NVIDIA’s nForce3 Professional Chipset
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NVIDIA’s announcement of a workstation class single processor Opteron chipset could be one of the more exciting developments of the Opteron release. With NVIDIA pushing the Opteron platform into the 1P and soon 2P systems I think you will find many more users will be looking into getting a “workstation” class PC rather than the standard enthusiast PC. While AMD is trying desperately to prevent the wide spread sale of Opteron systems and processors to the consumer market, with NVIDIA’s name now being thrown into the mix it may be inevitable. Online resellers always find a way to get the products that the consumers want.
There are two flavors of the nForce3 Pro chipset that were announced today, the Pro 150 and the Pro 250. Both are single chip designs, no more north/south bridge chips. The Pro 150 is available immediately to manufacturers and the Pro 250 is slated to be released in the fall.
The main features of the NVIDIA nForce3 Pro 150 chipset include a high performance, 128-bit memory design and full support for NVIDIA’s line of Quadro graphics cards. An NVIDIA 10/100 Fast Ethernet connection is included as is USB 2.0, AC’97 audio and standard PCI slots. Interestingly, there are three Ultra ATA-133 channels included with support built into the chipset for RAID 0, 1, and 0+1.
The Pro 250 chipset that will be later in the year has the same feature set but with the addition of Gigabit Ethernet and four Serial ATA ports also with RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 support.
NVIDIA’s initial partner in the nForce3 launch is going to be Asus with their SK8N design. Several system builders have already built designs around this platform including Angstrom, Boxx, Einux and Xi Computer. Expect to see system reviews of their workstations on AMDMB.
Be sure to check out the prices and availability on AMD Opteron processors:
AMD Opteron 240 – $298
AMD Opteron 242 – $737
AMD Opteron 244 – $861
