That's probably the most intriguing part of the whole NForce saga to date.....just how much, if any, of a price premium is there going to be?

I've heard everything from $50 dollars a chipset which would be far from totally out of line with current chipsets (wasn't the i850 at $40 when it first came out?) to rumors that Nvidia was looking to cash in for a lot more per unit.

Now, if the price is at $50, the question becomes is it really all that much of a premium considering the chipset has both integrated sound AND video, never mind the power of the two chips in question. I guess the only way we can truly compare is to find pricing on major OEM computers where the video wasn't integrated and find out how much they were paying per video card and whether or not the total cost to the manufacturer grew to more than what the NForce alone cost.

Another interesting side to this is, IF (and until it's released in mobo's by any of the five who have signed up so far and been tested thoroughly by independent sites, it's a big if), the NForce proves to be the performance demon the Nvidia is claiming, doesn't that make it even more of an attractive thing to the OEMs. Suddenly, they've got an integrated machine that should lower their volume of support calls which looks to provide performance on par with a mid-level non-integrated PC.

Isn't this what we've been awaiting for so long now? An integrated PC sold to the masses that doesn't run like a piece of garbage that can still have non-integrated cards put in to run the latest and greatest?

I, for one, am hoping that Nvidia can make good on their claims.

The sound issue is debatable for me, we only pay a few pounds for a soundcard that 95% of customers will be happy with, so if the chipset is 10$ or $20 more expensive and that follows through to the price of mobos, it wouldn't be worth it on that alone. However, an MX quality video card thrown in for only a little more rather than the £40 it costs for the card would be great as this is quickly becoming the average card we put in a basic system. Having fewer potential configuration issues would also be a big bonus.

The only other issue is that a lot of Intel marketing has got through to the public and many do ask for Intel chips specifically.

Do they ask for the Pentium 4? The Pentium 3? Or just "Intel Inside".

Also, have you ever asked them why during the process of trying to find what computer best fits their needs?

Usually they mean just Intel, P4s are relatively new and expensive so we've only had a couple of request for them specifically so far. Whether that's the best choice for them or not is up for debate (somewhere else ), but I have 3 AMD systems at home and we wouldn't hesitate to recommend them if we thought the customer might get a better deal out of it and would be prepared to listen. It's more about 'wants' than 'needs' in my opinion these days, as most office systems don't really need to be as powerful as any modern computer, but in this country at least AMD is not well known among the public and even some technical people who handle their company's IT needs still judge them on the legacy of past products instead of on current information and so request Intel. That's pretty much the hurdle as far as I'm concerned, AMD can have all the performance in the world but it doesn't seep into the public conciousness until some time afterwards. Maybe in the US AMD are a more well known brand, in the UK (our market at least) knows little about them other than that they're not Intel.

Thanks for the info.

Here's another one for you. IIRC, a few months back AMD had a major OEM win in Europe with regards to PC's being shipped with AMD processors. I thought it was in the UK but I could be wrong. All I do remember is that it was supposed to have been one of the biggest OEM vendors in the country where they were located.

Do you know if there has been any net effect?

If I'm not mistaken, on Tom's Hardware, I read that the cheaper NForce model (the one with the thinner [I think 64 bit] pathway from video card to system ram) is going to be only $10-$20 more and the one that uses the 128 bit wide pathway will cost $20-$35 more per mobo, of course.

I though, am still contemplating buying one, since the past three systems I have built I have gone the dual monitor route (im running a Radeon VE right now). Though I am finally getting wishy-washy about an integrated card now because most of the time, the integrated 2 monitor cards have not top of the line 3D performance. Maybe though, If the more expensive NForce has an AGP slot too, I could run dual monitors, as in dual monitor 3D acceleration. I would put a GeForce3 in the AGP and use it on my better monitor and use the MX on my cheaper monitor and I could maybe have dual monitor 3D acceleration. Does anybody know if something like this would be an option with the NForce?