The nForce 570 SLI and nForce 590 SLI chipsets

The nF590 SLI platform is the most feature-packed and thus the most expensive of the nF500 series chipsets. At first glance, it seems very similar to the nForce4 SLI X16 platform for the AMD Socket 939 Processors, in fact if you look at a basic overview of the two chipsets side-by-side, you’ll see there are little differences. The most significant changes are DDR2 support, two less native PATA drives, two more native SATAII and the inclusion HD Azalia audio, all missing on the nF4 SLi X16 platform, while present on the nF590 SLi platform. Both chipsets are composed of two chips, and are the only ones like that in their classes. The Southbridge handles most of the I/O operations while the Northbridge is primarily responsible for handling PCI Express graphics.

The nForce 590 differs from the other less expensive options of the nF500 series too. Only nForce 590 boards offer maximum overclocking, and LinkBoost™ Technology. As we noted before, it is the only dual x16 platform as well. Dual x16 PCI Express Graphics (PEG) slots don’t help much, if at all, when gaming, so this is nothing special. These premium boards are priced in the $200+ range. Even now, one month after their release, the three nF590 SLI boards are priced over $200 dollars. The Foxconn and ASUS boards are in stock now, priced at around $210. The Gigabyte board hasn’t been released yet, but will be in stock in the coming week priced similarly. Now let’s move on to the other chipset featured in this roundup.

The nF570 is a single-chip chipset. Other than the new technologies and dual X16 PCI Express slots, it is identical to the nF590 SLI chipset. The nF570 SLI is one tier down in the nF500 series, but by no means does it lack features or performance. The 6 native SATA II ports, High Definition Azalia audio and dual Gigabit Ethernet, as well as 10 USB 2.0 ports are all carried down from the nF590 SLI platform. We expect performance to be similar to the nF590 boards.

The nF570 SLI boards are mainstream offerings, and are priced in the $130-$150 range. They are much more affordable than the premium nF590 enthusiast boards. LinkBoost™ Technology did nothing to improve performance as we saw in FiringSquad’s AM2 review, linked on the introductory page of this article. Maximum overclocking is also gone, but many manufacturers have included these options anyway in their BIOS. The nF570 SLI board tested by us, the EPOX MF570-SLI has as many overclocking options if not more than the other nF590 SLI boards.

Let’s move on to the actual boards.