Whoever said time flies as you get older, was actually right! How do I know this? I know this because just 5 years ago now, the very first NVIDIA chipset being the original nForce was released. Just think, in the computer industry a new generation of products is released every year, in some cases every six months, and the original nForce chipset was brought to light roughly 60 months ago! This means, each year since then we have seen a new version of the nForce chipset and thankfully the majority of them have been very good.
In fact that is an understatement, in the past 5 years NVIDIA has almost redefined what a chipset should be with their nForce series. Just think back when the nForce was first released, it was competing with the well established KT series from VIA. At the time the KT266A was dominating the AMD chipset market and the original nForce chipset did little to change this. It was not until the nForce2 chipset went head-to-head with the KT400A that everyone knew, NVIDIA really did mean business.
By the time the nForce3 stepped up to take care of business it was apparent VIA had some serious competition on their hands. Initially VIA came out strong and their K8T800 chipset did reasonably well for a short period of time. Towards its later years the nForce3 chipset dominated the market segment, pushing VIA completely aside. Then the nForce4 chipset stepped in and quickly became NVIDIAs most dominant product yet. By now VIA was more of a myth than a chipset manufacturer, which was a shame given how good their past products had been.
Now NVIDIA has super charged the nForce series once again, as they release the latest and greatest version yet! The nForce 500 series is designed to support both the latest AMD and Intel platforms. The most obvious reason for NVIDIA to release this new chipset series was to support the new AMD AM2 platform. They plan to offer total support to AM2 users with a range of four different chipsets, being the nForce 590 SLI, 570 SLI, 570 Ultra and 550. Todays review item is the MSI K9N Platinum featuring the nForce 570 Ultra chipset, which is the performance mainstream part.
NVIDIA calls the nForce 570 Ultra their performance mainstream option as it will deliver very similar single graphics card performance to the nForce 590 SLI chipset. On the other hand, they call the nForce 590 SLI the chipset that is Engineered for enthusiasts which really means For those with too much money. I guess that would make the nForce 570 SLI chipset one for all those consumers out there that almost have too much money. Either way, the nForce 570 Ultra is the new nForce4 Ultra, and it is certainly going to be the choice of most migrating to the AM2 platform.
The chipset alone supports 20 PCI Express Lanes and 5 Links, along with 6 SATAII (3Gb/s) ports. The chipset supports RAID0,1,0+1,5 modes and also supports the NVIDIA MediaShield Storage Technology. Another impressive aspect of the chipset is the dual native Gigabit Ethernet connections which help improve the connectivity of the nForce 570 Ultra. Other features include support for 10 USB 2.0 ports, HDA (Azalia) Audio, the NVIDIA nTune Utility, NVIDIA FirstPacket technology and NVIDIA DualNet technology.
Being an MSI motherboard the MSI K9N Platinum is very well equipped, featuring everything an affordable AM2 motherboard should have. Priced at just $120 US the K9N Platinum is amazing value. Furthermore, considering the fact that an accompanying AMD Athlon64 3800+ processor goes for roughly the same amount, the AM2 platform is shaping up to be a very competitive solution. This motherboard supports Dual-Channel DDR2 memory, Serial ATAII RAID, 8-Channel Audio, Dual Gigabit LAN, PCI Express 16x, Firewire and USB 2.0. The board design and layout is also very good!
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