Nvidia Exiting Chipset Business? Nope, Not True!

What a month August is shaping up to be, and we're only on day one! First, ArsTechnca exposes a major memory benchmarking flaw in Futuremark's PCMark05 suite, and if that weren't enough to have enthusiasts crying scandal, DigiTimes reported this morning (much to the chagrin of Nvidia's brass) that Nvidia plans to quit the chipset business.

According to DigiTimes, anonymous sources "close to the situation at one of Taiwan's top motherboard makers" are privy to Nvidia's alleged decision to stop making chipsets and instead transfer its chipset team to work on GPU projects. If true, the news would end any speculation that Apple might be looking to Nvidia to provide chipsets for its next round of MacBooks, and the future of SLI would be in serious trouble.

The story has been spreading like wildfire, and it didn't take long for Nvidia to offer an official response denying the allegations. Not only is Nvidia going on the record as saying the rumor is false, but they're asking DigiTimes to retract its story. Here's what what Nvidia had to say:

1. The story on DigiTimes is completely groundless. We have no intention of getting out of the chipset business.

2. In fact, our MCP business is as strong as it ever has been for both AMD and Intel platforms.

a. Mercury Research has reported that the Nvidia market share of AMD platforms in Q2 08 was 60 percent. We have been steady in this range for over two years. Contrary to popular perception, we have not lost any ground to AMD, despite their chipset introductions over the last year or so.

b. SLI is still the preferred multi-GPU platform thanks to its stellar scaling, game compatibility, and driver stability.

c. Nforce 790i SLI is the recommended choice by editors worldwide due to its compelling combination of memory performance, overclocking, and support SLI. In fact, a recent article on Tom's Hardware recently came to the same conclusion: LINK

3. We are looking forward to bringing new and very exciting MCP products to the market for both AMD and Intel platforms.

So there you have it. Nvidia's response doesn't leave much room for interpretation, and SLI fans can now let out a collective sigh of relief.

Image Credit: Nvidia