Gigabyte Technology does not plan to stick to NVIDIA nForce2 chipset series only with its powered by NVIDIA mainboards for AMD processors. A French web-site reports that Gigabyte will not wait for NVIDIA to start mass-production of its nForce3 Pro 250 chipset and will launch its Socket 754 product based on the nForce3 Pro 150 for AMD Athlon 64 processors pretty soon.

Surely, because nForce3 Pro 150 does not incorporate really a lot of I/O functions, the Gigabyte GA-K8NNXP mainboard will carry a massive set of external I/O controllers to provide Serial ATA-150, FireWire, RAID and other necessary capabilities. Here is the full list of specifications.

• Supports Socket 754 AMD Athlon 64 processors;
• NVIDIA nForce3 Pro 150 core-logic;
• 3 DIMM slots for up to 3GB of PC2100, PC2700 or PC3200 DDR SDRAM;
• 5 PCI and 1 AGP 8x slot;
• 2-channel integrated ATA-33/66/100/133 controller;
• 2-channel ATA-33/66/100/133 controller with RAID support;
• 2 Serial ATA-150 ports with RAID support;
• 10/100Mb/s Ethernet adapter;
• USB 2.0 ports;
• 2 FireWire (IEEE1394) ports;
• Integrated AC`97 6-channel audio solution with SP/DIF connectors;
• Loads of additional functions and technologies from Gigabyte, including DualBIOS and DualPowerSystems;
• Probably, some overclocking and tuning functions;
• ATX Form-factor.

The solution will not be too expensive, but will not be affordable as well considering the lack of South Bridge, but the presence of extra controllers for certain functionality. I think that Gigabyte GA-K8NNXP will be available immediately following the AMD Athlon 64 launch on the 23^rd of September this year.

See the picture of the mainboard at Clubic.com web-site here.