Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
The 600i series includes support for Gigabit Ethernet, DDR2 memory, PCIe 1.x, SATA
and PATA drives with RAID support, and HD audio. Some models also include support
for two-way SLI.
The 700i series includes support for Gigabit Ethernet, two or three-way SLI, SATA and
PATA drives with RAID support, and PCIe version 2.0. DDR2 or DDR3 memory is sup-
ported, depending upon the specific chipset in use.
TheGeForce9000seriesincludes supportforDDR2orDDR3memory,Gigabit Ethernet,
SATA 3Gbps, HD Audio, and DirectX 10 graphics.
TheGeForce7seriesisbasedonthenForce600series,andsupportsDDR2memory,Dir-
ectX 9.0 Shader model 3 graphics, PCIe x16 and x1, HD Audio, and RAID. Most models
support Gigabit Ethernet.
For more information, see
http://www.nvidia.com/page/mobo.html
.
Chipsets for AMD Processors
AMD took a gamble with its Athlon family of processors. With these processors, AMD
decidedforthefirsttimetocreateachipthatwasIntelcompatiblewithregardtosoftware
but not directly hardware or pin compatible. Whereas the K6 series would plug into the
same Socket 7 that Intel designed for the Pentium processor line, the AMD Athlon and
Duron would not be pin compatible with the Pentium II/III and Celeron chips. This also
meantthatAMDcouldnottakeadvantageofthepreviouslyexistingchipsetsandmother-
boards when the Athlon and Duron were introduced; instead, AMD would have to either
create its own chipsets and motherboards or find other companies who would.
The gamble has paid off. AMD bootstrapped the market by introducing its own chipset,
referred to as the AMD-750 chipset (code-named Irongate). The AMD 750 chipset con-
sists of the 751 system controller (North Bridge) and the 756 peripheral bus controller
(South Bridge). AMD followed with the AMD-760 chipset for the Athlon/Duron pro-
cessors, which was the first major chipset on the market supporting DDR SDRAM for
memory. It consisted of two chips—the AMD-761 system bus controller (North Bridge)
and the AMD-766 peripheral bus controller (South Bridge). Similarly, AMD established
a new standard chipset architecture for its line of 64-bit processors—the Athlon 64 and
Opteron—by developing the AMD-8000 chipset. AMD's pioneering efforts inspired oth-
er companies, such as VIA Technologies, NVIDIA, SiS, and ATI (now part of AMD) to
develop chipsets specifically designed to interface with AMD processors. In 2006, AMD
purchased ATI, essentially bringing both motherboard chipsets and video processors in-
house. This put AMD on a level more equal to Intel because it gave the company the
capability to produce most of the chips necessary to build a system around its processors.
