Nvidia has announced it will show off its as-yet-unannounced nForce 500 chipset family this week, even though the part won't ship until "mid 2006", the company said. No surprise there: that's exactly when AMD's Socket AM2 - a key component of the nForce 500 series - is due to be launched.

Nvidia said it will offer four nForce 500 chipsets: the 550, 570, 570 SLI and the 590 SLI. A variety of motherboard makers will have mobos based on the chipsets fixed to the walls of their booths at CeBIT, it added.

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The two top-end 500s will both support dual x16 PCI Express graphics cards, but Nvidia said the chipsets will also support four-board set-ups. The 500 series will also incorporate support for ten USB 2.0 devices and six 3Gbps Serial ATA drives. The chipsets' MediaShield component has been upgraded to support dual RAID 5, Nvidia said. ®