AMD Heralds PCI Express Chipsets

AMD formally welcomed its Athlon 64 processor family into the world of PCI Express, touting the availability of chipsets that support the new add-in card format. According to AMD, chipset makers ATI, Nvidia, SiS, ULi and VIA will be offering “a broad range” of PCI Express products. No great surprise there, since details of almost all of these vendors’ AMD-oriented PCI Express parts have long since leaked out. Even ATI chief, Dave Orton, recently admitted that the company was already shipping its PCI-E chipsets, believed to be offered under the Radeon Xpress brand name.

Nvidia, meanwhile, unveiled its nForce 4 chipsets earlier this month ahead of today’s formal introduction of the new family. The vanilla nForce 4 is expected to sport dual Serial ATA channels and be pitched at Socket 939 AMD processors, with the HyperTransport bus clocked at up to 1GHz. An Ultra version will add improved network processing facilities, while the SLI release will naturally provide a pair of PCI Express add-in slots. There’s also talk of a budget version, pitched at Socket 754 processors and equipped with just a single Serial ATA bus. This may be the product once suggested as a server-oriented nForce 4, though the processor socket implies that Nvidia has other roles in mind.

AMD heralds PCI Express chipsets @ The Register