by Anna Filatova
06/29/2002 | 06:44 AM
According to ExtremeTech, NVIDIA is going to announce its new nForce2 chipset (Crush 18D) on July 15. The new chipset is a continuation of the nForce family concept and hence will be very similar to it from the architectural point of view. However, unlike the predecessor, it will boast a number of innovations aimed at improving its performance and implementing the support of all contemporary standards.
The chipset North Bridge (IGP) will support AGP 8x and PC2700 DDR SDRAM, and the South Bridge (MCP) will support FireWire, USB 2.0, ATA/133. Also they will implement the support of Dolby Digital and integrated Ethernet.<%BANNER[article]%>
As for the integrated graphics core, the new product will be launched without it at first, as they have actually planned. It will be like nForce 415-D. The nForce2 chipset version with the integrated graphics core based on GeForce4 MX will appear a bit later.
It has already become a good tradition by NVIDIA that the new chipset is intended solely for AMD Athlon XP processors, because the company considers the Pentium 4 license to be too expensive. Anyway, NVIDIA and AMD have always been good friends...