The nForce 590 supports automatic overclocking as well as nVIDIA's LinkBoost technology, neither is supported by the lower end models. Automatic overclocking is pretty straight forward, the motherboard automatically overclocks the system depending on load but it's LinkBoost that's more interesting. When the nForce 590 SLI chipset detects GeForce 7900GTX or higher videocards installed, it will automatically increase HyperTransport and PCI Express x16 bandwidth by 25%. This may not do much for current generation videocards but future generation nVIDIA videocards will definitely benefit from the added bandwidth!

nVidia nForce 500 Series Chipset Feature Breakdown nVidia nForce 590 SLI nVidia nForce 570 SLI nVidia nForce 570 Ultra nVidia nForce 550 CPU 940-pin Socket AM2 940-pin Socket AM2 940-pin Socket AM2 940-pin Socket AM2 nVida SLI Support Yes, (2 x16) Yes (1 x16, 2 x8) - - nVidia LinkBoost Yes - - - nVidia FirstPacket Yes Yes Yes Yes nVidia DualNet Yes Yes Yes - Native Gigabit Ethernet 2 2 2 1 Teaming Yes Yes Yes - TCP/IP Acceleration Yes Yes Yes - nVidia MediaShield Storage Yes Yes Yes Yes SATA/IDE HDD 6/2 6/2 6/2 4/2 SATA Speed 3Gb/s 3Gb/s 3Gb/s 3Gb/s RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 0, 1, 0+1, 5 0, 1, 0+1, 5 0, 1, 0+1 nVidia nTune Utility Yes Yes Yes Yes PCI Express Lanes 46 lanes 28 lanes 20 lanes 20 lanes USB Ports 10 10 10 10 PCI Slots 5 5 5 5 Audio High Definition Audio (Azalia) High Definition Audio (Azalia) High Definition Audio (Azalia) High Definition Audio (Azalia)