14 DAY TRIAL // Santa Clara, California-based NVIDIA is said to be preparing the introduction of a new motherboard chipset, which will provide end-users with support for the latest AM2 and AM3-socket compatible processors. The new chipset will basically enable motherboard makers to roll out products that combine the computing power of AMD's latest 45nm-based Phenom II processors with the graphics performance of NVIDIA's lineup of GeForce graphics cards. The new chipset, codenamed MCP82 XE, is expected to be released by the end of this month, under the official name of nForce 980a SLI.
According to details made available by vr-zone in a recent news-article, the graphics chip maker is preparing to expand its lineup of AMD-supporting chipsets, by introducing a new nForce 980a SLI motherboard GPU, which is based on the MCP82 XE chipset. The new nForce product will add support for NVIDIA's SLI and Hybrid SLI technologies, combined with the additional support for AM2 and AM3 desktop processors.
The new nForce chipset is said to essentially be the MCP72 XE that comes with support for the latest AM3 processors, on both DDR2 and DDR3 motherboards. The MCP82 has PCIe 2.0, HyperTransport 3.0, Triple SLI support, Hybrid SLI, a total of 12 USB 2.0 ports, SATA 3GB/s ports, Gigabit Ethernet and HD Audio. The motherboard GPU will enable support for Microsoft's DirectX 10 API and Shader Model 4.0. The MCP82 XE is specified at 20W TDP while using the mGPU, at 22W TDP in Hybrid mode and 9W when the chip is in idle mode.
It's interesting to see how AMD and NVIDIA can collaborate on the release of new SLI-supporting chipsets, especially since Intel appears to be looking for ways to take NVIDIA out of the chipset business, at least for Intel-based platforms. On the other hand, the new AM3-support nForce chipset will probably compete with AMD's own Dragon platform, which combines an AMD chipset with the latest Phenom II processors and Radeon graphics cards.