NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb Preview

Supplied by NVIDIA

NVIDIA are now on their third incarnation of the nForce chipset with nForce3.
The NVIDIA nForce 250Gb stands at the forefront with NVIDIA Gigabit Ethernet,
NVIDIA Firewall, a new system utility for control over system settings and massive
hard drive support through NVIDIA RAID. NVIDIA have taken common features that
enthusiasts already know one step further. The NVIDIA PR folk brought the nForce3
250Gb into the office the other day for a one on one and admittedly it not only
garnered some interest; some features are just darn clever.

NVIDIA have made a serious push into the chipset business. The battle waged
against ATI in the graphics card market has taken its toll even though NVIDIA
is claiming market share dominance. From a business perspective it made sense
for NVIDIA to branch out. Vicious product cycles and shrinking profit margins
put tremendous pressure on the GPU side of NVIDIA. Between the processor and
the graphic card stands the chipset. It only makes sense that NVIDIA made the
move to designing and manufacturing their own chipset to open up new revenue
streams for both PC and personal communications devices. This move also made
sense from a marketing perspective. The consumer can be quick to assume that
NVIDIA GPU products will work best with NVIDIA chipset products therefore make
purchasing decisions based upon that assumption. While NVIDIA may be locked
in a head to head battle with ATI in the graphics arena they are quick to play
both sides up the middle in the chipset business. It would be a disaster if
NVIDIA did not go out of their way to ensure every product is fully supported
and can make full use of their nForce chipset. The chipset is a single chip
design and some might argue that VIA’s two chipset design is a better move.
NVIDIA counters that a single chip design speeds up data and is cost effective.

NVIDIA nForce3 Specifications

NETWORKING

• NVIDIA IEEE 802.3 Media Access Control (MAC)
  • Supports 10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet/Fast Ethernet/Gigabit Ethernet*
    • Supports HomePNA 2.0 PHYs
    • Advanced Communication Riser (ACR) and Communications and Networking
      Riser (CNR) interface support
  • High performance networking features
    • TCP segmentation offloads*
    • Jumbo frames*
    • Checksum offloads*
  • NVIDIA StreamThru technology
    • Isochronous controller paired with HyperTransport results in fastest
      networking performance

SECURITY

• NVIDIA Firewall technology*
  • Industry’s only native firewall solution
  • Unmatched performance and protection
  • Advanced management features
    • Remote access, configuration, monitoring
    • Command line interface (CLI)
    • WMI scripts

STORAGE

• RAID 0 disk striping support for highest system and application performance
• RAID 1 disk mirroring support for fault tolerance
• RAID 0 +1 disk striping and mirroring support for highest performance with
  fault tolerance
• Support for both SATA and ATA-133 disk controller standards
• Dual independent SATA controllers**
  • Supports up to 4 SATA disk drives simultaneously
• Integrated SATA PHY with support for two drives**
• Digital SATA interface for external PHY with support for two drives**
• Fast Ultra ATA-133 Disk Drive Controllers
  • Each interface supports two devices, for support for up to six devices
  • Supports UltraDMA modes 6-0 (UltraDMA 33/66/100/133)
  • Industry-standard PCI bus master IDE register set
  • Separate independent IDE connections for 5V-tolerant primary and secondary
    interfaces

