Nvidia yesterday announced that its nForce 3 Pro chipset has entered volume production, following AMD's launch of the latest 64-bit Opteron server and workstation processors.
The nForce 3 Pro is a single-chip implementation of Nvidia's Athlon XP-oriented nForce 2 product. The Opteron's built-in memory controller has forced Nvidia to dispense with its own controller, allowing it to fold the North Bridge's AGP controller into its South Bridge part.
The processor connects to the nForce 3 Pro chip across a 3.6GBps HyperTransport point-to-point serial link.
The 150nm (0.15 micron) nForce 3 Pro chip provides AGP 8x; Serial ATA support with RAID levels 0, 1 and 0+1; ATA 133 support; 10/100 Ethernet with network boot, wake on LAN and hardware firewall; and USB 2.0.
Asustek is the first mobo maker to offer nForce 3 Pro-based boards, Nvidia said, using the nForce 3 Pro 150 chip. Asustek's mobo, the SK8N, will begin shipping to system builders and distributors in early July, with systems based on the board arriving later in the month. ®