X-bit labs

NVIDIA nForce3 250 Mainboards Approach the Market.

Category: Mainboards

by Anton Shilov

[ 03/10/2004 | 08:15 AM ]

Mainboard partners of NVIDIA Corporation are going to start selling their new products based on NVIDIA nForce3 250-series of core-logic products next week, sources close to NVIDIA told X-bit labs on Wednesday.

NVIDIA nForce3 250 family of core-logic products is expected to support AMD 64-bit 754-pin, 939-pin and 940-pin microprocessors and is ready to power both high-end AMD Opteron and AMD Athlon 64 FX microprocessors as well as performance-mainstream AMD Athlon 64 chips. NVIDIA nForce3 Pro 250 core-logic is highly likely to be capable of working in 2P AMD Opteron systems.

The nForce3 250 products are very likely to bring a number of advanced features over its predecessor – NVIDIA nForce3 Pro 150 – such as 2 Serial ATA-150 ports as well as external 2 Serial ATA-150 PHY support in addition to presently available AGP 8x, PCI, 2 ATA-33/66/100/133 channels with RAID 0,1 and 0+1 support, 10/100Mb/s Ethernet, USB 2.0, etc. A version of the nForce3 250 series intended for enterprise-class workstations – the nForce3 250Gb – adds Gigabit Ethernet support and promises to be the world’s first core-logic to integrate native Gigabit Ethernet inside the chip.

To provide even more value for enterprise customers, NVIDIA is expected to incorporate its firewall technology for enhanced network security into its next-generation core-logic components, including the nForce3 250-series, sources said.

Both versions of NVIDIA nForce3 250 family of core-logic sets are in production. The majority of NVIDIA’s mainboard partners are likely to demonstrate nForce3 250- and nForce3 250Gb-based mainboards at CeBIT 2004 in Hannover, Germany, next week. Along with demonstration, resellers are expected to start offering new NVIDIA-powered mainboards for AMD 64-bit microprocessors.

A number of mainboard makers, such as Chaintech, DFI and Microstar International already demonstrated their versions of NVIDIA nForce3 250 mainboards at CES and Comdex trade-shows.

Availability of NVIDIA’s new core-logic products is pretty important event for the Santa Clara, California-based company. Currently VIA Technologies commands about 90% market of chipsets for AMD64 chips, while NVIDIA’s nForce3 150-series are not deployed really widely because of the lack for some capabilities, such as Serial ATA-150. With the new series of chipsets NVIDIA is likely to begin a new round in a fight for chipset market share.

NVIDIA does not officially comment on reports about availability of next-generation products.