NVIDIA-Via Join Forces to Fend Off Intel and AMD

NVIDIA has released more details about the much-touted tie-up with Via in this article from CNET.com. The deal would pit a combo of NVIDIA's soon to be released IGP and Via's Isaiah with the existing discreet graphics products of AMD and Intel. This comes at a crucial time for NVIDIA. Analysts are starting to question the long-term viability of their products in the face of increasing consolidation on the part of AMD and Intel to include graphics into their individual product offerings.

To stress the cost benefits of this future platform, NVIDIA is drawing direct cost comparisons with Intel's existing IGP solutions for multimedia-enabled machines. They say their solution would perform better compared to a similarly-priced option from Intel. Here's a copy of the comparison they presented to analysts at a recent event:


This development is an interesting historical point in the evolution of the role IGP solutions will play in the ever-heightening green consciousness of consumers. It also emphasizes the need for cheaper but better hardware to deal with the demand of current household computing needs. To be more specific, today's computer must be able to play multimedia content and be cheap enough to be adopted in the home. NVIDIA and Via are in effect creating a product platform that will appeal to both green computing advocates and cost-conscious consumers. This post in Ubergizmo also opines that this increases NVIDIA's chances of fending off moves by Intel and AMD to consolidate graphics into their own platforms, thus ensuring they will still be relevant to the PC for the foreseeable future.

I think I'll put off upgrading until this is released. This is even better than I had hoped for. The low-power features of Via's Isaiah combined with NVIDIA chipset. Having both in a single board will surely perform well on the graphics end and still save on power consumption. This will turn out as the perfect solution for my needs. I'm thinking a Zonbu based off this platform would be even better.