Intel Corp’s launch of the 810E chipset at the end of last month (CI No 3,756) takes the company’s integrated graphics strategy into the mid-range marketplace, and spells trouble for the third party 3D graphics vendors who have concentrated on that space, such as ATI Technologies Inc and S3 Inc. The 810E chipset is a variant of the 810/Whitney chipset that integrates graphics, audio and soft modem features, aimed at the $1,200 to $1,500 PC market segment.
According to the Microprocessor Report, although the high-end 3D market remains viable and active Intel’s integration strategy has quickly halved the available market for discrete third-party 3D chips. Nvidia Corp has already produced its own alternative integrated chipset, and S3 is working on one, but both will find it hard to displace the 810E, despite its relatively poor performance. Users don’t appear to care much about graphics performance, mainly due to the lack of mainstream 3D applications outside of the gaming world, and so are perfectly happy with the 810E’s limited speed.
Intel itself has failed in the area of discrete graphics chips, and discontinued the i740 family, including the newest version, the low-end 752, back in August (CI No 3,728). The Report predicts that the discrete 3D graphics chip now looks to be heading in the same direction as the math co-processor – towards extinction.
