nForce questions!

[Guest]

I've been studying several articles concerning nForce.
To me it looks like a gift from heaven, standarization, unified drivers. (It was bound to happen, I was wondering when Nvidia would finally be taking over the motherboard market)
But I still have some uncertainties:

- Will future 3D cards lack onboard memory? Has Nvidia made a new sort of standard where the onboard memory is used to coexist. Or should I say, when a card, whatever brand, is put in the AGP slot, will it (or can it) take advantage of the memory onboard the mainboard? Could this be where it's heading, since memory (and therefor 3D cards) is expensive.
- Will it be possible to upgrade (3D) simply by taking out the current IGP and placing a new one inside (based on Geforce 3 tech/or newer). Can we see a IGP war ISO 3D cards? Does the IGP contain 'everything' that's normally on a 3d card, or does the nForce mobo have seperate chips (you usually see on a 3d card) on it as well.
- Will other companies merge/work together and create a new sort of nForce-like mainboard (IGP/MCP) to compete with Nvidia?
- Can you put 460Mhz DDR (as used on a Geforce 2 Ultra) memory inside the nForce, and in this context would it make the 3D faster respectively. (where is the bottleneck in this case)
- Why is one PCI slot higher than the other two, how would a PCI card fit in the case?
- The technology used in xbox is actually comparable with a Geforce 2 MX? Xbox has two T&L (?) units? The IGP on nForce has two T&L units as well?
- Most of the stuff is integrated in nForce. There's enough bandwith free which you can compare it with AGP 6x? Does this mean integrated stuff is faster than a seperate 3D card? If Nvidia made an IGP based on Geforce 3 would it be faster than a seperate card?

 

[Guest]

Dear Cookie Guy,
I am no electrical engineer, but I think I can help on some of your questions.

- Will future 3D cards lack onboard memory? Has Nvidia made a new sort of standard where the onboard memory is used to coexist. Or should I say, when a card, whatever brand, is put in the AGP slot, will it (or can it) take advantage of the memory onboard the mainboard? Could this be where it's heading, since memory (and therefor 3D cards) is expensive.

- The integrated video on the the Crush uses the system memory, since it is 128-bit DDR the integrated video and perform similarly to the Geforce2MX AGP card. All AGP video cards can use the system memory for things like storing textures, but because it is normally so slow they still put onboard memory on the card. I do not think we will see add in video cards that have no onboard memory, but the future is always hard to see.


- Will it be possible to upgrade (3D) simply by taking out the current IGP and placing a new one inside (based on Geforce 3 tech/or newer). Can we see a IGP war ISO 3D cards? Does the IGP contain 'everything' that's normally on a 3d card, or does the nForce mobo have seperate chips (you usually see on a 3d card) on it as well.

- The IGP will be soldered onto the motherboard so I dont think you will easily be "upgrading" to a new one. I am sure that if nForce is succesful, we will see other nForce releases with more powerful IGPs on them

- Will other companies merge/work together and create a new sort of nForce-like mainboard (IGP/MCP) to compete with Nvidia?

- I just read an article that told of ATI entry into the chipset market. They will be producing DDR boards for P$ with and integrated RadeonVE. Sounds like competition to me

- Can you put 460Mhz DDR (as used on a Geforce 2 Ultra) memory inside the nForce, and in this context would it make the 3D faster respectively. (where is the bottleneck in this case)

- No, but if you could use it for the system memory, Im sure it would help speed things up.

- Why is one PCI slot higher than the other two, how would a PCI card fit in the case?

- That is not a PCI slot, it is one of those junky CNR or AMR slots for cheaply adding LAN, Modem and other junk. Good luck on finding something to put into it!

- The technology used in xbox is actually comparable with a Geforce 2 MX? Xbox has two T&L (?) units? The IGP on nForce has two T&L units as well?

- This is not my area of expertise, but I believe the video in xbox is more like Geforce3 than MX. Maybe someone else can give more details on this one.

- Most of the stuff is integrated in nForce. There's enough bandwith free which you can compare it with AGP 6x? Does this mean integrated stuff is faster than a seperate 3D card? If Nvidia made an IGP based on Geforce 3 would it be faster than a seperate card?
- That one is hard to say, if they made a GF3 IGP and it used the system memory, I would think it would be a little slower because the memory on the addin card is alot faster than PC2100 DDR

Hope I could help

Hazyblue


HazyBlue