Reviews - NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 in SLI - can it beat AMD?

[HalloweenJack]

full `power` GF106 core, as a good guess

[mateau]

I have been largely a huge fan of Invidia. I built 3 pc's using Invidia chipsets, graphics and AMD cpu's and was very happy with the results.

My thinking then was their discrete gpu's should be optimised for their chipsets.

Unfortunately that is not longer the case as Intel has refused to license Invidia to produce chipsets for Sandy Bridge. Furthermore Sandy Bridge and AMD Fusion will eliminate the need for mid-range discrete graphics. The high end will still be there but on a PCI bus and support of SLI for the Intel Sandy Bridge has not been made clear.

So the only market that remains is legacy and that is only good for maybe a year for the gamer and enthusiast user. And those folks are both probably waiting to build out this spring.

One other nail in the coffin for discrete graphics lies in the AMD-Intel Agreement whereby the PCI bus may only be supported for (now) 5 more years. Intel out of the goodness of it's heart (what heart) may choose to extend this arrangement but if they do choose to discontinue PCI they are still obliged by the agreement to provide x86 compiler support for the new bus to their competition. Is Invidia their competiion now that Invidia chipsets are now a thing of the past?

So the question is: Is PCI still necessary or is it doomed in 5 years. And just what kind of future remains for discrete graphics in a Second Generation APU and graphics enabled cpu world?

It is becoming clearer that Invidia and ARM are getting cozier.