14 DAY TRIAL // Nvidia is reportedly planning to introduce a new series of single-chip mobile chipsets for Intel's processors. If all the mobile solutions based on Intel's CPUs were paired with its home-brewed Northbridge and Southbridge chips, things are about to change with the advent of Nvidia's monolithic MCP79 chipset.
The upcoming Centrino 2 platform is pitched as an important sales channel for Intel's own series of chipsets, but Nvidia's Northbridge and Southbridge seems to stick to its plans of sabotaging the CPU manufacturer as much as possible. Nvidia has two great advantages in the chipset industry and plans to play these cards until the end: the SLI technology and high-quality graphics cores.
According to Nvidia, the MCP79 is a single-chip integrated chipset for "small form factor" notebooks. Moreover, the MCP79 comes with a fully-fledged GeForce graphics controller, that sports DirectX 10 capabilities, Shader Model 4.0, NVIDIA's VP3 video processor, as well as Hybrid Power/Hybrid SLI/Hybrid Performance mobile technologies.
The MCP79 chipset supports both DDR2- 800 and DDR3-1333 memory, and comes with a plethora of goodies, such as single-channel TMDS interface for HDMI 1.2, 3 Gbps SATA/eSATA, and up to 20 PCIe 2.0 lanes.
Other functionalities will depend on the chipset version, given the fact that Nvidia plans to release six stock keeping units of the chip. The lowest-end version will be he MCP79ML, that will come without RAID 0/1, PCIe x16, DisplayCache, and DriveCache support. The highest-end offerings are MCP79GLM, that will come with a Quadro graphics controller, and the MCP79-SLI with full SLI support.
According to Nvidia, the first batch of MCP79 chipsets will arrive in June, just in time to catch up with Intel's Centrino 2 mobile platform. Formerly known as Montevina 2, Intel's new platform will be built on the integrated GM45/GM47 and the discrete PM45 northbridge chips, paired with either the ICH9M or ICH9-M Enhanced southbridge chips.