CONNECTIVITY

• AGP interface
  • Supports AGP3.0 – 0.8 V signaling for 8x and 4x with Fast Writes data
    transfers
  • Supports AGP2.0 – 1.5 V signaling for 4x, 2x, and 1x modes with 4x and
    2x Fast Writes data transfers
  • Supports graphics address remapping table (GART) features
  • The AGP3.0 8x 533 MT/s. (million transfers per second) interface provides
    the user with the ability to upgrade the external graphics card, thus
    avoiding obsolescence. An external AGP add-in card achieves higher performance
    than it would on existing platforms.
  • AGP interface is backward compatible with the AGP2.0 specification.
• USB 2.0
  • Single USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller Interface (EHCI)/Dual USB 1.1
    Open Host Controller Interface (OHCI)
  • Support for up to 8 ports
  • Supports transfer rates at high speed (480 Mbps), full speed (12 Mbps),
    and low speed (1.2 Mbps)
  • Dynamically configures slower devices for best utilization of bandwidth
  • Allows USB concurrency
• PCI interface
• Integrates a fast PCI-to-PCI bridge running at 33 MHz. It includes an arbiter
  that supports six external master PCI slots.
• Features of the PCI interface include:
  • PCI 2.3-compliant, 5 V tolerant – Supports six external PCI slots at
    33 MHz
  • Supports six bus master arbitration
  • PCI master and slave interfaces
  • Supports both master-initiated and slave-initiated terminations
  • Bidirectional write posting support for concurrency
  • Flexible routing of all four PCI interrupts
  • Supports read ahead: memory read line (MRL) and memory read multiple
    (MRM)

PERFORMANCE

• HyperTransport technology
  • High throughput (6.4GB/sec)**
  • Low voltage
  • Differential

AUDIO

• AC ’97 2.1 compliant interface
• Supports 2, 4, or 6-channel audio
• Dual AC-Link – supports up to two codecs
• 16-bit or 20-bit stereo output and 16-bit input streams
• Supports input, output, and general purpose input/output (GPIO) channels
  for host-based modems
• Separate independent functions for audio and modem
• Supports ACR and CNR interface
• S/PDIF output (stereo or AC-3 output)

MOBILITY

• Power management
• Full support for AMD PowerNow! technology
• ACPI 2.0 compliant
• Support for ACPI C3 stateLow power 0.15 µ process
• Maximizing real estate efficiency enabling small form factor designs
  • Single chip solution
  • Lower latency for higher performance

* NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb only. ** NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb and 250
only.

From the outside in

Begin with the connection to the nForce3 250Gb equipped motherboard through
NVIDIA Gigabit Ethernet. It’s important to differentiate between a gigabit ethernet
and the NVIDIA Gigabit Ethernet. Many motherboard manufacturers have equipped
product with a form of gigabit ethernet but NVIDIA, as would be expected, state
theirs is better. Gigabit Ethernet is a faster network connection. It won’t
make Internet upload/download speeds faster but data throughput takes a significant
jump when one gigabit system is connected to another. The Internet Service Provider
controls the upload/download speeds for the Internet connection and, at present,
Gigabit has no real advantage over 10/100 ethernet. Since NVIDIA have moved
the gigabit controller on chip the pathways are shorter and do not have to travel
through the PCI bus. Some gigabit port on the motherboard do pass through the
slower PCI bus and therefore NVIDIA have found a speed increase through bypassing
the PCI bus. That’s it in a nutshell foregoing the techno-babble about what
NVIDIA actually did on-chip.

NVIDIA did demonstrate the amount of data throughput and speed connecting their
nForce3 250Gb up to an incredibly expensive dual processor 3.0 GHz Xeon PC equipped
with an Alacritech TOE GigE NIC and 3Com GigE NIC. NetIQ’s
Chariot was used to evaluate the performance of the connection through a series
of standard scripts. The demo system using a 64kb script showed a throughput
of over 1700 Mbps which NVIDIA said was significantly greater than any available
GbE NIC presently on the market. It also showed less overall CPU usage during
the performance tests. The 64kB script test was said to be nearly twice as fast
with approximately 15%-20% less CPU usage. LAN gamers rejoice! It will be interesting
to compare the NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb Gigabit NIC with current 10/100 connections
and other gigabit equipped motherboards to put these claims into real-world
perspective.

