Nvidia Corp. launched two new nForce chipsets for the Intel market on Tuesday which trade a somewhat reduced feature set for a cheaper price tag.
The nForce4 SLI XE and nForce4 Ultra will be bought and integrated by motherboard manufacturers including Biostar, ECS, Epox, Foxconn, Jetway, J&W, MSI, and others, the company said.
Prices for motherboards using the SLI XE will be about $100, Nvidia estimated, while the cheaper nForce4 Ultra will enable boards for about $89 or so.
The new SLI XE and nForce4 Ultra boards are expected by the end of January, Nvidia estimated. The nForce4 Ultra was designed for both the Intel Socket 775 infrastructure, or either the AMD Athlon 64 or 64 FX chips.
As the price would suggest, the new boards cut some features. While the existing SLI X16 MCP chipset allows 40 lanes of PCI Express bandwidth, both the SLI XE and nForce 4 Ultra allow just 20, although the SLI XE chipset allows a board maker to configure it.
The nForce 4 Ultra, however, is locked at a single X16 PCI Express configuration, with three other X1 slots available.
The nForce4 SLI XE is otherwise identical to the X16 MCP, save for the exclusion of Nvidia's ActiveArmor secure networking engine. The nForce 4 Ultra also carries with it some tweaks; when paired with an Intel CPU, drives can be configured in a RAID 5 array, while an AMD CPU disables this functionality.
On the flip side, inserting an AMD CPU allows the ActiveArmor secure networking engine to be turned on, while the Intel microprocessor disables the feature.
Full chipset specs have been posted to Nvidia's nForce4 page.
The nForce4 SLI XE and nForce4 Ultra will be bought and integrated by motherboard manufacturers including Biostar, ECS, Epox, Foxconn, Jetway, J&W, MSI, and others, the company said.
Prices for motherboards using the SLI XE will be about $100, Nvidia estimated, while the cheaper nForce4 Ultra will enable boards for about $89 or so.
The new SLI XE and nForce4 Ultra boards are expected by the end of January, Nvidia estimated. The nForce4 Ultra was designed for both the Intel Socket 775 infrastructure, or either the AMD Athlon 64 or 64 FX chips.
As the price would suggest, the new boards cut some features. While the existing SLI X16 MCP chipset allows 40 lanes of PCI Express bandwidth, both the SLI XE and nForce 4 Ultra allow just 20, although the SLI XE chipset allows a board maker to configure it.
The nForce 4 Ultra, however, is locked at a single X16 PCI Express configuration, with three other X1 slots available.
The nForce4 SLI XE is otherwise identical to the X16 MCP, save for the exclusion of Nvidia's ActiveArmor secure networking engine. The nForce 4 Ultra also carries with it some tweaks; when paired with an Intel CPU, drives can be configured in a RAID 5 array, while an AMD CPU disables this functionality.
On the flip side, inserting an AMD CPU allows the ActiveArmor secure networking engine to be turned on, while the Intel microprocessor disables the feature.
Full chipset specs have been posted to Nvidia's nForce4 page.