NVIDIA Segment Breakdown and Unified Driver Arch
This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.
Directly below I have included two images of the NVIDIA press documentation that shows the market segments that NVIDIA is envisioning and how their products play out into them.


You can see pretty clearly here what they have in mind. For systems with graphics cards NOT integrated into the motherboard, there are three areas: Enthusiast, Highend and Mainstream. Chances are, if you are reading this you fall into one of these three. The enthusiast is going to want one the top of the line products available and that means the best performing NVIDIA nForce2 chipset combination. Coupling the nForce2 SPP with the nForce2 MCP-T you get the top of the line motherboard. Throw in a Ti 4600 video card and you have the best PC on the market (all with NVIDIA chipsets, ironically). Next, the Highend segment would downgrade to a Ti 4200 card to save some money, and then once more downgrade into the Mainstream segment.
The Integrated PCs table shows some more interesting results. For the Mainstream segment, you could couple the nForce2 IGP with either the MCP or the MCP-T, depending on the users need for a high-end sound system and multiple network cards. Moving into the Value range of PCs, and we are talking in the $600 range total here, you can use the nForce IGP (the original nForce) with the value nForce2 MCP to get the a system setup that is perfect for OEMs. It is interesting to see how well the HyperTransport technology is working here, as NVIDIA was able to couple to chipsets from different generations together with no problems at all.
On that same note of ease of integration, NVIDIA was quick to demonstrate how well their unified driver architecture is working on the nForce2 chipset. In the same way that the first nForce worked, a single driver download will be all you need to install your system and all you need to update the drivers. This makes upgrades and system restores a breeze for PC enthusiasts. In fact, NVIDIA claims they have this overlay working so well that using drivers from the original nForce platform, you could easily install a new nForce2 chipset motherboard. Of course, to take advantage of all the new features and performance boosts, the latest drivers are always the best.