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To: Sleeperz who wrote (7559)	9/22/1998 6:34:00 PM
From: Rob Cavese	Respond to of 16960

There is price and then there is price/performance: <<If separate chips were cheaper than an integrated solution then Intel would not be making Celeron A chips to save a few bucks.>> The point initially made was that current high-perfomance graphics chipsets are too sophisticated to be integrated efficiently. In some cases it can be cheaper to integrate a basic graphics chipset but this generally occurs once the product has been surpassed by several generations of improved technology. In short, integration is an attempt to commoditize and a commodity doesn't have cutting edge functionality. As an aside, my understanding is that new Celeron is not cheaper than the old one. It's just that the process shrink to .25um allowed room for an on-chip cache which was greatly needed. Integration is cheaper than incorporating the cache off-die but not cheaper than just leaving out the cache altogether. <<Intel integrates the graphics chips the OEMs will be more or less, forced to buy Intels version of the Integrated system/graphics chip regardless if its the best solution or not.>> You're making an assumption that a graphics chip is a graphics chip and that, once a computer has one, there's no longer any need for an improved solution. OEMs and consumers will continue to purchase add-on cards with the latest technology. It's difficult to believe that Intel will be able to keep the pace of its product development cycle when faced with the additional challenge of concurrently developing the graphics chipset and efficiently integrating it. I'm not sure how it is to Intel's advantage to "force" OEMs to purchase something they don't want or need. If Intel is really in a position to "force" OEMs to buy what they give them, why even incorporate a graphics chipset in the first place?

To: Sleeperz who wrote (7559)	9/22/1998 6:42:00 PM
From: Simon Cardinale	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

CR Lum: we need to not lump everything together If separate chips were cheaper than an integrated solution then Intel would not be making Celeron A chips to save a few bucks. Plop over to the Cyrix thread and Take a look at what Cyrix is planning on doing, a PC-on-a-chip the MXi. I could counter that they aren't persuing only Celeron A chips (which currently haven't anything integrated into them including cache, which makes them great overclocking chips I'm told). Notice that Intel is doing this for the low end. I said in my post that low end stuff was a different story. For any quality video chipset integrating into the CPU produces way too much heat. Good performance 3D acceleration will continue to push the boundary of heat generation (just as CPUs do today). But you are also concerned about motherboard system chipset integration (which would be moot if CPU integration were in the works). At that level you can only truly integrate commoditized products. Intel (and other motherboard manufacturers) can put the same IDE interfaces on all their motherboard because it doesn't matter which one you buy, so long as a certain minimum of quality is met. They can't put the same 2D chips on all their motherboards because there are still features which differentiate them. How much more so 3D and 2D/3D chipsets? That's not to say they can't produce a line of motherboards with ATI Rage Pro or Banshee chipsets built in, but they can't choose one and make it standard to everyone. In a normal market it would be impossible. Their monopoly makes it almost conceivable, but in order to succeed they would need to rely entirely on their monopoly on CPUs. This would be illegal. Simon