nVidia announces 680i, 680 and 650 ultra chipsets

Daily Tech reported today that nVida is set to announce its latest chipsets for Intel processors. The new nForce 600i family consists of  three new products:the nForce 680i SLI, 650i SLI and 650i Ultra. The three chipsets will target hardcore enthusiasts, performance gamers and mainstream gamers respectively. The names of the chipsets indicate that nVidia will start to differentiate their products for AMD and Intel processors by either an "i" (Intel) or and "a" (AMD) in the product name.

The high end chip of the family is the 680i SLI, compatible with Intel Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Duo, Celeron D, Pentium 4 and Pentium D processors. To ensure future compatibility and overclocking room the nForce 680i SLI is able to run a 1333 MHz front-side bus. In addition to the 1333 MHz front-side bus support the nForce 680i SLI features a dual-channel DDR2 memory with various memory dividers to take advantage of SLI-Ready memory modules. NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI based motherboards also feature Quicksync Technology that accelerates memory performance when the front-side bus and memory speeds are synchronized.

The nForce 680i SLI supports two full-speed PCI Express x16 slots for SLI technology, but in addition to the two full-speed PCI Express x16 slots, nForce 680i SLI motherboards will feature a third PCI Express x16 slot. The third slot will run at half-speed and have an x8 electrical interface, enough for physics processing. Other notable features of the nForce 680i SLI include LinkBoost, FirstPacket, DualNet, high definition audio and MediaShield technologies.

The nForce 650i SLI and 650i Ultra are more aimed at the lower end of the market. These two chipsets are almost identical, apart from the SLI support on the 650i SLI. The nForce 650i chipsets lack most of the features of the nForce 680i SLI, but it still features a dual-channel DDR2-800 memory controller, Gigabit Ethernet with FirstPacket technology and high definition audio. Interestingly enough, the nForce 650i series support two IDE channels where the nForce 680i SLI only supports one.

EVGA is on eof the first manufacturers to release an nForce 680i SLI based motherboard. The EVGA nForce 680i SLI motherboard features the three PCI Express x16 slots with two full-speed and one half-speed slot, and the board is identical to that of the reference design of nVidia. The motherboard supports all features of the nForce 680i SLI including the LinkBoost, FirstPacket, DualNet, MediaShield and high definition audio technologies.

The high end version of these motherboards will not be cheap, prices are expected to end up close to US$ 300. The motherboards based on the 650 chipset will be cheaper, the expectation is that these boards will end up costing anywhere around US$ 150