Conclusion

NVIDI'As new nForce 500 family is the first core-logic for the AMD AM2 platform to offer an option for every price class right from the launch. The great performance combination between Socket 939 and nForce 4 gave the entire plattform and AMD a lot of momentum. It will be intersting to see if nForce 500 and AM2 can keep that going. There are a few very promising ideas embedded into the entire range of the nForce 500 series, focusing the spotlight on more than just pure performance.
The competition between AMD and Intel has never been greater, with both introducing new CPUs. The Core 2 Duo also known as Conroe and the AM2 Athlons should give us a great performance battle. No matter which of the two will come out on top, I have a feeling that NVIDIA and the nForce 500 series will play a part in it.

The overall improvement between the Socket 939 and AM2 CPUs may not be as great as some of us may hope or anticipate and it remains to be seen how much performance gain the move to DDR2 will give us.

Testing and benchmarking the new platform will become much more complicated as the focus of performance has been expanded from just the core components (CPU, GPU, memory) to Ethernet and hard drive performance. This will surely lead to a change in the evaluation of this kind of hardware, focusing on all the aspects of a mainboard instead of core performance and listed features.

I am sure that the new nForce 500 series will become a success, as it is of interest for everyone from the budget gamer to the hardcore enthusiast, no matter if Intel or AMD CPUs become the performance leaders.