Chipmaker
Nvidia went amok when AMD announced the first AM2+ chipsets, namely the
790FX, 790X and 770, and promised to put all its best at stake to
recover the handicap. Things have heated up pretty
much at the GPU manufacturer's headquarters and the next year will
bring us no less than six AM2+ chipsets for the upcoming Phenoms. All
the promised chipsets will be part of the MPC72 and MCP78 line-up.
The MPC72 chips will be found on the nForce 700a family of boards. The
other chips, MPC78s - MCP78U and MCP78S will be commercially known as
GeForce 9200 and 8200 respectively, and will feature integrated
graphics to support DirectX 10.1. This is a major offensive, as they
are supposed to compete with AMD's RS780G chips.
The chipsets will include support for one PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slot,
Hybrid SLI, six SATA ports, 14 USB connectors, as well as DVI and HDMI
ports. Nvidia has scheduled the GeForce 8200 series to be officially
unveiled next month. The chip will be included on entry-level
mainboards that sell for about $55. The GeForce 9200 enabled
motherboards will be a little more expensive and will sell for $70 and
$80. The first 9200 chips are expected to arrive in late February.
The nForce 700a family will include other four chipsets: the 780a SLI,
750a SLI, 730a and 720a. These are either high-end or mid-range chips,
but this did not prevent Nvidia from integrating graphics into the 780a
SLI.
The nForce 720a will be launched in February and will sport two PCIe
2.0 x16 slots, six SATA ports, 14 USB ports and FirstPacket support.
Although the chip is quite mid-range, it lacks SLI, Hybrid SLI and
SmartPower capabilities. The 730a chipset is slated for January 2008.
It will include the same features as the cheaper nForce 720a plus
Hybrid SLI support. Things get a little odd with the Hybrid SLI
support, since the 730a chipset does not feature integrated graphics.
The high-end users will surely appreciate the last two Nvidia chipsets,
that both feature integrated graphics as well as 3Way SLI support (for
the 780a model) and 2-way SLI (the 750a version). The chips include
SmartPowert and FirstPacker support, six SATA ports, 14 USB connectors
and DVI and HDMI. The two chipsets are different as the 780a has two
x16 2.0 ports while the 750a has two x8 2.0 ports.
You must register before you can view this text.
