The nForce2 Mystery

[Tuesday630]

You may be geeky enough to find this interesting. This is a mystery.

Have you noticed that some mobo manufacturers refer to the nForce2 south bridge as MCP and MCP-T and some call it MCP2 and MCP2-T?

I'm very much aware that the original nforce was MCP and MCP-D, and it's natural to want to call the south bridge of nForce2 MCP2, but no one calls the north bridge IGP2 or SPP2.

If you look at nVidia's roll out of the nForce2, they very explicitly called it MCP and MCP-T. See http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=nppa .

Manufacturers who call their nForce2 south bridge MCP2 and MCP2-T: MSI and Abit

Manufacturers who call their nForce2 south bridge MCP and MCP2-T: Asus, EPoX, Chaintech, Leadtek (basically, everybody else).

If you look at photos of the nForce2 mobo, it will nearly always show MCP and MCP-T. However, I've found photos of a Leadtek K7NCR18 mobo on an Asian website that reads MCP2.

There is no difference in the features. The change in nomenclature is a mystery.
:?:

[Evil_Spork]

the -t is onboard video

[Tuesday630]

Dude, no offence, but - not only are you wrong, but you're missing the point.

Video is located on the north bridge. There are two possible north bridges with nForce2: SPP and IGP. The IGP has integrated GeForce4 MX, the SPP version does not. The MCP-T is the south bridge. The "T" is for Turbo. Which is not in relation to speed, but extra features. The "T" version, which is similar to the "D" version of nForce, has Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding and supports firewire and USB 2.0.

There actually 4 combinations possible with nForce2:

nForce2 SPP-MCP
nForce2 IGP-MCP
nForce2 SPP-MCP-T
nForce2 IGP-MCP

But, back to the point. The point of the post is that they are two different ways to refer to the south bridge by different mobo manufacturers (the features are the same).

This is borderline unethical. If I'm looking at an MSI mobo that claims to have nForce2 IGP-MCP2-T, and then I review an Asus motherboard that claims to have nForce2 IGP-MCP-T, I might choose the MSI over the Asus just because it appears to be more current. That's just not right.

[Evil_Spork]

hmmm.. thats odd.. and your right. hehe. the t isnt onboard video lol.

thats wierd with the two names. look around at some in depth articles about the nforce. see what they say. ill look on my epoc board and see what the southbridge says.

[Tuesday630]

I would be interested in knowing what your south bridge has on it. I've read tons of articles on the nForce2 looking for a reason for this change, but I haven't found anyone comment on it but me. I'm a technical writer by trade. I'm going to mention this in an article I'm writing on chipsets. Maybe that will shed some light on it - one way or another.

It's probably just a marketing branding change to differentiate it from the original nForce. My guess is that the change started with mobos distributed in Asian countries and will work its way to North America soon.

[Evil_Spork]

it may be that some of the NF2 mobos have more audio plugs and an optical out aswell. it could be noting that.