Introduction

While nVidia just released their brand new nForce 600 series chipset, there is a rather quiet part on the nVidia roadmap. Conceived for the Intel Core 2 Duo platform, but not well thought about, we are talking about the nVidia nForce 500 series for the Intel platform.

While it may have the 500 series name, the 590, 570 and 550 based Intel chips are derived from the old C19A chip, the nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition Northbridge. That’s right - old Northbridge but new Southbridge.

In early tests from the OEM’s, this chipset performed less than stellar in the overclocking department but it was too late for companies to pull out of, as their production lines were already making boards based on this chipset. While they have been made, we won’t see them pushed like the nForce 600 series. For companies like ASUS who will create their own nForce 680i motherboard design which takes much more time than purely using the nVidia reference design, it is a good stop gap for them while the newer motherboard is being prepared. That is the exact reason why we are even looking at this motherboard here today.

Today we have the first of these phantom boards in our labs from ASUS. This being dubbed the P5N32-SLI Premium/WiFi-AP and it is based on the top-end nForce 590 SLI Intel chipset.

It’s by no means a cheap motherboard being stacked with plenty of very good enthusiast features but it is cheaper than the new nForce 680i based motherboards. We need to take a close and careful look at the ASUS P5N32-SLI Premium motherboard (especially overclocking) and work out if you should really be spending your money on it or waiting for newer boards based on the new nVidia chipset.