14 DAY TRIAL // 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.