NVIDIA Intros nForce3 for AMD Socket 939

Computex – Nvidia has updated its nForce 3 support chip to cope with AMD’s new 939-pin Athlon 64 and 64-FX processors. Now dubbed the nForce 3 Ultra Media Communications Processor, the new part works with the North Bridge technology built into the AMD chips to provide South Bridge functionality along with a graphics card bus. The new nForce also supports the 2GHz HyperTransport frontside bus (1GHz in each direction) introduced with the latest Athlons 64s, which AMD launched yesterday.

Nvidia’s chip contains its own Gigabit Ethernet interface and controller, backed by TCP/IP packet processing to provide a hardware firewall. The chip can host up to four Serial ATA devices in a variety of RAID configurations plus four ATA-133 drives – allowing users and system builders to add up to eight devices.

Nvidia also launched AutoTuning an intelligent overclocking utility that "adjusts PC clock speeds to maximise overall system performance… without requiring any end-user intervention".

The company said motherboards based on the new chipset were already available from the likes of Abit, AOpen, Asustek, Biostar, Chaintech, EPoX, Gigabyte, Jetway, Leadtek, MSI, Shuttle, Soltek and others.

Nvidia rejigs nForce 3 for AMD’s Socket 939 @ The Register