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Nvidia's MCP78 to launch on Dec 17

by on29 November 2007

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Boards already appearing

Nvidia's upcoming DX10 enabled chipset with integrated graphics for AMD processors, which goes under the name of MCP78 for the time being, should (if all goes to plan) launch on December 17th. That's less than three weeks from now.

A Chinese site that goes under the name of Zol.com.cn has already scored pictures of an early board from a manufacturer that we weren't able to identify, possibly as the board is only available on the Chinese market.

Now, this board has some interesting features, as it's a full ATX board, it has two x16 PCIe slots as well as a single x1 PCIe slot and two PCI slots. The chipset is located between the two x16 slots and is covered by a rather large, but flat, heatsink.  In front of the heatsink are six SATA ports.

This doesn't sound like an IGP board, but it is, as the board also features a DVI connector at the back, alongside four USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet connector and 7.1-channel audio jacks. This is the first production Hybrid SLI board that we're aware of that has shown up anywhere, and although it might be a bit basic in terms of features, this is something like what the future from Nvidia will look like.

From what we know, the MCP78 is limited to 19 or 20 PCIe lanes, which means that if you're going to use two graphics cards with this board, you'll end  up with x8 bandwidth per slot. This should still be ample for the target market Nvidia is going after with this product, and we would guess that we might even see some single slot Hybrid SLI boards in due time, so as to keep costs down.

You can check out the pictures of the board here
Last modified on 30 November 2007
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