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The nVidia nForce 420 chipset is by all means the bad boy on the block. After some initial problems on the legal side as well as regarding some technical issues (the first revisions only supported single sided DIMMs and there were some issues with the onboard sound), the chipset has finally matured enough to go into serial production After MSI, ASUS comes out with their version of the nForce-based mainbord, in this case named A7N266E. There is no doubt that the nForce has no competition amongst all other integrated graphics solutions, furthermore, the onboard sound, courtesy of the APU is stellar. One unique feature is the PCI bus locked at 33 MHz which makes overclocking a safe endeavor, at least for the hard disk, even at the 172 MHz FSB we managed to run at. All in all, a very rounded solution but is it the fastest and what other bugs did we unearth?

One of last year's Computex key events was the unveiling of the nForce chipset by nVidia, the first foray of the world's most successful graphics chip manufacturer into the realm of mainboard or system chipsets. Being a newcomer in any given area of engineering has some disadvantages but at the same time also brings with it the major benefit of not being bound by legacies to older concepts.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the nVidia Crush or nForce chipset constitutes a radical breakaway from conventional patterns of configuration or implementation of core logic. Conceived as the first true integrated chipset to combine graphics, Dolby Sound as well as networking capabilities in a tightly interconnected configuration of center logic bridges, renamed in the true entrepreneurial spirit of nVidia as processors and interconnected via AMD's Hypertransport protocol, the NV420 and its budget pendant NV220 promise the richest multimedia experience of all time in a single board. The second major novelty of the chipset is the so-called Twin Bank architecture, similar to what ServerWorks chipsets have offered in the past.

In Detail

Integrated Graphics Processor (IGP)

What is conventionally called the North Bridge on most chipsets, that is, primarily the memory controller and interface to the South Bridge is named the Integrated Graphics Processor by nVidia. As indicated by the name, the core logic contains the graphics unit, in this case, it is a spin-off of the NV11 core known from the GeForce2 that is embedded into the controller chip. Integrated graphics have always been somewhat problematic in that they need to rely on a united memory architecture (UMA). In turn, this means that instead of having access to ultrafast graphics memory (frame buffers) to store triangulation and textures, they are hobbled to the system memory with much less bandwidth that is furthermore shared with the CPU and every other DMA device.

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