Nvidia Nforce 4 PCIe SLI (P)review
Omega65
Philadelphia, Pa
Anandtech Reviews the spankin new Nvidia Nforce4 chipset. It will be available in three flavors, Nforce4, Nforce4 Ultra & Nforce 4 SLI!
Source: AnandtechnForce4 - 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.
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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.
Said the curmudgeon who increasingly moves away from embracing change as time passes.
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...
Its basically like OCing the FSB.
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.
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.
if you have an agp card... just get an nf3-250gb... same shit.
-scheherazade