NVIDIA has after six weeks of delays launched its new chipsets for the Intel platform. nForce 780i SLI and nForce 750i SLI are the names of the new chipsets and as expected the focus is on the added support for the new 45nm processors from Intel, including Yorkfield. The big news of NVIDIA’s new chipset flagship are three-fold; the support for 3-way SLI with three PCIe X16 slots, PCI Express 2.0 and ESA (Enthusiast System Architecture). Although, NVIDIA has admitted that the nForce 780i SLI isn’t an entirely new chipset, but a rebuffed nForce 680i SLI, and as we’ve already told you, there’s surprisingly little difference between the two.
It turns out that nForce 680i SLI supports 3-way SLI as well, although then with only two PCIe X16 and one PCIe X8 slot. To round things off, nForce 680i supports ESA too. There is the difference of Yorkfield support too, nForce 780i works just fine with the 45nm quad-cores from Intel.
In other words, the only thing that’s actually really new here is the PCI Express 2.0 support, which feels a bit weak to be honest. On the other hand it’s nice to see some new possibilities with the aging nForce 680i platform. And as expected, there are no real performance advantages of the nForce 7 series, which means that current nForce 6 owners can stay calm until the next generation comes along.
More information on NVIDIA’s nForce 7 series can be found at NVIDIA’s website.
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