Nvidia nForce

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The nForce is the first PC chipset from Nvidia (code name Crush ), presented in June 2001 at Computex in Taiwan, and a classic design consisting of North (IGP or SPP = System Platform Processor) and Southbridge (MCP = Media and Communication Processor). It is suitable for AMD K7 processors.

development

It was originally designed as a pure Integrated Graphics Processor (IGP), but it offered some innovations: The two chips were connected via the HyperTransport developed by AMD and, in addition, dual channel for PC2100 memory (called Twinbank ) was used for the first time in the mass market. The real reason for this architecture, however, was the bandwidth requirements of the integrated GeForce2 MX graphics core . A version without an integrated graphics core followed a little later. The nForce generally offers AGP 4 × and supports a front side bus of 266 MHz (133 MHz EV6 ).

Northbridges

There are the following variants of the northbridge:

  • nForce 220D
  • nForce 415D
  • nForce 420D

The nForce 420D (code name Crush 12 ) is the original version with an integrated graphics core and dual channel , while the nForce 220D (code name Crush 11 ) only has single channel as the basic version . Accordingly, these two variants only differ in their performance. The nForce 415D, on the other hand, does not have an integrated graphics core.

Equipment nForce Northbridge
model Integrated
graphics core		 Front side
bus		 Storage controller AGP
nForce 220D IGP GeForce2 MX 133 MHz EV6 Single-channel DDR / 266 4 ×
nForce 415D SPP - Dual-channel DDR / 266
nForce 420D IGP GeForce2 MX

Southbridges

There are also two Southbridges available: MCP and MCP-D. Both have an Ultra DMA / 100 controller with two channels, integrated 10/100 MBit Ethernet , six USB 1.1 ports and support for the AC'97 audio standard . The MCP-D also offers an audio processor (APU), called SoundStorm .

Equipment nForce Southbridge
model P-ATA
(ATA-100)		 S-ATA RAID
modes		 Ethernet Audio USB 1.1 PCI
slots
nForce MCP 4th - - 100 Mbit AC97 6th ?
nForce MCP-D SoundStorm ?

See also

Web links