CES 2008: Nvidia Confirms New Chipsets, 3-way SLI

Nvidia came out of the gates running at CES this year! First thing Monday morning, they confirmed the rumors that have been flying around the PC world regarding their new chipsets. Three new chipsets are on their way, the 730a, 750a SLI, and the 780a SLI. It appears, however, that they are only announced for AMD processors.

The 750a and the 780a both support the AMD Phenom quad core processors and the new Nvidia Hybrid SLI technology. Hybrid SLI incorporates Nvidia's new power-saving Hybrid Power, which enables uses to shut down power to a discrete graphics processor and divert it to an integrated processor (great for gaming laptops when not being used for gaming), and GeForce Boost, which boosts (oddly enough) the over-all graphics processing ability of the slightly older 8400 GT and 8500 GS and other budget cards. Also, the 780a will support 3-way SLI (using three graphics cards in the same system), slowly increasing the SLI Better Butter Battle of chipset makers.

The final kicker for Nvidia this morning was the announcement of the integration of the 8200 graphics chip into the new 700-series chipsets. Nividia states the the integrated chip will support Direct-X 10 and PureVideo HD (Nvidia's HD decoding software), which also means that users of the new chipsets will not have to have a discrete graphics card to play Blu-Ray and HD DVD format discs. Of course, you'll still need Blu-Ray or HD DVD drive.

Nvidia announces new chipsets, Hybrid SLI [CNET]