Where Gigabit will make its presence felt with gigabit is machine to machine
be it between two PCs or in a network of many nForce3 250Gb machines. The obvious
use for a gigabit connection is to allow a user to transfer more or larger files
at a much higher throughput. Think of it like a highway that has been widened
and the speed limit has been raised by a multiple of 10. Gigabit ethernet operates
at 1000 megabits per second (Mbps) or 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) as opposed
to 10/100 which operates at 1 Mbps. It is not safe to say that Gigabit is 10
times faster but it is significantly faster.

Faster ethernet solutions are more than just hardware. They are also a protocol
standard. Gigabit isn’t THE solution. It is one solution for faster data throughput
that is making a push into the marketplace. The Gigabit
Ethernet Alliance was formed in 1996 by 11 companies : 3Com Corp., Bay Networks
Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Compaq Computer Corp., Granite Systems Inc., Intel
Corporation, LSI Logic, Packet Engines Inc., Sun Microsystems Computer Company,
UB Networks and VLSI Technology. The Gigabit Ethernet Alliance represents one
side of the equation and ATM
(Asynchronous Transfer Mode) represents the other. Gigabit may make its foothold
at the home and small business level as integrating Gigabit is easy and seamless;
plug and play if you will. ATM may make its assault from the server and backbone
level as ATM is not nearly as fast as Gigabit but it does offer certain advantages
in given situations. Since NVIDIA is targeting the single user and small business
user it is now easier to understand their concentrated effort on Gigabit.

Shield’s up! How?

So the NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb gigabit is faster but today security of data is
another extremely high priority even for the home user. No one wants their banking
information, credit card numbers or personal data left open to the Internet.
No one wants a PC to be compromised by a hacker. No one wants unwanted guests
inside their PC in the workplace. It’s best not to be paranoid about data security
as chances are slim that your home PC is of interest to a hacker; your high
score in solitaire just isn’t that valuable. If you are “chicken little”
paranoid about data security then unplug your PC from the Internet, erase the
drives and shut it off.

A proactive approach to data security is best. The “ounce of prevention
is worth a pound of cure” phrase is most applicable. The 250Gb comes with
NVIDIA’s Firewall technology and this falls into the “that’s just damn
handy” category. Remember that a firewall will NOT prevent a PC from getting
a virus. It is not virus protection software. If you foolishly open that email
“RE: reply now for a million dollars!” then a firewall can’t help
you.

Where a firewall can help is at an intrusion defense level. The NVIDIA firewall
provides an inbound and outbound shield between the PC and the outside world
that is at the driver level. This shield can be configured from a minimal level
of protection right up to a total and complete lockdown. A firewall means that
users outside of your PC may see your PC in the form of a locked door or, if
you change the level of protection, don’t see you at all. What can’t be seen
can’t be readily hacked. Software firewalls, or personal firewalls, kick in
after the operating system is loaded. There is a level of vulnerability there.
A firewall that loads immediately after the BIOS offers a superior form of security
and the minds at NVIDIA know that the consumer wants that level of security.
NVIDIA also realized that most may not know a thing about how a firewall works
never mind how to set one up. So NVIDIA came up with a clever idea that I wonder
why no one else has thought of before.

NVIDIA dreamed up an interface that looks easy and helpful to those who want
security but are completely lost on how to set up a firewall. This interface
can also allow a knowledgeable user to drill down deep into advanced settings
to custom configure the firewall. For example, the NVIDIA Firewall can be as
easy as pulling up the administration page and choosing a preset level of security.
That’s it. The firewall is now active and you are done!

But a firewall can also inadvertently block friendly outside sources such as
game servers. A novice user could possibly be lost or frustrated when it comes
time to solving this problem. The solution in the past has been to turn off
the firewall which is no security at all. NVIDIA have taken a step in the right
direction by providing a wizard interface for step by step setup of given task,
such as allowing access to and from a game server, without compromise to overall
security.

The NVIDIA Firewall is far more configurable than the hardware firewall built
into my own SMC router. The advanced user can be very precise for security settings
including mucking about with such things as anti-spoofing and anti-sniffing.
Custom setting can be created from scratch or on templates. Rule after rule
can be added in order to take the utmost in security precautions. NVIDIA have
also incorporated handy graphical interfaces to assess the activity of the firewall.

