The PC was cheap, but the low quality video and audio were so bad that it put many first time computer buyers off of using their new computers. The problem was that most of the Taiwanese chipset makers (Acer Labs, SiS and Via) were too specialized in their engineering process and knew little about making video or audio chips. Nvidia, however, had concentrated on making excellent video chips for the better part of the decade. Since the announcement of the nForce a few months ago, the Taiwanese chipset makers have been uncomfortably rushing to answer the nForce with their own high-performance integrated boards. Nvidia's integrated nForce boards, with great graphics and Dolby Digital sound, is being touted as the premier all-in-one solution for the big OEMs to bring low-cost and high-performance to the mainstream PC market.

Intel's answer to the mainstream market will be their new i845G chipset. The highly integrated i845G will support the Pentium 4 and DDR SDRAM like the i845D boards first mentioned here at World Tribune back in October. Intel expects to officially release this product in April 2002, but I have seen a couple of pre-production models. The Intel 845G board I was privileged enough to play with was using experimental pre-alpha drivers, but it was actually very stable in Windows XP Professional. Like the nForce, the i845G uses DDR SDRAM, has built-in sound, video and network interface connections.

That's where the similarities end. Nvidia's nForce has much better video than the i845G. The nForce video has 32MB of dedicated video RAM on a GeForce2 MX-style graphic core compared to a few measly megabytes of shared system memory on the Intel 845G's integrated graphics. In video benchmark comparisons, the nForce has severely beaten the i845G. Home users in the market for a mainstream PC would probably prefer an nForce-based system. However, the i845G is mainstream but also geared primarily for businesses. I'm not all that sure I want my employees playing video games at a smooth 30+ frames per second while on the job. There's also the fact that the drivers I saw were pre-alpha from Intel and in no way optimized. Even then, the 3D intensive game "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon" was playable at 1024 X 768.

The Nvidia nForce boards have Dolby Digital sound compared to fairly standard (yet multichannel stereo) sound on the i845G board. Again, for a home user the nForce is going to win out in the sound department, but business users won't see much of a difference. Both the nForce and Intel boards' network interfaces were comparable to a standard 10/100 card you can get at any CompUSA or Fry's, but the i845G's network interface was able to be remotely "managed" by network administrators. Score a slight advantage for businesses using the i845G.

Something that the i845G board has that the nForce lacks is USB 2.0 support. USB, a ubiquitous hot-swap connection interface used on both PC and Macintosh computers, has long been criticized for being too slow compared to the IEEE-1394 ( aka Firewire) standard. Microsoft passed on USB 2.0 support with pre-Service Pack 1 OEM/retail releases of their new Windows XP operating system because of a lack of USB 2.0 products. Intel is thinking ahead by including support of it in the i845G, but where are the USB 2.0 peripherals? USB 2.0's greatly increased 480Mb transfer rate makes it very competitive with Firewire, but so what? If there are no USB 2.0 devices, what good is it?

Intel has an interesting problem in positioning their 845G to compete with nForce/SiS/Via-based boards in the mainstream desktop market. Nvidia has the advantage because nForce is an Athlon/Duron only product that won't contend with licensing lawsuits from Intel the way ALI/SiS/Via-based chipsets will. The nForce boards will undoubtedly be cheaper than the Intel boards because of the AMD processors are on average much less expensive than comparable Intel parts. For home users (and even some power users), the better sound and video are major advantages for the nForce boards over the i845G.

However, major OEMs like Dell, Gateway and HP can use the highly integrated 845G with the new low-cost Pentium 4 Celerons to hit a competitive price point with business users. Only one top-tier OEM (MicronPC) has a line of mainstream PCs based on nForce chipsets, and that's not saying much. Large OEMs are likely to use the i845G over the nForce because of the unparalleled stability with Intel chipsets. The i845G's video and audio performance is an X factor in the pre-alpha stage. The production versions of the new Intel video and audio will undoubtedly improve greatly, but how much better will it need to be for the business market Intel is obviously targeting?

Nvidia's AMD/nForce chipset is a good product, but it's going to lose out to Intel's 845G because there's no broad support with the major OEMs. A modified nForce powers the Pentium III-based Microsoft XBox, so it's not like Nvidia hates Intel and refuses to work with them. Speculation is that if Nvidia garners a P4 license from Intel, it would put Intel out of the chipset business. That's not beyond the realm of possibility, but it seems extremely unlikely. Realistically, it's an issue of how much money each side wants when it comes to licensing the nForce/Intel technology.

With the release of the 845G, Intel is going to dominate the business market with a low cost integrated solution. If your business is looking to spend some money out of the IT budget next year to upgrade those old Pentium 266 PCs from three years ago, wait until April. You'll be glad you did.

Your comments and criticisms are welcomed at mailto:scott@worldtechtribune.com
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