Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
and AMD. Originally founded in 1987, VIA is based in Taipei, Taiwan, and is the largest integrated
circuit design firm on the island. VIA is a fabless company, which means it farms out the
manufacturing to other companies with chip foundry capability.
To learn more about VIA's chipsets for AMD processors, see “VIA Chipsets for AMD” and “VIA
Chipsets for Athlon 64” in Chapter 4, “Motherboards and Buses,” of
Upgrading and Repairing PCs,
19
th
Edition, included in its entirety on the DVD packaged with this topic.
SiS Chipsets
SiS has produced a variety of chipsets for the Athlon, Duron, Athlon XP, and Athlon 64 processors,
some of which use a single-chip design and others of which use a high-speed two-chip design similar
to other vendors' chipsets.
For more information, see “SiS Chipsets for AMD” and “SiS Chipsets for Athlon 64” in Chapter 4,
“Motherboards and Buses,” of
Upgrading and Repairing PCs,
19
th
Edition, included in its entirety
on the DVD packaged with this topic.
NVIDIA Chipsets
NVIDIA, although best known for its popular GeForce line of graphics chipsets, also became a
popular vendor of chipsets for the AMD Athlon/Duron/Athlon XP processor family thanks to its
nForce product families. The original nForce was a descendant of the custom chipset NVIDIA
created for the Microsoft Xbox console game system. For more information about nForce and nForce
2, see “NVIDIA nForce Chipsets for AMD.” For more information about nForce 3 and nForce 4
chipsets, see “NVIDIA Chipsets for Athlon 64.” Both are found in Chapter 4, “Motherboards and
Buses,” of
Upgrading and Repairing PCs,
19
th
Edition, included in its entirety on the DVD packaged
with this topic.
Although NVIDIA is no longer developing chipsets for AMD processors, its final lineup of nForce
chipsets for AMD 64-bit processors included the following families: nForce 500, nForce 600,
nForce 700, and nForce 900; the GeForce chipsets with integrated graphics for AMD 64-bit
processors are in the GeForce 6 series, GeForce 7 series, and GeForce 8 series.
The nForce 500 series supported AMD processors using the AM2 socket such as the Athlon 64 X2,
Athlon 64, and Sempron models based on the Athlon 64. Models labeled SLI support two-way or
three-way SLI, and all models include support for PATA and SATA hard disks (most support
3Gbps), RAID, and integrated audio (AC97 or HD audio, depending upon the individual model). Fast
or Gigabit Ethernet support varies with chipset model. For details, see
The nForce 600 series for AMD included one chipset, the 680a, which supports Athlon 64 FX
processors in Socket L1/1207. The 680a includes dual PCIe x16 slots, a PCIe x8 slot, and up to eight
PCIe x1 slots. It supports 12 SATA 3Gbps devices and four PATA devices, and RAID. It includes
HD audio, 20 USB ports, and four Gigabit Ethernet ports. For details, see
The nForce 700 series for AMD included six chipsets: the 720D, 720a, 730a, 740a SLI, 750a SLI,
and the 780a SLI. These chipsets included support for PCIe 2.0, SATA, and PATA drives including
RAID, 12 USB 2.0 ports, and Gigabit Ethernet. For more information about processors supported,
PCIe slots, and RAID configurations, see
