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5 – nForce 680i/a chipsets: As tough as it is to compete against Intel in the CPU business, you can argue that in some ways, they’re even tougher in chipsets. Over the years Intel’s chipset business has run into a few roadblocks – most notably during the Pentium III/Rambus fiasco during which VIA was able to capture a large portion of the market – but other than that, Intel’s been a tough competitor.

In order for a company other than Intel to succeed in the chipset business on Intel’s platform you have to design a product that offers significantly more than Intel all while also delivering a solid platform. That’s exactly what NVIDIA has done with their nForce 680i chipset.

One of the chief selling points of the nForce 680i chipset it that it is incredibly forward-looking: nForce 680i is the first chipset to fully support 1333MHz FSB operation. Intel isn’t expected to release their first 1333MHz FSB CPU until the latter half of 2007 and while many P965 motherboards can break the 1333MHz FSB barrier as well, officially it’s considered overclocking. nForce 680i also supports SLI-ready DDR2 memory speeds up to 1200MHz. In comparison, Intel only recently added DDR2-800 support in the G/P 965 family of chipsets. The chipset has also been endowed with 46 PCI Express lanes and supports up to three PCI Express graphics slots. And of course, NVIDIA continues to keep SLI exclusive to their chipsets (although Intel-based motherboards can be hacked to support SLI unofficially).


NVIDIA did hit one snag with nForce 680i however. Some users ran into data corruption and other SATA issues with their nForce 608i motherboards. The problems affected some users with motherboards based on NVIDIA’s reference board design and has since been corrected via a BIOS update that was issued a few weeks ago.





4 – Dell 3007WFP: Dell’s 30” 3007WFP display was by no means the first 30” LCD, Apple’s Cinema display was actually first, but Dell was the first to make 30” considerably cheaper. When it was initially introduced, the 3007WFP sold for hundreds less than the Apple Cinema display, and 3007WFP panels can now be found online for about $1,200, that’s over $1,000 less than prices were a year ago. In fact, Dell has used this formula of providing high-end, feature-packed displays with attractive pricing to catapult themselves to the #1 spot in LCD sales.

The 3007WFP boasts an 11ms grey-to-grey response time (14 ms black-to-black), 700:1 contrast ratio, and 400cd/m2 brightness. The monitor also ships with a 9-in-2 media card reader and sports four USB ports for added connectivity. Since launching the 3007WFP, Dell has announced a newer model, the 2007WFP-HC, which boasts improved color. The 3007WFP is also HDCP-compliant.

The bottom line though is that the introduction of Dell’s 3007WFP had huge implications for the entire LCD market. With its aggressive pricing, the introduction of the 3007WFP had a trickle down effect on the rest of the industry, and as a result, prices on all big monitors came down. You can now buy a 24” LCD for well under $800 in part thanks to Dell’s 3007WFP.