WE HAVE ALREADY reported about Nvidia"s new south bridges, the ones that are to include Serial ATA and Gigabit LAN. While Nvidia"s Serial ATA was supposed to be available much earlier, in late Q3, have we learned that this chip will not now be released until the next quarter. Early samples of this chipset will now make their appearance in October, and boards powered with it could easily be available at the end of that month or perhaps more realistically, the beginning of November.
If you want MCP-S and MCP G1000 south bridges in your board you will have to hold your breath a little I guess. Motherboard manufacturers are ready for this chip as their design is already finished. It"s up to Nvidia now since it is the one to delay this product. Nvidia is very close to having its Nforce 3 boards in retail, but we reckon you wont be able to get these boards before late September -- at least for the Athlon 64 versions since the CPU won"t be announced before the 22nd of September.
Some motherboard manufacturers tell the INQ that they were under some pressure to use the A2 version of the chip with the Serial ATA controller disabled, and use a discrete Serial ATA controller from Silicon Image. But the mobo makers didn"t want any more delays on their Hammerish products. They"ve been waiting long enough - that"s their beef.