Tuesday, August 19th 2008
NVIDIA Plans to Take on AMD 790, Intel P45 DDR3
The NVIDIA chipset division has decided to take on chipsets (core-logic) from both AMD and Intel in their respective platforms. To begin with, the nForce 780a SLI has been given a major update. The Advanced Clock Calibration (ACC) feature has been added to this chipset that allows overclocking competitive to the latest chipset from AMD, the SB 750 southbridge which is used on high-end motherboards based on the 790 GX or 790 FX northbridges. NVIDIA will connect the southbridge to the JTAG interface and then update the BIOS to support ACC for up to 10% better Phenom overclocks.
On to the Intel platform, and NVIDIA plans to release a new chipset called the nForce 770i SLI. Think of it as NVIDIA's answer to the P45 DDR3 chipset which provides Crossfire support (Dual PCI-Express slots with PCI-E 2.0 x8 bandwidth each in Crossfire mode). The nForce 770i will use a DDR3 memory controller, this is what differentiates it from the nForce 750i SLI, the chipset will support the 2-way SLI in the electrical PCI-E 2.0 x8 format.
Update:
It is known that existing motherboards in the market cannot be updated with this feature by means of a BIOS update, addition of this feature requires a hardware-level modification. Provided is a company slide from NVIDIA.(Source: Expreview)
Source:
NordicHardware
On to the Intel platform, and NVIDIA plans to release a new chipset called the nForce 770i SLI. Think of it as NVIDIA's answer to the P45 DDR3 chipset which provides Crossfire support (Dual PCI-Express slots with PCI-E 2.0 x8 bandwidth each in Crossfire mode). The nForce 770i will use a DDR3 memory controller, this is what differentiates it from the nForce 750i SLI, the chipset will support the 2-way SLI in the electrical PCI-E 2.0 x8 format.
Update:
It is known that existing motherboards in the market cannot be updated with this feature by means of a BIOS update, addition of this feature requires a hardware-level modification. Provided is a company slide from NVIDIA.(Source: Expreview)
19 Comments on NVIDIA Plans to Take on AMD 790, Intel P45 DDR3
Doesn't the 790 have something on it that is "linked" with some part of the CPU? Wouldn't that be proprietary? I mean more power to Nvidia for trying but it just seems the 790 will still come out on top.
Side note if my system was running an AMD CPU, I'd probably get the Nvidia chipset because those are my two "fanboy" choices. But thats not the logical point. The 790 should still win.
Also, when can we see upgraded 780a boards? And how will they distinguish themselves from the current 780a lineup? Are they gonna be called 780a-something?
Thanks for your help
For example: www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/m3n-ht_deluxe/
Surprise! No SPP + MCP. Guess what, The nForce 200 has x lanes which it splits among three cards (3 cards work at x8, x8, x8) but the nForce 200 itself connects to the 780a MCP using 16 PCI-E 2.0 lanes so effectively the entire graphics sub-system relies on 16 lanes (with high base frequency) ! I really wouldn't make 3 GTX 200 cards walk on that rope. Rather for its (the motherboard's) price, buy a 790FX which has 32 PCI-E 2.0 lanes to split between 4 cards, and all those lanes come from the NB. Or hop over to Intel + 780i
Sure that's 16 lanes effectively, but using the "broadcast" feature, the nForce 200 replicates information from the MCP to all three/four cards. When loading a game, you send the same texture/mesh/geometry/shader data to all the cards you have in SLI. So in broadcast, the same data that's received from the MCP is broadcast to all those cards. Very clever. There's flipside to everything.
Although Iam on Intel based system now Iam allready looking for my next AMD setup. Something to keep in mind when choosing a platform.
Sorry about that, thats what I ment with their new south bridge chipset.That could make things interesting. Definately will be watching how this does.