Hypertransport and Configurations

Both the MCP and MCP-T are pin compatible with each other meaning that motherboard manufacturers can design one board and replace each of the MCP’s depending on the configuration they want to aim for. However, further configurations can be enabled because of NVIDIA’s use of the Hypertransport bus.

NVIDIA uses Hypertransport as the interlink between the two elements of the chipset and this is the same for both nForce and nForce2 meaning that the configurations available between the two chipsets are completely interchangeable. This offers motherboard manufacturers further configurations should they want to use elements of nForce2 with elements of the original nForce.

With nForce and Xbox, nForce2 represents the 3rd generation of Hypertransport product for NVIDIA. With this familiarity with the technology, NVIDIA feels that this places them in good stead when AMD ready their next generation of processor core.

Conclusion

From the specifications listed nForce2 certainly seems to be a highly attractive proposition for AMD users, however, sadly, Intel users will still miss out on this. NVIDIA think there is enough headroom in the Althon market alone to grow the nForce business to the size of their graphics market. They also do not want to be competing in a market place flooded with competition from Intel already and have to pay a licence for it as well!

The PC is operating in an increasing Media rich environment which means that more data is being pushed around all the various element of a PC system. NVIDIA’s nForce2 architecture with features such as DualDDR, Hyper-transport interlinks and the latest connectivity features has been designed to meet the needs of this of environment and it looks very likely to succeed. While nForce2 doesn’t purport to be a completely legacy free device as yet it does have one of the highest integration levels of new connectivity standards presently available on motherboard chipsets, which can only be a good thing for the end user.

NVIDIA expects ramp up of nForce2 chip and motherboard manufacturing in August with products hopefully hitting the shelves shortly after for widespread availability before Christmas. More motherboard manufacturers have already signed to produce nForce2 based motherboards so there certainly shouldn’t be any shortage of choice for everyone.

nForce2 Specifications

Below is a quick overview of the specification of each of the nForce2 elements.

nForce2 SPP

  • DualDDR Architecture
    • 64bit or 128bit memory busses
    • Supports DDR400/333/266/200 SDRAMS
    • Up to 3.0GB Memory (64MB, 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1.0GB Modules supported)
  • AGP 8X Interface
    • AGP3.0 8X and 4X Fast Writes supported
    • Supports AGP2.0 for 4X, 2X and 1X modes
  • Integrated Clock Synthesizer
    • Supports all FSB and memory bus asynchronous frequency combinations
    • Independent overclocking of CPU, MEM, and AGP clocks
  • Power Management
    • Power On Suspend (POS) or ACPI S1
    • Suspend to DRAM (STR) or ACPI S3
    • Suspend to Disk (STD) or ACPI S4/S5
    • Supports C0, C1, and C2 states
    • Support for shut down of internal DAC
    • ACPI 2.0 compliant
    • PowerNow!â„¢
  • CPU Interface
    • Supports AMD Athlon/Duron CPU
    • 133/100/66 MHz FSB Clock

nForce2 IGP

As nForce2 SPP, also including:

  • Integrated GeForce4 MX GPU
  • nView multi-display technology
  • Integrated TV Encoder
  • External DVI Interface
    • Multiplexed via AGP interface

nForce2 MCP

  • Up to 6 USB 2.0 Ports
  • NVIDIA IEEE 802.3 MAC 10/100 BaseT Ethernet
  • Dual Ultra ATA/133 Disk Drive Connectors
    • Supports Ultra DMA modes 6-0 (Ultra DMA-133/100/66/33)
  • AC ’97 2.1 Compliant Interface
    • Supports 2, 4, or 6-channel audio
    • Dual AC-Link – Supports up to two CODECs
    • 16-bit or 20-bit stereo output and 16-bit input streams
    • Supports input, output, and GPIO channels for host-based modems
    • Separate independent functions for audio and modem<
    • Supports ACR and CNR interface
    • SPDIF Output (Stereo or AC-3 Output)

nForce2 MCP-T

As nForce2 MCP, also including:

  • IEEE-1394a/Firewire
  • 3Com IEEE 802.3 MAC 10/100 BaseT Ethernet
  • NVIDIA Audio Processing Unit (APU)
    • Dolby Digital Interactive Content Encoder
    • Hardware DirectX 8.0 Audio Processor
    • 256 Total Voices
    • 64 3D Voices
    • Downloadable Sample Version 2 Acceleration(DLS2)
    • 32 Bin Mixer (8 voice volumes mapped to each bin)