Nvidia nForce 3 Pro Preview

Dom · May 20, 2003, 03:44 AM

Nvidia's Crush K8 and Crush K8G Athlon 64 chipsets were seen on display as far back as Comdex of 2002. When AMD officially announced Athlon 64 Nvidia was their with the other chipset makers with their support at least on paper. Then a few months ago we learned that AMD had delayed the release of the Athlon 64 to September, but kept the Opteron CPU on track for a late Q1 or early Q2 launch.

There was much speculation as to what chipset companies would do. We had hoped that Nvidia, who experience with implementing HyperTransport with three previous products, would adapt their Crush K8 to the Opteron platform. When April was upon us we heard rumors of an Nvidia Opteron workstation chipset. Some were reporting no AGP ports for Opteron at launch, but we had learned from multiple sources just days before the first of two briefings with Nvidia this month. Nvidia denied the existence of such a chipset just as they did with the original nForce, but we knew better. By then we had confirmed that Asus had worked with Nvidia with a reference design board for their Opteron workstation chipset that would be on display at the Opteron launch in New York.

In our 2nd briefing with Nvidia the mystery nForce 3 Pro chipset was revealed. Nvidia had indeed adapted the Crush K8 to a workstation class chipset. Not only that, but system makers we were talking to were raving about the chipset. They all seem quite excited about a workstation chipset for Opteron. This was no surprise as the need for workstation class motherboards for Opteron had demand according to them a few months earlier, but AMD had no AGP implementation ready for launch. Luckily Nvidia stepped up, and workstation shops are eager to put products based on the chipset into the market.

Read the full preview at AMDZone.com

Bane the ECF · May 20, 2003, 04:42 AM

Sounds interesting.

May 20, 2003, 03:44 AM	#1
Dom DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 12,940 Rep Power: 0	Nvidia nForce 3 Pro Preview Nvidia's Crush K8 and Crush K8G Athlon 64 chipsets were seen on display as far back as Comdex of 2002. When AMD officially announced Athlon 64 Nvidia was their with the other chipset makers with their support at least on paper. Then a few months ago we learned that AMD had delayed the release of the Athlon 64 to September, but kept the Opteron CPU on track for a late Q1 or early Q2 launch. There was much speculation as to what chipset companies would do. We had hoped that Nvidia, who experience with implementing HyperTransport with three previous products, would adapt their Crush K8 to the Opteron platform. When April was upon us we heard rumors of an Nvidia Opteron workstation chipset. Some were reporting no AGP ports for Opteron at launch, but we had learned from multiple sources just days before the first of two briefings with Nvidia this month. Nvidia denied the existence of such a chipset just as they did with the original nForce, but we knew better. By then we had confirmed that Asus had worked with Nvidia with a reference design board for their Opteron workstation chipset that would be on display at the Opteron launch in New York. In our 2nd briefing with Nvidia the mystery nForce 3 Pro chipset was revealed. Nvidia had indeed adapted the Crush K8 to a workstation class chipset. Not only that, but system makers we were talking to were raving about the chipset. They all seem quite excited about a workstation chipset for Opteron. This was no surprise as the need for workstation class motherboards for Opteron had demand according to them a few months earlier, but AMD had no AGP implementation ready for launch. Luckily Nvidia stepped up, and workstation shops are eager to put products based on the chipset into the market. Read the full preview at AMDZone.com

May 20, 2003, 04:42 AM	#2
Bane the ECF DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Phoenix, AZ Posts: 220 Rep Power: 0	Sounds interesting. __________________ ASUS K8N-E Motherboard Athlon 64 3200+ 10x200MHz Zalman CNPS7000A-Cu Heatsink & Fan 2x512MB Mushkin Black Level 2 PC-3500 ATi Radeon X800 SE 256MB 100GB Western Digital SE 8MB 7200RPM 320GB Seagate 8MB 7200 RPM Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Sony 19" E400 Trinitron Thermaltake Xaser III V2000A All-Aluminum Logitech Z-5300 5.1 Surround Sound