No more NVIDIA chipsets for Macs?

Seth Weintraub
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October 08, 2009
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NVIDIA has fallen on hard times it seems both due to licensing issues with Intel and manufacturing issues with their integrated chipsets.  ZDNet is reporting today that Intel has forced NVIDIA to halt development of its future chipsets for Intel processors, specifically Core and Nehalem series - which Apple use.  We reported on this back in August.

In a somewhat related note, NVidia has stopped making chipsets for AMD because in-house ATI has been taking all of that business. 

The spat with Intel isn't a done deal but it is considered a big enough risk that NVIDIA is halting Nforce integrated chip investment until the issue is dragged through the courts in 2010.

Intel claims that its four-year-old chipset license with NVIDIA doesn’t cover the Nehalem or Core series of CPUs. NVIDIA naturally disagrees with this and as a result is that both parties will fight it out in court sometime in 2010.

Almost all of Apple's low to mid-range product line use NVIDIA chipsets but recent issues mentioned above had the long term relationship in question. 

 Intel will likely be the big winner in this one as they make competing chipsets that will likely find their way into future Macs and PCs.

Comments (5)

the Cappy (not verified) | October 08, 2009 - 9:54am

I think it's unfortunate that the courts are so slow you can effectively kill a competitor's product line doing these kinds of shenanigans.

Daniel (not verified) | October 08, 2009 - 10:34am

Intel = plague. Isn't it enough that they torture the world with x86...?

muddybulldog (not verified) | October 09, 2009 - 5:35am

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the entire Apple product line top to bottom except for the Mac Pro uses Nvidia chipsets at this point.

bothausenstein 111 (not verified) | October 10, 2009 - 12:53am

You are correct. It will suck for the entry level if they have to go back to intel integrated. If they go with a dedicated gpu and intel chipset on everything that is a different story and I would cheer the decision. I guess it depends how Apple will respond.

bothausenstein 111 (not verified) | October 10, 2009 - 12:54am

You are correct. It will suck for the entry level if they have to go back to intel integrated. If they go with a dedicated gpu and intel chipset on everything that is a different story and I would cheer the decision. I guess it depends how Apple will respond.