Nvidia will next month announce not one but four versions of its upcoming CK8-04 chipset, according to an anonymous Russian source cited by a French web site.

The site, x86 Secret, claims the next-generation AMD64-oriented chipset line will ship in both standard and Ultra versions, the latter providing Serial ATA II support. A Pro version will be pitched specifically at servers. All three chipsets will offer PCI Express support.

So too will the so-called SLI release, which presumably provides either two PCI Express x16 buses for two SLI-enabled graphics cards, or allows the integrated graphics engine to co-operate with an external card, again utilising Nvidia's SLI technology.

A piece over at AnandTech appears to confirm the regular, Ultra and SLI versions of the chipset, which may or may not be called nForce 4. It claims the vanilla version essentially adds PCI Express and 7.1 high-definition audio to the nForce 3 250Gb. Expect Gigabit Ethernet and a hardware firewall too.

In addition to SATA II, the Ultra version offers broader network processing features, along with the firewall - presumably the same kind of functionality already offered by the nForce 2 Ultra 400Gb.

Nvidia has already admitted that "next-generation nForce MCPs" will not only support Socket 939 Athlon 64s, but provide PCI Express support too. ®

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