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Nvidia is expected to roll out a bumber crop of chipsets during the first three months of 2008, including AMD-oriented versions of its latest nForce 700 series.

The release schedule, according to a report on Chinese-language site HKEPC, will also see the arrival of new integrated chipsets for AMD that'll go out under the GeForce brand.

So, this month we'll see the GeForce 8200 go into mass production, the site claims, based on the MCP78S chipset. It won't support SLI, but it will Support Hybrid SLI, allowing the integrated GPU to co-operate with a discrete GPU, if one's installed. For that, the MCP78S has a single x16 PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 slot.

It can also host six SATA drives and one parallel ATA add-on - other devices can be hooked up to the 14 USB headers the chipset makes available. Outputs include HD TV, HDMI and DVI.

The MCP78U has the same basic spec, but since it'll debut as the GeForce 9200, it's clearly going to sport a more powerful GPU. It's due in February.

That month will also see the mass-production of the MCP78D, the report claims. It comes a month after the MCP72XE, MCP72P and MCP78H chipesets. All four will be pitched as nForce 7 parts: the nForce 720a, 780a SLI, 750a SLI and 730a, respectively.

It's claimed the SLI products have integrated GPUs for Hybrid SLI operation, but also support two x15 PCIe 2.0 slots for board-to-board SLI too - three-way in the case of the 780a - but we suspect that the 780a and 750a, analagous to the existing, Intel-oriented nForce 780i and 750i, will simply support three-way and two-way SLI respectively, through add-on GPUs.

The 730a and 720a are both said to eschew SLI support. All four AMD-oriented nForce 7 series boards support the same I/O options as the GeForce chipsets detailed above but without the the integrated graphics outputs.

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