NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, June 27, 2006, 09:00 AM EDT

Despite rumors suggesting the contrary, NVIDIA is prepared to launch the highly acclaimed nForce 590 SLI chipset to support Intel's Conroe platform. The folks at Anandtech have taken a look at NVIDIA's latest and greatest chipset and verified that Conroe is fully supported and offers excellent performance. Due to NDA constraints however, the only performance benchmarks which can be shared are those from a Pentium D 820. Here, the new flagship NVIDIA chipset does battle with Intel's own i975X chipset and appears to more than hold its own. Should you be considering purchasing a new Conroe processor and supporting motherboard, you would be wise to read through this article and get familiar with your options.

"Our first tests with the NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition reference board certainly shows promise against one of the better performing Intel 975X boards currently on the market. Based upon the progress NVIDIA has made over the past two weeks with BIOS updates and a new board revision, we are very optimistic about this chipset performing equal to or better than the Intel 975X at this time. Of course, until we are able to fully test a production ready nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition board along with the soon to be released Core 2 Duo ready 975X boards, we cannot conclude with confidence which chipset will cater to the gamer, enthusiast, or hard core overclocker. We do know that if you want to use SLI then NVIDIA is the only game in town for the Intel platform."

Tags: Nvidia, Intel, nforce, sli, edition, force, id

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com