DFI is one of the manufacturers that has decided to skip NVIDIA’s current nForce 590 SLI chipset for the Intel platform. It was simply not satisfied with the chipset and its performance. Instead it is working on NVIDIA’s successor, C55 which will be paired with the new southbridge MCP55. We’ve now received information that DFI is already about to build a board based on this circuit and what is perhaps even more interesting is NVIDIA’s expected product name. According to VR-Zone NVIDIA will name the C55-based chipset ‘NVIDIA NF680I SLI’. Which is short for NVIDIA nForce 680 Intel SLI and will be an answer to ATI’s naming of RD600.
If it would’ve stuck with nForce 590 it would’ve indicated that RD600 was perhaps a hotter chipset, which is definately not what the green team wants. DFI will also launch a budget version in its Infinity series and then its C55 + MCP51 which will be housed on the motherboard. The name of this board will be NF650I SLI. The biggest differences between these two circuit combos is that 680I SLI offers 2 x 16 PCI Express bandwidth while 650I SLI only comes with 2 x 8.
