NForce 500: the successor to nForce 4

The northern bridge, hitherto mostly known only by the codename MCP55, will also debut at CeBIT.

The new chipset is also able to work with central units with AM2 sockets and, of course, meets all today's requirements for services. In addition to supporting the new processors, it’s important to mention that the 500 Series can now work with four SLI video cards at once. Four different versions of the MCP55 will be available:

• nForce 590 SLI (high-end, multi-GPU support)
• nForce 570 SLI (top category, multi-GPU support)
• nForce 570 (cost-effective category)
• nForce 550 (mid-range)

nForce 570 SLI - Supported features, standards:

• Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX with AM2 support
• 2 db DDR2 400/533/667 MHz
• 2 pcs PCI Express 16x
• 2 pcs PCI Express 1x
• 2 pcs PCI
• 4 db SATA RAID
• ATA133
• eight-channel, High Definiton audio
• 1Gbps Ethernet
• 8 pcs USB 2.0
• ActiveArmor hardware firewall
• MediaShield mass storage control: RAID 0, 1, and 5

The picture shows the first version, A01, the motherboards that will be in stores will already have the A02 edition.