It looks like NVIDIA have no intent on slowing down support for AMD's high-end desktop market. VR-Zone has learned today that the company is looking to release the nForce 980a SLI to motherboard makers as early as March.

However, there isn't a lot to say about it at all. In typical re-branding fashion, it's been said NVIDIA are merely changing the name of the existing nForce 780a SLI chipset to the 980a SLI and the core code will change from NF780A-SLI-N-A2 to NF980A-SLI-A2. There may be a few subtle changes made, but it likely won't be anything to write home about. Here's what NVIDIA had to say about it to its partners:

The NVIDIA nForce 980a SLI SPP is an enthusiast-class high performance interface to AMD AM3 CPUs. It is RoHS-compliant. It includes 2×16 PCI Express 2.0 lanes (also configurable as 1 x16, 2 x8) and 3×1 PCI Express 1.0 lanes, 12 USB ports, six SATA ports, and single GigE. To ensure timely availability and flexibility, we encourage customers to qualify and release products using the NVIDIA nForce 980a SLI SPP.

ASUS also recently leaked details about its nForce 980a SLI based M4N82 Deluxe board within a press release last month, which you can locate here.