Leaked by Asus about a month ago, the nForce 980a SLI chipset is yet another rebrand which Nvidia wants to make official next month, probably at the CeBIT show. Featuring practically the same specs as the nForce 780a SLI, the 980a SLI will have support for AM2, AM2+ but also AM3 processors, HyperTransport 3.0, DDR2-1066 memory, three-way SLI, DirectX 10 integrated graphics, six SATA 3.0 Gbps ports and Gigabit Ethenet. The first nForce 980a SLI motherboard announced is Asus' M4N82 Deluxe.

Given the fact that the 'major' update of the AM3 processors is DDR3 support, Nvidia is probably also working on a high-end chipset which will use the memory standard.