NVIDIA nForce 980a SLI chipset is set to be launched. Santa Clara, California-based NVIDIA designs new high performance motherboard chipset which is able to combine the computing power of AMD's latest 45nm-based Phenom II processors with the graphics performance of NVIDIA's GeForce graphics cards. The new chipset called MCP82 XE is going to be launched at the end of the march under its name nForce 980a SLI. The new nForce chipset is reported to be the MCP72 XE supporting the latest AM3 processors, on both DDR2 and DDR3 motherboards. The MCP82 AMD-supporting chipset is a new motherboard GPU which has PCIe 2.0, HyperTransport 3.0, Triple SLI support, Hybrid SLI, a total of 12 USB 2.0 ports, SATA 3GB/s ports, Gigabit Ethernet and HD Audio.The motherboard GPU supports Microsoft's DirectX 10 API and Shader Model 4.0. The nForce 980a SLI features a 20 W TDP in the mGPU mode, 22 W in Hybrid SLI mode and 9 W idle. Chipset will be compatible with PCIe 2.0, HT 3.0, tri/quad SLI, along with Hybrid SLI with the IGP, DVI-D and D-Sub outputs. The MCP82 XE has twelve USB 2.0 and 6 SATA 3 Gb/s connectors. The NVIDIA nForce 980a SLI SPP is a high performance interface to AMD AM3 CPUs. NForce 980a features SLI technology for maximum graphics performance of next-generation DirectX 10 games with PhysX gaming effects, stereoscopic 3D, lightning fast video and image processing. The nForce 980a SLI and nForce 200 chips are placed next to each other, and are cooled separately by a fan-heatsink. It includes 2×16 PCI Express 2.0 lanes (also configurable as 1 x16, 2 x8) and 3×1 PCI Express 1.0 lanes, 12 USB ports, six SATA ports, and single GigE.
