14 DAY TRIAL // NVIDIA announced the imminent introduction of two new chipsets for the Intel platforms, according to DailyTech. NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI and 680i SLI support the Intel Core 2 technology and are to replace nForce 570 SLI and 590 SLI Intel Editions.
At a closer look, the 650i SLI and 680i SLI chipsets aren't exactly newly manufactured. It is just a quasi-re-branding of the previous chipsets. However, the C55 nForce 650i SLI SPP will be the equivalent of the previous nForce 430 SLI MCP, providing a total of 29 PCI Express lanes. As with the previous versions, the budget-oriented nForce 650i SLI will deliver two half-speed PCI Express X16 slots.
Nforce 680i SLI is basically a revised nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition chipset. But NVIDIA hopes it will be better received by manufacturers who reluctantly adopted the nForce 590 SLI, because of its FSB scaling issues. Now, the C55 nForce 680i SLI will be paired with the old nForce 590 SLI MCP in order to provide up to 48 PCIe lanes. This means that the nForce 680i SLI will be able to sustain two full-speed PCIe X16 slots. The new C55 chips are actually C19 (from 590 SLI) ones with upgraded memory controllers.
The new cipsets will continue to support 3.0 Gbps SATA, Gigabit ethernet, ATA-133, USB 2.0, high definition audio and up to five PCI slots. Asus and other OEM manufacturers are already making the appropriate changes in order to adopt the new line of NVIDIA Intel-platform chipsets.