ABIT, one of the leading makers of mainboards for overclockers and computer enthusiasts, may postpone or cancel its mainboards based on NVIDIA’s latest flavour of the nForce3 core-logic. The reason for the possible move may be certain stability issues with the nForce3 250 product.

On Hold, or Cancelled?

A report at The Inquirer web-site claims that ABIT will not use NVIDIA’s nForce3 250 core-logic with its mainboards because of insufficient stability of the chipset.

However, a source close to ABIT told X-bit labs that the mainboards powered by the nForce3 250 core-logic still exist in the company’s roadmap, but the company has no plans to use the current revision of the chipset because of instability. Sources believe that once NVIDIA fixes the existing issues with its latest chipset, ABIT will jump on the nForce bandwagon for AMD64.

It is not clear when NVIDIA may issue a new revision of its core-logic, if this is planned.

Second NVIDIA’s Chip Rejected by ABIT

NVIDIA supplies a number of flavours of the nForce3 core-logic for AMD Athlon 64-series of chips today: nForce3 250, nForce3 250Gb, nForce3 Ultra and the nForce3 250 Pro. The base capabilities of all four SKUs include 2 Serial ATA-150 ports as well as external 2 Serial ATA-150 PHY support in addition to AGP 8x, PCI, 2 ATA-33/66/100/133 channels with RAID 0,1 and 0+1 support, 10/100Mb/s Ethernet, USB 2.0, etc. The nForce3 250Gb also has embedded Gigabit Ethernet controller, while the nForce3 Ultra and the nForce3 Pro are tailored for enthusiast as well as server/workstation applications respectively.

Last year ABIT decided to skip NVIDIA’s nForce3 150-series chipset because of lower performance compared to that of the competition. This year ABIT is not satisfied with stability of the nForce3 250 and plans to offer VIA KT890- and VIA K8T800 Pro-based mainboards for AMD64 processors in PGA754 and PGA939 form-factors.

NVIDIA Rides Chipset Storm

While NVIDIA Corporation is mostly known for its graphics processors, the company is now very focused on its core-logic products. The firm’s latest nForce3 250-series products feature capabilities, such as Gigabit Ethernet, NVIDIA Firewall and Dynamic Overclocking, not available on competing offerings, such as VIA K8T800 Pro. In addition to that NVIDIA vows to bring Serial ATA-300 enabled chipset before year end.

Enthusiasts adored the nForce2-series designed for AMD Athlon XP processors for exceptional performance and feature-set. Nevertheless, at this point VIA Technologies has market share crown in AMD64 market as NVIDIA faced numerous delays with its nForce3-series.

Officials for NVIDIA Corp. and ABIT did not comment on the news-story.