What the NVIDIA Firewall does not have is NAT (Network Address Translation).
NAT Technology is usually found on a router and is commonly used to allow multiple
PCs to share a single Internet connection. You see your Internet Service Provider
(ISP) knows that you are you by an IP address. ISP companies typically assign
one or two IP addresses per household. If you are in a household that has a
computer in the office, one in the family room and one in the kid’s room then
a router with NAT technology solves the problem of everyone trying to access
the Internet simultaneously. The ISP sees the router’s single IP address and
the router sees the PCs that are plugged into it. The data coming to or from
a PC is modified to masquerade as what the ISP thinks is the single PC…no
matter what or how many PCs are active at any one moment. That means everyone
in the household can surf the Internet simultaneously. That’s the basics of
NAT technology and it appears not to be a detriment that it isn’t included with
the NVIDIA Firewall. The NVIDIA Firewall is at an endpoint in the connection
diagram. NAT technology isn’t really of use in this application. If the 250Gb
were equipped with dual LAN for Internet Connection Sharing then it would be
as the PC would act as a pass through point for another. No NAT, apparently,
is no big deal.

RAID Re-Done NVIDIA Style

Most are familiar with RAID and its advantages for performance and/or redundancy.
NVIDIA have equipped the nForce3 250Gb with the usual RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1
and JBOD features. A tremendous amount of drive connections are also supported
by up to 4 SATA and 4 ATA133 PATA drive headers. Up to 8 drives could be supported
on a single motherboard. Time will tell if an nForce3 250Gb motherboard will
come out with 4 separate PATA headers and 4 separate SATA headers.

Dig down into the features and three stand out; RAID across PATA and SATA,
Spare Drive and Bootable RAID. Bootable RAID means that any supported operating
system can boot from any support RAID level. It’s more of a convenience feature
rather than significant advancement. RAID across PATA and SATA will be interesting.
PATA hard drives, the standard 80-pin EIDE hard drives, proliferate our PCs.
Only recently have SATA drives been finding their way into systems. It makes
no sense to stripe a RAID across a SATA and PATA drive in RAID 0 as the RAID
performance would be limited to the speed of the slower PATA drive (150 MB/s
SATA versus 133 or 100 MB/s PATA) but it would to stripe 2 SATA drives RAID
0+1 with PATA drives acting as the backup. It’s expensive to replace 2 or more
drives and the RAID across PATA and SATA allows for an easier economical transition.

Spare Drive makes the most sense to users who are concerned with downtime and
data integrity. Spare drive is only available in RAID 1 or 0+1 arrays. A drive
is designated as a shared (available as a hot spare to any array) or dedicated
(assigned to a particular array). If a drive should fail within the array the
spare drive is on hot standby to take its place. It’s unknown if this feature
is automatic meaning that if a drive should fail the computer will reboot itself
and automatically rebuild the array using the hot spare. This would be of great
benefit in server/workstation environments or unattended PCs where downtime
costs money.

NVIDIA proclaim their RAID technology improves performance. Enthusiasts use
RAID 0 arrays to improve disc read and write times but at the risk of losing
data should a drive fail or a stripe break. They avoid RAID 0+1 or RAID 1 arrays
due to the performance hit. The nForce3 250Gb chipset promises to bring up array
speeds where enthusiasts can maintain an acceptable read/write speed and peace
of mind by data backup associated with RAID 1 and RAID 0+1 arrays. Again the
future will tell if this proves true. Data integrity only makes sense as we
are a society of pack rats and with the gigabytes of MP3s, video files, family
photos and other precious data that could otherwise be lost in a failure of
a single drive or RAID 0 array. How many of us religiously back up our data
to CD or DVDR on a regular basis…really?

How easy will it be for the novice to go RAID? We’ll see.

