NForce

The nForce is the first PC chipset of the company Nvidia (codenamed Crush ), presented in June 2001 at Computex in Taiwan, and a classic design consisting of North - (IGP and SPP = System Platform Processor) and Southbridge ( MCP = Media and Communication Processor). It is suitable for AMD K7 processors.

Development

It was originally conceived as a pure IGP, however, offered some innovations: The two chips were connected to developed AMD HyperTransport, and also the first time a dual-channel memory interface for PC2100 memory (called TwinBank ) used in the mass market. The real reason for this memory interface but was the bandwidth requirement of the integrated GeForce2 MX graphics core. But little later, followed also a version without the integrated graphics core. The nForce AGP 4x and provides general support for FSB266 (133 MHz EV6 ).

Northbridges

There are the following variants of the North Bridge:

• NForce 220D
• NForce 415D
• NForce 420D

The nForce 420D (codenamed Crush 12) is the original version with integrated graphics core and dual-channel memory interface, while the nForce 220D (codenamed Crush 11) as a base variant, only a single-channel memory interface. Accordingly, these two variants differ only in their performance. The nForce 415D, however, has no integrated graphics core.

South Bridges

In addition, two South Bridges are available: MCP and MCP -D. Both have a Ultra-DMA/100-Controller with two channels, integrated 10/100 Mbps Ethernet, six USB 1.1 ports and an AC97 audio interface. The MCP -D features in addition to an audio processor (APU ), called Sound Storm.