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NVIDIA is positioning the 780a as "the" chipset for Socket AM2 enthusiast boards, and is really pushing the "Hybrid SLI" concept, but before we go into more details, let's take a quick look at NVIDIA's other new AMD offerings:

NVIDIA has segmented its vision of the motherboard market into three classes of customers:

• Mainstream Gamers - suggests using nForce 730a with a single PCIe 16x slot - $80+ motherboards
• Performance Gamers - suggests the nForce 750a with dual PCIe 2.0 8x slots - $120+ motherboards
• Enthusiasts - with the "king of the hill" nForce 780a with a PCIe 16x slot and two PCIe 2.0 8x slots - $250+ motherboards

The "low end" 730a supports the latest Phenom and X2 AMD processors, supports DDR2-1066MHz (PC8500) memory, DMI, HDMI and VGA outputs, Gigabit Ethernet, 12 USB 2.0 ports, HDA audio, 6 SATA and 2 PATA drives with RAID 0,1,0+1,5 and up to 5 PCI slots, 3 PCIe 1x slots, and a single PCIe 16x slot.

Even though NVIDIA is addressing this chip at the mainstream gamer, I would not at all be surprised if it showed up in a lot of HTPC's.

The "middle of the road" 750a changes little from the 730a described above - instead of a single x16 slot and three 1x slots, it is described as having two PCIe 2.0 8x slots and two PCIe 1x slots.

I'd be VERY surprised if the die was not identical with the 730a, with the only real difference being the BIOS enabling PCIe 2.0, and how the lanes are routed.