Asus Debuts Radeon Xpress 200 Motherboard
It's still a month away from an official launch, but Nvidia Corp.'s nForce4 chipset for Intel-based desktop PCs is previewing at the CeBIT trade show in Hannover, Germany. Like the AMD original, the new Intel chipset will support Nvidia's SLI technology to yoke two PCI Express x16 graphics accelerators -- hence its official name, nForce4 SLI Intel Edition -- as well as DDR-2 memory at speeds up to 667MHz and an 800MHz or 1066MHz front-side bus.
A bit lower on the market-segment spectrum, ATI Technologies has introduced a new integrated chipset for Intel desktops. The Radeon Xpress 200 targets mainstream consumer PCs and low-cost media centers with DirectX 9 graphics based on Radeon X300 core technology plus dedicated video processing for what ATI calls the best visual experience available for any integrated chipset. Already shipping in Asus' P5RD1-V multimedia motherboard and coming in products from Gigabyte, MSI, and others, the chipset supports DDR-2/667 memory and both single- and dual-core Socket 775 processors.