Nvidia Nforce 4 PCIe SLI (P)review

Omega65Omega65 Philadelphia, Pa
edited November 2004 in Science & Tech
Anandtech Reviews the spankin new Nvidia Nforce4 chipset. It will be available in three flavors, Nforce4, Nforce4 Ultra & Nforce 4 SLI!
nForce4 - the basic value chipset for 939 and754. This is the chipset that you will likely find in Socket 754 and low-end Socket 939 boards selling for less than $100. The nF4 is targeted at value boards, but it still includes on-chip gigabit Ethernet capabilities, support for 10 USB, full nVidia "any drive" Raid capabilities, support for nVidia Firewall 2.0, and support for the nTune Performance Utility. Four SATA drives are supported at current 1.5GB/s speeds plus four PATA (IDE) devices.

nForce4 Ultra - the mainstream nF4 designed for boards that will sell in the $100 to $150 price range. In addition to nF4 features, you will find full support for an unlocked 1000 Hyper Transport, support for 3Gb/s SATA drives, and nVidia's secure networking engine, which is called ActiveArmor.

nForce4 SLI - the high-end version of the nF4 is designed for boards that will sell at $150 or more. The nF4 SLI is the only version to support programmable PCI Express lanes, which allows the use of either a single or dual Video Card. A single GPU is supported by an x16 PCIe slot, which can be reprogrammed to two x8 PCIe slots to support two video cards in SLI mode.
Source: Anandtech

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    The lack of AGP pisses me off. A lot. What percentage of the market owns PCIe? 2? Less?
  • PirateNinjaPirateNinja Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    dual video cards working together? why does this sound cool?
  • paroxymparoxym Toronto, Canada
    edited October 2004
    Thrax wrote:
    The lack of AGP pisses me off. A lot.

    That makes two of us. :shakehead
    Also, as far as I have read, there isnt going to be any Soundstorm this time around either. "Not cost effective" was the term I read I believe. I don't know about most people but I would gladly pay a premium to have quality onboard sound a la the NF7-s.
  • ketoketo Occupied. Or is it preoccupied? Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    paroxym +1. In this day and age, nobody should have to go to 3rd party add on cards for high Q sound solution. No AGP = severely limited market. My guess is not 2% but more like .02% @ PCIe

    Said the curmudgeon who increasingly moves away from embracing change as time passes. :rolleyes:;D
  • ShivianShivian Australia
    edited October 2004
    Well I like that they are actually pushing along the new technology rather than sitting on their hands. SATA imho has taken way too long to be accepted. As far as hdd's go sure it is accepted now but it has taken a long time to get there. And if I want more than 4 SATA drives most boards can't do that whereas my old SocketA board can do 8 PATA drives. How long has it been and we still don't have mainstream boards with SATA optical drives and so on?
  • entropyentropy Yah-Der-Hey (Wisconsin)
    edited October 2004
    Uhhm, smack me around, call me a total noob if you will, but I'm new (and, I think, converting to!) AMD.

    I've heard it before, but what exactly is "overclick the HyperTransport bus"? Is it basically like overclocking the FSB in an Intel system...?

    edit: To be honest, I don't even really know what HyperTransport is, exactly...
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited October 2004
    HyperTansport is a link between 2 or more CPUs, CPU to Chipset, or CPU to RAM. Hmm well one of them isnt right because An A64 only has one link and Opterons have 2, the link to the other CPU.

    Its basically like OCing the FSB.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    Shivian wrote:
    Well I like that they are actually pushing along the new technology rather than sitting on their hands. SATA imho has taken way too long to be accepted. As far as hdd's go sure it is accepted now but it has taken a long time to get there. And if I want more than 4 SATA drives most boards can't do that whereas my old SocketA board can do 8 PATA drives. How long has it been and we still don't have mainstream boards with SATA optical drives and so on?

    I much prefer the approach SATA took. The presence of PATA + SATA on boards at the same time.

    I sure would like AGP and PCIe on the same board. Drop a PCI slot, easy. I don't need it.
  • edited October 2004
    Are you guys really that suprised it wasn't going to have AGP support? I've brought it up here before, and we've all seen the pictures of the boards which will be using the NF4.

    In any case, I too find it ****ty that they can keep the old-gen. PCI slots, and PATA, but not at least have a bridged AGP slot, even if it had to be a little slower than a true AGP 8X slot, not that even all the bandwidth of AGP 8X is anywhere near being overrun by the current gen of video cards.

    This means that once I decide to replace the motherboard/CPU, I'll also need to replace the video card at the same time, meaning I'll have to buy a cheapo PCI-E card until I can afford a better one.

    It'd be nice if the nForce 5 supports AGP somehow, but I'm not going to count on it.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    No, we're not surprised. We're just stating exactly what you just said in your post.
  • edited October 2004
    you all do know that NF4 IS NF3 with PCI-E instead of AGP right?

    if you have an agp card... just get an nf3-250gb... same shit.

    -scheherazade
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    No, it isn't.
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited October 2004
    Not even close. Look at all the stuff in the chipset. The NF3 doesnt have a firewall.
  • edited October 2004
    Grab a 6600GT. A good, inexpensive and available PCI-x card.
  • edited November 2004
    YEAH THEY DO!! Do some research, nForce 3 250Gb motherboards as well as ultras have them. :p
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited November 2004
    Hmm they do. I never saw that advertised.
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