Hmmm.....amazing how many of the gaps you've filled in yourself.

I never got into the 6 series chipset bug in that huge post, its outdated info that doesnt matter now. It was Ztcoracat who brought it up, and neither of us mentoined the exact chipsets involved.

Ivy bridge can have HD 4000 or HD 2500. Yes, its an improvement on sandy bridge...just like NV17/18 (Geforce 4 MX) is an improvement on NV11/15/16 (Geforce 2).

The drivers and hardware are pretty much exactly the same, just they changed the numbers for marketing reasons. The marketing seems to be working.....

LOL, Intel 'decent GPU'? Depending on your requirements, they already have with the Intel HD series.

Decent GPU for gaming, LMAO. Intel has tried that several times.....Larrabee was the last public project intel has had to make a 'gaming' GPU. It never even got to market (though intel is going to sell 'MIC'/'Knights Corner' which are developed from Larrabee).

Well, I'm passimistic about the future. I see it only as a matter of time before Intel swallows either Nvidia or AMD, and then they'll have decent GPU designs and designers. I presume they won't fire all of them. That kills off competition in PC chipsets. Game over.

The parallel GPU cores is the stumbling block ATM, I gather. From a hardware guy's point of view, it's not an insuperable obstacle. Now there may be patent issues to deal with, and the best ways of doing it may be done and patented, but I'm sure they will manage. Companies like Telefunken had major decoding blocks of the PAL TV market sewn up with patents. The Japanese (Salora, Mitsubishi, & Samsung in Korea) found ways around those patents and actually improved on the colour quality also. You don't have quite the same decoding problems with NTSC.

Intel wont buyout AMD. Even if they wanted to it would be anti-competitive. From what I've heard AMD isnt even a good choice for a buyout, thanks to the legal minefield that the AMD/intel licencing/agreements have made.

nVidia...I dont think intel wants them. They might buy them if the price was 'right' (i.e. very low), at current market values intel wont touch them. Dont forget that it was AMD overpaying for ATI that in part led to the situation we have now. Intel would rather crush nVidia, as it is currently doing.

There is no real comptition in x86 chipsets anymore. Intel has intel chipsets. I dont recall if nVidia is still building ION2 chipsets, if they are its the end of the line for intel and nVidia. Intel wont give them a licence to make iX chipsets....

AMD has AMD chipsets. While its still possible to get nVidia chipsets for AMD, I wouldnt touch one unless I had no choice.

Pretty horrible when I remember how much choice we used to have with x86 chipsets.

Finally got the box today. It seems that dabs say "18 in stock," but they mean "Samsung has 18 in stock, but they have none." The communication between Samsung & dabs was poor, leading to me getting nothing until I complained.

Windows 8 is a Nightmare - like Vista. Just too many mouse movements required for simple things. For instance, turning off the box is located is located in a hidden menu accessed by bringing a mouse pointer to one of the right hand screen corners (Top right or bottom right) and then choose Settings/Power/Switch off. Intuitive, huh?