X-bit labs

April 2004 Hardware News Overview (page 4)

Category: Editorial

by Andy Yaschenko

[ 04/21/2004 | 09:34 AM ]

VIA didn’t forget about another direction where it’s been traditionally strong, although less now than before – platforms for AMD processors. The K8T800 Pro, much emphasized at CeBIT, is for them, differing from its “non-Pro” mate in the support of the 1GHz HyperTransport bus, in addition to 800MHz. That’s going to be the way the Athlon 64 will develop in this year: a 25% increase of the bus clock rate here and a higher frequency of the supported DDR SDRAM there. Plus a new socket – the K8T800 Pro supports the Socket 939.

The SiS 756 chipset, announced at CeBIT, supports the 1GHz HyperTransport and the Socket 939 and the PCI Express bus and various minor things like a Gigabit Ethernet controller integrated into the South Bridge. We’ll probably see mainboards on this chipset in May-June or thereabouts.

Somewhat to my surprise, first mainboards on the nForce3 250 appeared in March (considering the speed at which NVIDIA moves on in this field lately, we might as well never see them at all). This time they did it: we saw the ill-fated nForce2 MCP that supports SerialATA and Gigabit Ethernet. The nForce3 250 differs from the first generation (nForce3 150) only in support of these peripheral functions and in the 1GHz HyperTransport/Socket 939 combination, of course. Overall, there’s nothing new against the competitors, but NVIDIA seemed ready to throw in such chipsets in mass quantities in March already.

We will of course be watching the turn of events, but, if nothing seriously changes in the next two-three quarters, VIA will increase its market share, while NVIDIA will lose. SiS will keep its slice of the pie, in all probability. I guess there won’t be the second renaissance as in the times of the SiS 645 and SiS 650.

Memory

Prices went crazy in the last month! They skyrocketed up since its beginning and were growing without any pauses until its end. As a result, in March only, the price of a 256Mb DDR400 chip went up from $4.43 to $5.53 in the spot market. In other words, 25% per month! The same tendency will probably rule in April, too.

Why so? In fact, it was clear that the beginning of the spring would be ameliorative. A long decline is sure to be followed by a period of some growth – the increasing demand from major OEM makers gave effect at last. So there were natural reasons for the prices to go up, but not that high…

Seeing the demand, the memory makers rushed into the sweetest contract market, working in the spot one just to show their presence there. That was a fertile soil for deficit to spring from. Considering that many of them had swung their “PC memory – flash” pendulum to the lucrative flash, we get the well-known situation: growing demand meets limited supply.

The traders have long been waiting for a growth phase, now they were willing to uphold this new trend, pushing the prices even higher. By the way, the contract market, much more voluminous and thus more adequately reflecting the ongoing processes, was more reserved in March – its prices grew only by 10-15% compared to those 25% in the spot market.