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UPDATED: Foxconn drops nForce 790i
Nvidia denies that its quitting the chipset business, as Foxconn drops its nForce 790i-based Dreadnought board
Foxconn has halted development of its nForce 790i-based Quantum Force Dreadnought board, amid reports that the chipset is unreliable. This morning, The Inquirer claimed that Foxconn was one of three motherboard manufacturers, along with Gigabyte and DFI, who had dropped their 790i boards, implying that the problem was related to the weak packaging and thermal management issues of some mobile GPUs that Nvidia admitted to this month.
While Nvidia acknowledges that Foxconn has ceased development of the Dreadnought board, the company’s PR manager for the UK and Northern Europe, Ben Berraondo, told Custom PC that Gigabyte’s 790i board is ‘still on their roadmap, and they’re still coming out with it.’ Berraondo also said that he ‘didn’t even know DFI were meant to be making a 790i board,’ so the board may not have even been in development in the first place.
While Foxconn claims that it’s had problems with the chipset, every other motherboard manufacturer that we’ve spoken to says they haven’t had any problems with it. MSI’s Richard Stewart told Custom PC that ‘from MSI’s side, we haven’t seen any major problems with our P7N2 Diamond, which is based on nForce 790i, so we don’t currently have any plans to drop the chipset from our lineup.’ Meanwhile, Asus’ Iain Bristow said that ‘Asus are still selling and producing the Striker 2 Extreme and Striker 2 NSE range of motherboards, which utilise the 790i Ultra and 790i Nvidia chipsets respectively. There are currently no plans to change this.’
The bad press surrounding nForce 790i has prompted speculation that Nvidia may be exiting the chipset business. Today, DigiTimes reported that Nvidia decided to quit making chipsets after a meeting this week apparently showed that motherboard manufacturers weren’t interested in new Nvidia chipsets. The site says that ‘Nvidia will transfer the chipset team to working on GPU projects.’
However, Berraondo from Nvidia described the story as ‘complete fabrication,’ adding that ‘Nvidia is still very much in the chipset business and has no plans to exit, as several exciting new products on the horizon will show.’
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Has anyone here said they totally don't trust Nvidia chipsets? They've just learnt from previous experience and decided to stick with what works.
Comment by cjagusz at 1:18pm 6th August 2008
Why would nvidia need to keep making their chipsets? to make a profit! that's like Samsung saying "let's make hard Drives" then saying "oh no, someone else makes them, let's stick with tellies". I also dont get why some people, having had a bad experience with NV chipsets, now totally don't trust them. I used to have a via chipset (s754 system) which was pretty abysmal but if via released a board that performed well, o/c'd well and didn't set itself on fire then i'd probably buy it. I would buy a 4870, but I don't like a GPU running at 80C, if a card was released that had a sensible cooler and ran at 50C then it would be a more attractive proposition.
Comment by EdArch at 11:21am 6th August 2008
If Nvidia die off, then GPUs in general are F**Ked because AMD can just follow down Intels route and kill off the GPU so there is less people for AMD to focus on, which could turn out to be a big problem for us... I just hope the NV and ATI fanboys will be big enough fanboys to not buy into this rubbish of Intels...
Comment by NikoBellic at 10:12am 5th August 2008
After testing this board for the past 2 months, I can vouch for the "thermal" problems... Was shaping upto be a cracking board as well :-(
Comment by barron_greenback at 7:47pm 4th August 2008
.... wasn't good either. I had purchased an Asus P5N32E SLI Plus (I think) and I just couldn't get the system built around it to run stable, even at stock speeds. I remember northbridge ran ridiculously hot.
In the end I gave up on it and purchased an Asus Maxmimus Formula which worked without problems.
It would take some convincing to try Nvidia chipsets again, despite the nice feature of unlocking the memory clock.
Comment by cjagusz at 8:57am 4th August 2008
this might be true because the new nehalem boards support sli so why wud nvidia need to keep on making their own chipset boards?
Comment by camz2008 at 2:37pm 2nd August 2008
it started out as a nice bit of satirical doom-mongering fun, then went the whole 'Fox News' hog and just got exaggerated and silly! I doubt nVidia are going to make a sudden exit from chipsets because of this or their possibly-related errors, they've put alot of effort into these new chipsets and the hybrid SLI/hybridpower technologies and it'd probably be a bit of a blow to the gfx cards if they no longer had chipsets to support these features. As for the motherboards, well, let's hope it is something to do with the other issues so it can be resolved, and not another drama for them...
Comment by EdArch at 12:09am 2nd August 2008
This only proves once and for all that nVidia are DOOMED and on their way out, deceased, bereft of manufacturing life and joining the choir invisible. It won't be long now before Nintendo buy them out, or possibly Volvo...or Enron
Comment by EdArch at 12:04am 2nd August 2008
The chip is not needed to allow Sli on Intel chipsets, its simply a way of only allowing it on certain boards. Quadro cards allow Sli on all chipsets, they use different drivers that do not check that an Nvidia chipset is present.
Comment by NotFred at 11:18pm 1st August 2008
I used to have an Nforce4 DFI Lanparty UT NF4 Ultra-D. That motherboard is gorgeous, and still going in another computer with the Athlon X2 4200+ (939) I bought for it, overclocked to 2.6GHz, as it has been for about 3 years. When I upgraded to my next platform I was horrified. I thought I'd stick with an nforce chipset, so got a 650i SLI (stupidly) in the shape of the Abit FP-IN9 Fatal1ty. I thought that motherboard sucked honestly. Could run my E2140 at 3GHz but barely, and I had to strap 3 40mm fans on the NB to keep it cool. It also took ages to find a stable FSB speed and I found that memory overclocking was a total nightmare. Hardly any combinations in between worked. I have just upgraded motherboard after a painful 8 months, to a DFI Lanparty LT X38-T2R. It took me about 4 minutes to overclock back to normal speeds, and i only had to change Vcore. Actually I'm now running at 3.1GHz stable, rather than the 2960ish I managed with the 650i. I totally agree that Nvidia chipsets are unstable and I'm glad foxconn aren't going to spoil their cool new motherboard lineup with one.
Comment by RedHotsRule549 at 10:24pm 1st August 2008
It is questionable whether the nforce chip is even needed to carry out SLI considering SLI has been proven before on non-SLI boards.
Comment by tiff_lee at 9:23pm 1st August 2008
Yup I agree with you there. I'm still running on my old 939 nForce4 board and it's only just growing whiskers. For Intel boards you want an Intel chipset hands down.
Comment by TWeaKoR at 5:57pm 1st August 2008
To be honest, the only nVidia chipset boards I have been interested in were for the AMD sockets, going back to the nForce2-4 range. For an Intel socket they have never even crossed my mind as a potential buy.
Comment by PokerMuppet at 5:26pm 1st August 2008
If Nvidia knew they were having problems with their chipsets, that may explain why they're letting Intel add nForce 200 chips to their future motherboards. It's the only way to keep SLi going in the short term.
Comment by l3v1ck at 3:56pm 1st August 2008
If you go to any of the 7 Series forums for the respective company, it is full of complaints and issues with these boards. The 790i was a hell of a price, performed well but is hampered with problems, from drivers, heat too BIOS's.
Comment by C7ouD at 3:48pm 1st August 2008
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