Nvidia lays down AMD chipset plans for 2004

SOURCES TELL the INQUIRER that Nvidia is preparing a fresh onslaught against its chipset competitors next year, with PCI Express the major prong for its all-out AMD attack. During next year, Nvidia plans to introduce a total of three different PCI Express chipsets for the Athlon64/Opteron microprocessors, taking advantage of the faster throughout the bus provides.

The first plank of its PCI Express onslaught will be a chipset tentatively called Crush 3GIO, which will take advantage of the increased graphics capabilities of PCI Express. 3GIO was the former codename for PCI Express. Plans for this chipset are well underway – it is expected to sample in the fourth quarter of this year and be available in the first quarter of next year. It supports a hypertransport interface to the Athlon64. The Crush K8-04 is a high end PCI Express chipset that is being prepared on a similar schedule. It will support four Serial ATA ports, four ATA-133 ports, ADMA, NV RAID, four PCI 2.3 slots , 24 bit 7.1 surround audio and Gigabit Ethernet. Vendors are pinning high hopes on what they describe as "2004 PCs", using PCI Express.

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