Got boards? When?
Here at Computex, we've already seen quite a few nForce sample boards on display, mainly from the five launch partners, which include ABIT, ASUS, Gigabyte, MITAC, and MSI. They have been given exclusive rights to the chipset for the first few months of availability. These guys are all working closely with NVIDIA on the development of the boards and together have agreed upon a reference design that most of the manufacturers are following very closely.
The reference design that everyone is working with right now is a microATX form factor board. Only ASUS has deviated from the microATX form factor for their initial board, going instead with a standard ATX setup, although all the manufacturers assured us that standard ATX nForce boards would be available as well.
That reference design has 4 layers, which is exactly what motherboard manufacturers like to see since it keeps manufacturing costs down. Similarly, our sources tell us that NVIDIA is using a 0.15 micron 7-layer metal process to manufacture the nForce, which should help keep the cost and heat production down.
Apparently development of nForce boards has been quite rushed as we heard numerous times that designers started with essentially nothing about five weeks ago. Working samples were available to play with in private rooms at Computex; although we've been told performance and stability still need quite a bit of work, both in terms of motherboard and chipset designs. Fortunately, however, the word we're getting is that NVIDIA has been quite helpful in the design process and fully intends to have the boards be rock solid at the launch.
The current word is that evaluation samples will be ready later this month with the target for mass production being late August. If things go as they usually do, that could easily be pushed into September or even October, which is still quite a short period of time for a motherboard maker to go from nothing to retail quality boards.
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Drudy - Tuesday, June 1, 2021 - link
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