AMD May Lead NVIDIA In The Next IGP Battle

AMD's RS780 and Nvidia's MCP 78 IGP chipsets are scheduled to go head-to-head in the first quarter of 2008, however, performance of the MCP 78S is reportedly below that of the RS780, while the higher-end MCP 78U is causing issues due to its higher thermal dissipation giving AMD the advantage over the chipset battle, according to sources at motherboard makers.

The RS780 is reported to have 15-20% better performance than the MCP 78S in 3DMark 05 and 06 tests, while the higher-end MCP 78U cannot function normally with the original passive northbridge heatpipe due to the higher core frequencies of the graphics engine. Adopting a larger heatpipe or fan will cause costs to rise significantly, pointed out the sources. Nvidia is still struggling with the problem, they added.

Additionally, motherboard makers have not yet taken delivery of MCP 78 chipset supplies, which means that the original launch schedule of motherboards might have to be postponed back to the end of January or beginning of February, noted the sources.

On the other hand, motherboard makers have already finished preparations for their RS780 motherboard launches and will be ready to ship in January 23 next year.

Source