Cadaveca has been using his foggy spectacles to take a look at what lies ahead in 2005. Looking at nVidia, AMD and Intel in particular. What are we likely to see at the big shows in 2005?

Groundhog's Day has come and passed and acronyms are floating the halls of hardware manufacturers; E3, CeBIT, COMPUTEX. For those of you that are not aware, these are the biggest and most influental comsumer-level tradeshows held by various organizations for the computing industry. Each one will see crowds upwards of 100,000 and sometimes substantially more. Companies will spend the whole year developing one product to release at either show because if you get good response there you're product is as good as gold.

We've started to hear rumours now... C19 and dual-core CPU's for the Intel front, Sony's Playstation 3, Windows 64 bit. Each one possibly changing computing in thier own regard. Each one with thier common denominator - nVidia.

nVidia is a popular name in the computing market whether it be motherboards or graphics, they have a good hold on two on the most important components in today's computers. Many people know them for thier graphics processors and most know about the nForce chipset. However, they are not in the business of making either components as parts of computers, but rather in processor architechture and design.

nVidia's business plan when looked at with foggy spectacles seems to follow a 2 year plan. One year they release a series of graphics processors, and the next they focus on motherboard chipsets. Thier place in the market is very specific and without partnerships with other companies it's hard to see them stay afloat.

There is a long-held bond between AMD and nVidia going up against the big Intel. The first rumours of favortism between the two became quite obvious with the introduction of dual-channel DDR, and the edge that put them ahead of Intel in performance of which Rambus felt the consequences. Then came the first support for 64 bit computing and most recently the introduction of SLi graphics.

This time, however, the partnerships are slightly different and nVidia had thier hand in everyone's pocket. There's another big change about to happen in the market again with the introduction of 64 bit computing and no matter who comes out the winner, nVidia stands to take in some winnings.

The one big thing that the majority of the people out there don't think about is the current news of dual-core CPU's . AMD and Intel have both laid bare thier plans, but nowhere do we see support in motherboards.

Now, this is not entirely true on the Intel front because they have recently introduced 2 new chipsets that should show support for these newest cores in one revision or another. But we are talking about nVidia, not Intel.

So, what about nVidia and thier two newest platform incarnations? Have they released technology that will support the monstrous dual-core beasts? Strangely enough they have both AMD and Intel covered in thier most recent releases.

Looking through those foggy spectacles, it seems it might just be so. Both sets of chipset have been released this year, 2005, at least to the public in quantity. That would mean that we shouldn't see anything new from them until 2007 in the chipset front and with the current processor roadmaps it even makes more sense. nVidia has already said that they plan no more GPU builds until 2006 and SLi seems to make sure that should the competition release a bombshell (which by looking at what's out there, does not seem to be likey), they have the computing power for graphics rendering covered until 2006. But that poses a big question, are all those 939 socket board owners out there just a BIOS upgrade away? Is nForce4 a trojan horse riding on PCI-EXPRESS wheels? Is it just nForce4, which seems to be the most customizable chipset ever released? What about VIA? Who's been supporting these dual cores? And what the heck is Nintendo doing..."home video game system with hard disk drive and Internet access capability" patent.

There are a load of big questions floating out there with many big names making major moves. Some of them will be answered later this year at one of the big "acronyms". I can't wait for the biggest one of them all...what about the little guys?

Discuss in the forum here.

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