NVIDIA to push for mainstream DDR3

The lads at Expreview have sighted what could be the world's first budget/mainstream positioned DDR3 motherboard to hit the market. Code-named MCP7A-U, this will be a part of NVIDIA's GeForce 9-series motherboard GPU lineup with nForce 730i Southbridge, HDMI video output, PCI-E 2.0 and many more up to date technologies.

It is said that we should see the upcoming chipset first sampled as early as next month, with a launch date of sometime in July which is when Intel's G45 should see light of day with its assumed DDR3 support. However, Expreview have strong suspicion that NVIDIA will beat them to it.

As to the logic of running DDR3 in a more budget oriented platform; well, it would seem to be a bit un-fitting given the cost of DDR3 memory hasn't really dropped much at all yet, though this will hopefully soon change for the better with the presence of chipsets like these hitting the market.

Because of Hybrid SLI, NVIDIA mainstream market strategy is now facing a big change. The new chipset, MCP7A-H, have been canned before it enters the market. Because it is lack of integrated graphic, can not meet the needs of NV's recent changed strategy.

But instead of canceling, 730i will keep exist and have new chipset, the MCP7A-S. In other words, MCP7A-S will have two names, one is GeForce 9xxx (still can not conform its name) and the other is 730i. The GeForce 9xxx is a uATX form factor mobo, with less PCI, PCIe and other expansion slots. 730i is a ATX mobo and has more expansion slots.