In a few days we expect to see an official launch of the nForce 780i SLi chipset, preceded by the launch of nVidia's 3-way SLI. This triple SLi will be able to run on the 680i chipset, but will be a bit limited due to the lack of PCIe lanes on that particular board. The
680i chipset along supports graphics configurations of 16x/16x/8x and limits the third card to half the bandwidth of the other two cards.
Also a limiting factor of the 680i chipset is its confirmed lack of support for Intel 45nm Quad Core (Yorkfield) CPUs. The 680i has no trouble with the 45nm (Wolfdale) Dual Core CPUs, but lacks a circuit required for the 45nm Quads.
It's for this reason that nVidia is set to launch the
780i SLi chipset. This chipset
supports all three graphics cards at a full 16x each - thanks to the help of some other chipsets. The 780i SLi motherboard is actually comprised of an
NF780i-SLI chipset, an NF570SLI chipset and the NF200 chipset that adds PCIe 2.0 support to this board.
Izvor:
BCCHardware