14 DAY TRIAL // Hong-Kong-based graphics card manufacturer Zotac pre-announced a new motherboard based on Nvidia's nForce 750 chipset. The new offering is extremely important, as the 750a is the first Nvidia chipset for AMD systems since 2006, when the graphics expert introduced the nForce 590 series.
The 750a delivers Nvidia's newest graphics technologies, such as Hybrid SLI, Hybrid Power and GeForce Boost for the AMD platform. The new Nvidia offering for the AMD platforms seems to be part of an older pact between AMD and the graphics manufacturer, called SNAP (Strategic Nvidia-AMD Partnership). The SNAP was created to conceive the chips for the first series of Xbox, but AMD was soon replaced by Intel.
The new motherboard comes with an integrated GeForce 8-series graphics core that features support for DirectX 10, Shader Model 4.0, and Nvidia HybridPower technology. More than that, the nForce 750a chipset can run two GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics cards in Quad-SLI links, despite the fact that Three-SLI links are not supported, because of the limited amount of PCI-Express connectors on the motherboard (two PCI-Express x16 slots).
The integrated graphics core is part of Nvidia's GeForce 8/9 series, and thanks to the HybridSLI support, users can boost graphics performance using a discrete card.
"Nvidia Hybrid SLI technology is the future of high-performance platforms, adding that the technology allows customers to have extreme flexibility with graphics performance when building new systems," claimed Zotac's marketing manager Carsten Berger.
The nForce 750a chipset is compatible with the previous, current and upcoming generations of AMD chips, and the company claims that the new motherboard will support 50 CPUs, including dual, tri and quad-core Phenom, Athlon, and Sempron processors with Hyper Transport 3.0 and DDR2 memory.
According to Zotac, its 750a-based motherboard offering is a no-compromise solution for users who would like to take advantage of full features without busting their budget out. Although general availability has not been announced yet, Zotac claims that the units will hit the market at sub-$150 price tags.