Monday, August 17th 2009
nForce Lives: NVIDIA Plans LGA-1156 Chipset
NVIDIA enjoys its share of the pie with the existing socket LGA-775 platform, with a broad range of performance nForce, and value-oriented GeForce MGPU chipsets. With Intel's implementation of the FSB-replacement QuickPath Interconnect system interface with LGA-1366, a conflict ensued with regards to Intel licensing NVIDIA making chipset. Intel's contention stood that its older licenses did not cover the latest processors that implement integrated memory controllers and QPI. As a result, NVIDIA was forced to license its SLI technology to motherboard manufacturers for products based on Intel X58 chipset, and now Intel P55 chipset for the LGA-1156 series processor, and the future of NVIDIA Intel-series chipsets looked bleak at worst.
Fresh reports suggest that NVIDIA indeed has a chipset product lineup planned for Q1 2010, that supports socket LGA-1156 processors, codenamed MCP99. In addition to this, NVIDIA will also serve up two new LGA-775 chipsets, codenamed MCP85 and MCP89. What's common to all these chipsets is that they embed an integrated graphics processor (IGP). Some of these chipsets feature a 64-bit wide memory channel dedicated to the IGP's memory needs, apart from the 128-bit wide (dual-channel) system memory controller, on the LGA-775 platform. The dedicated memory channel allows the IGP to match entry-level graphics cards in terms of performance, without eating into the system memory. We predict this will be implemented in the same way AMD 780G, 785G and 790GX does, with dedicated memory chips present onboard. The LGA-775 compatible ones will further feature dual-channel DDR3-1333 standard supportive memory controllers for system memory. The MGPU will be named inside the GeForce 200M series.Moving on to MCP99, the company's first chipset for the Nehalem/Westmere generation of CPUs, NVIDIA will look to cash in on the value-segment to begin with. The MCP99 chipset is said to feature an IGP, again, with its own memory channel and dedicated memory. This, despite some future Intel processors coming with embedded Intel-made IGPs. Sampling of these will be completed in Q3-2009, and volume production will commence in Q1-2010.
Source:
HKEPC
Fresh reports suggest that NVIDIA indeed has a chipset product lineup planned for Q1 2010, that supports socket LGA-1156 processors, codenamed MCP99. In addition to this, NVIDIA will also serve up two new LGA-775 chipsets, codenamed MCP85 and MCP89. What's common to all these chipsets is that they embed an integrated graphics processor (IGP). Some of these chipsets feature a 64-bit wide memory channel dedicated to the IGP's memory needs, apart from the 128-bit wide (dual-channel) system memory controller, on the LGA-775 platform. The dedicated memory channel allows the IGP to match entry-level graphics cards in terms of performance, without eating into the system memory. We predict this will be implemented in the same way AMD 780G, 785G and 790GX does, with dedicated memory chips present onboard. The LGA-775 compatible ones will further feature dual-channel DDR3-1333 standard supportive memory controllers for system memory. The MGPU will be named inside the GeForce 200M series.Moving on to MCP99, the company's first chipset for the Nehalem/Westmere generation of CPUs, NVIDIA will look to cash in on the value-segment to begin with. The MCP99 chipset is said to feature an IGP, again, with its own memory channel and dedicated memory. This, despite some future Intel processors coming with embedded Intel-made IGPs. Sampling of these will be completed in Q3-2009, and volume production will commence in Q1-2010.
11 Comments on nForce Lives: NVIDIA Plans LGA-1156 Chipset
AM3 is still AMD's newest socket and all they have is a rebadge of the 780a. Hell, ASUS is the only one that has one on the market, and it's not even AM3. I think they're giving up on the AMD market. Not sure why, but I still would like to see them at least try.. I would love to try something other than AMD chipsets, they're getting boring. :p
775 will stay at least 2 yrs.
any Q9xxx cpu will offer almost i7 performance, i7 WILL be faster but not by very much so it is indeed a waste of money to jump from 775-i7 as we speak.
Q9xxx clocked to 3.8-4Ghz will handle almost everything for a long while to come.
Not to mention they already have a successor for the i7.
their hardly what i would call expensive compared to Asus R.O.G series 'intel' based boards. Im not happy paying upto & over £300 for a motherboard. I have yet to see an Nvidia AMD based board break the £200 mark.
& everyone knows what happends when Nvidia gets bored - they start getting fidgity fingers that alter bios's & release them as something completely new a few times.