Nvidia NF3-250 Review

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Hexus: [link=http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD03MzImdXJsX3BhZ2U9MQ==]Nvidia NF3-250 Chipset Review[/link]

[blockquote]The new chip comes in a variety of guises depending on the market segment a board maker wishes to target. There are versions aimed at compact or mobile implementations which feature on board graphics; nForce3 Go, which is already shipping. And then we have the versions aimed at drop in replacements for existing nForce3 150 designs, giving such boards a new lease of life with the new features. It's the 250 and 250Gb parts that will garner most attention from the online press and predictably that's what I'm looking at today.

We get 800MHz HyperTransport driven clock on all nForce3 250 products. 1000MHz support only appears in the Pro version of the chipset, for future processors. Parity in the up and downstream bus widths was a given, along with AGP and PCI bus locking if board makers implement it.[/blockquote]

Omega65

[link=http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD03MzImdXJsX3BhZ2U9MTA=]Conclusions[/link]

With NVIDIA giving the 250-series chips a feature upgrade, a 'fixed' HyperTransport implementation, some new disk based ability with the changed ATA and SATA controller, 1000Mbit/sec Ethernet capability to let marketroids tick a box, along with an all round spit and polish, nForce3 250 is rather good. The hardware firewall for example is a fine chipset level feature upgrade, scoring NVIDIA good brownie points.

I still have reservations about the single chip design, but it does have its advantages in certain scenarios. Plus, I still have reservations over the ability of board makers to implement designs that can lock the AGP and PCI bus, appeasing the enthusiast, but that will come in reviews of boards that claim to implement it.
....

Other reservations lie with NVIDIA's lost market share to K8T800 designs in the initial run of boards to support the new CPUs. However, with the Athlon 64 market still small, I doubt they care too much about that. The questions lies with board parners still seeing a market for nForce3 250 designs, given poor sales of 150-based boards. It's something like a 90/10 split in VIA's favour, at the time of writing.

Encouraging, especially with the new SATA controller and GigE MAC with firewall. They do add value to the chipset as a base, providing per-bridge costs aren't too high. I'm hedging my bets, but I slightly prefer K8T800 Pro on paper, at least as a basis for great enthusiast motherboards, going by existing K8T800 designs. It remains to be see what non-reference boards will do with the bridge, but here's hoping its good stuff and they don't just drop it in to exsting 150-based designs and change scant little else.

The jury is out. The chipset itself is good, we just need good boards based on it in return.

RWB

Sounds mighty nice, 800MHz to 1000MHz, awsome.

Omega65

RWB wrote:

Sounds mighty nice, 800MHz to 1000MHz, awsome.

Only on the NF3 250 Pro