A Window to the BIOS

NVIDIA have introduced their System Utility Application that we initially heard
about in the spring of 2003. The System Utility Application will monitor
system and CPU temperature, voltages, bus speeds, and CPU core speed in real
time. Dynamically adjust bus speeds, memory timings, and voltages in a safe,
easy to use Microsoft® Windows® interface, providing the opportunity
to overclock or underclock system settings without having to enter the BIOS
or change hardware jumpers. Advanced users can also change system settings from
a Windows environment, and save those settings to a custom profile for export
or later use.

Yes it’s a windows based software tool for system information and adjustment.
With it, hopefully, the user can squeeze out every ounce of performance.

nForce audio or SoundStorm is in transition. What SoundStorm is will no longer
be and what it will be isn’t yet. For the moment AC’97 is onboard accompanied
by NVIDIA’s NVMixer Application. NVIDIA assures us that the next step in NVIDIA
audio is coming but is pretty tight-lipped about any specifics. In February
of 2004 Dolby Laboratories and Intel Corporation today announced
cooperative efforts to extend the consumer electronics sound and entertainment
experience to PCs featuring Intel® High-Definition (HD) Audio. As part of
the Dolby PC Entertainment Experience initiative, Dolby is launching a new Integrated
Audio Codec Licensing program and a PC Logo program featuring world-class Dolby
surround sound technologies.

The Dolby Integrated Audio Codec Licensing program is designed to enable
PC audio codec companies to develop solutions that work with Intel HD Audio,
Intel’s next-generation audio architecture formerly code-named “Azalia.”

One can only guess if NVIDIA plan to venture down this or a similar road.

Conclusions

Do not mistake present nForce3 boards with the nForce3 250Gb. The nForce3 chipset
is changing and current production models on the market are nForce3 150 and
150 Pro versions. The nForce3 250 and 250Gb chipset most appeal to enthusiasts
who want it all. It isn’t for every user and that’s the reason for the 150,
150 PRO, 250 and 250Gb models along with NVIDIA’s nForce3 Go150 series for mobile
users. NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb could be most beneficial in workstation environments
in multimedia houses. In graphic design and multimedia work there is the absolute
need for data integrity and fast and fat PC to PC connections. No one wants
to here “bork” or wait longer than a few minutes to transfer large
data files. This is where NVIDIA could gain a strong foothold. They would stand
to benefit with an aggressive move into this area as the 250Gb will support
Athlon 64 or Athlon 64 FX processors.

For the home user the safety of the NVIDIA Firewall comes only in the 250Gb
flavor. NVIDIA made a good impression with their firewall which was easy to
use for the novice user and extensive enough for the seasoned veteran. Security
is more costly but has a strong appeal and the NVIDIA marketing department knows
this. NVIDIA have opened up their technology to antivirus software producers
to further enhance security and data integrity. NVIDIA were quick to comment
that a majority of the reasons for firewall protection are due to incidents
within the network of a workplace rather than from outside attacks. It seems
our co-workers aren’t as trustworthy as we may have once thought. The home user
can also benefit from the data integrity of NVIDIA RAID. It would be disasterous
to lose a hard drive and precious data with it.

No doubt that enthusiasts will take a shine to all the bells and whistles but
may miss the audio quality and features that NVIDIA SoundStorm brought. SoundStorm
will resurface but in a different form. For now users have to be content with
AC’97.

How motherboard manufacturers will adopt the features of nForce3 250 and 250Gb
is yet to be seen. Release images show only 2 DIMM slots and a fairly barren
PCB landscape. If a motherboard maker decides to produce a model taking advantage
of every feature and then some it could result in a very crowded PCB landscape…just
what we enthusiasts love….a motherboard with bucket loads of places to plug
things in, hotwire and otherwise tweak to within an inch of its digital life.
Rumour has it that the nForce2 MCP will also get a facelift with some or all
of these features.

Our thanks to NVIDIA
for their personal visit and support of this and many other sites.