This is sleazy. ATI's own southbridge might be slow, but at least it's not defective like Nvidia's. I've had so many problems with Nforce ethernet and IDE/SATA, errors and data loss, that I'm never using an Nforce chip again. And instead of using the rather decent ULi chips themselves to fix their own problems, what do they do? They cut production to hurt ATI.

There comes a point where people have to make a stand, and I'm encouraging everyone I know to boycott Nvidia, at least on the motherboard front. This action hurts the consumer, period, and the consumer should retaliate in kind.

Now ATI can cut off all the XGI parts that Nvidia is reliant upon. Oh, wait...

C'mon ATI. Take a cue from VIA and fire your engineers to make money for more marketers. Your retail products don't need to make it to shelves or be reliable if they do, so long as you have cheap, unimpressive OEM parts to placate the masses. Just make sure to advertise your vaporware all over tech sites and give a fancy name to every slight improvement in technology. VIA ftw!

Hmm, I guess I'll have to remember this when making buying decisions... the long term threat of such developments worries me as a consumer.

If ATI comes out with a good southbridge then I'll give them a try just to keep competition in the marketplace... I'd hate to see nforce as the only choice in the marketplace.

I don't think Via is up to the task of competing with nVidia, they just don't seem to understand the importance of software support and software - and sometimes hardware - quality in the marketplace, a small drop in pricetag is not what I'd call a good tradeoff for the consumer. Other players are too small. ATI is the only "other" viable alternative right now realistically speaking imho.

I'm also trying to get an ATI video card a couple of years later, this round nVidia's $200 range offerings were simply more attractive when I was in the market for one. I hope ATI has something good for me when the time comes next time around.

The nvidia HW works well. Windows drivers in combination with other software may not. NF4 chipset has been working fine for other OSes. There are however problems with some mobo makers (mostly BIOS issues). Asus and Gigabyte are some of the worst.

Market research: millions of dollars
Purchasing a small chipset company: 52 million dollars
Killing off your major competitor's entry into one of your most successful business segments: Priceless!

I love capitalism! (that is not saracsm, I mean it) If I were NVIDIA that is EXACTLY what I would do!

Hup hup! Let's get that southbridge ASAP! Or you're DEAD.

I think everyone saw this coming.

This is just the type of behavior that would push someone who was on the fence on which team to be a fanboi of, heh.

My question is how long does it take to come out with a new southbridge? I mean ATI has had the SB450 out for how long now, and they've known it sucks. I keep hearing the SB600 is still in development, but really, how hard can it be to throw a SATA2 controller and improve usb performance.

I guess it isn't surprising but it doesn't exactly help us consumers, at least not for a while. The silver lining is that ATI might just wake up and make a more competitive southbridge.

HA HA HA HA HA!

ATI better get their southbridge in order ASAP, or their chipset division is going to be roadkill...