Before I begin, let me tell you the purpose of this post. I want to give my views on the nForce and let you people tell me I'm wrong. This is not intended as a troll post, and I will not be comparing to any other specific chipsets. If I do either, let me know. I'll edit my post. All technical information is double-checked at <A HREF="http://www.andandtech.com" target="_new">AnandTech</A> before posting.
The nForce is manufactured by nVidia. It is their first chipset, and consists of a traditional Northbridge and Southbridge, called the IGP (Internal Graphics Processor) and MCP (Media & Communications Processor), respectively. I will not detail all the features, but I'll address the key ones (as well as differences between the different versions of the nForce).
Dual-channel DDR:
The dual-channel DDR platform of the nForce provides either one channel for the CPU and PCI/IDE, and one channel for the integrated graphics, OR (if integrated graphics are disabled in the BIOS), two channels for the processor. This gives the integrated graphics a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 2.1GB/s. A GeForce 2 MX400 has 2.7GB/s of bandwidth.
The CPU and PCI/IDE will receive a total theoretical maximum bandwidth of 2.1GB/s.
At this time, the AMD Athlon family of processors (for which the nForce is designed), can only utilize 2.1GB/s of bandwidth. Still, most current platforms do not realistically supply that much bandwidth, leaving the CPU starved in memory-intensive apps. This is a relatively small amount of typical computer use.
The integrated graphics are based on the GeForce 2 MX chip, with crippled bandwidth. This would make it apporximately equal to a TNT2 Ultra (I could be wrong here, someone please advise).
Until reading up for this post, I was not aware of the single-channel version of the nForce. Specifically, the IGP-64 is a single 64-bit channel, and the IGP-128 is dual 64-bit channels.
The IGP contains an equivalent of 100MHz AGP mode, or 6x. This will most likely not affect the GPU performance any, since memory bandwidth will remain the same (without overclocking, of course).
The nForce boards will contain an AGP 4x slot, so that superior (traditional) graphics cards may be used. However, unlike some boards (some Tyan Thunders?), they may not be used at the same time. This is very unfortunate, since it would provide a cheap, simple and useful dual-monitor system.
The IGP also contains a DASP (Dynamic Adaptive Speculative Pre-Processor), in order to perform hardware memory pre-fetching. This is also included in the Athlon XP processors, and is much faster and more accurate when on the CPU, not in the memory controller. At this time, I do not know whether the two can complement each other or not.
nVidia has taken advantage of AMD's HyperTransport Bus, resulting in 800GB/s of bandwidth between the IGP and MCP.
The MCP (Media & Communications Processor, performing the same functions as traditional Southbridges), contains the greater number of interesting features. The onboard sound is a licensed version of Parthus' MediaStream DSP. There are two different versions, MCP and MCP-D. In the latter, the Dolby Digital encoding is enabled. In the former, it is not. The nForce reference board does not contain a digital audio output. This will leave it up to the motherboard manufacturers to include this feature. Otherwise, an ACR card (the nForce comes with one ACR slot), will have to be used to achieve Dolby Digital output.
Also included is onboard network, although the reference board does not have an ethernet header on it. It seems that the majority of major motherboard makers will include an ehternet header for the 10/100 networking, although this might not be the case with all the motherboards.
Links:
<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1484" target="_new">Anandtech's preview from June</A>
<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=1535" target="_new">Anandtech's review from September</A>
<font color=orange>Quarter</font color=orange> <font color=blue>Pounder</font color=blue> <font color=orange>Inside</font color=orange>
The nForce is manufactured by nVidia. It is their first chipset, and consists of a traditional Northbridge and Southbridge, called the IGP (Internal Graphics Processor) and MCP (Media & Communications Processor), respectively. I will not detail all the features, but I'll address the key ones (as well as differences between the different versions of the nForce).
Dual-channel DDR:
The dual-channel DDR platform of the nForce provides either one channel for the CPU and PCI/IDE, and one channel for the integrated graphics, OR (if integrated graphics are disabled in the BIOS), two channels for the processor. This gives the integrated graphics a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 2.1GB/s. A GeForce 2 MX400 has 2.7GB/s of bandwidth.
The CPU and PCI/IDE will receive a total theoretical maximum bandwidth of 2.1GB/s.
At this time, the AMD Athlon family of processors (for which the nForce is designed), can only utilize 2.1GB/s of bandwidth. Still, most current platforms do not realistically supply that much bandwidth, leaving the CPU starved in memory-intensive apps. This is a relatively small amount of typical computer use.
The integrated graphics are based on the GeForce 2 MX chip, with crippled bandwidth. This would make it apporximately equal to a TNT2 Ultra (I could be wrong here, someone please advise).
Until reading up for this post, I was not aware of the single-channel version of the nForce. Specifically, the IGP-64 is a single 64-bit channel, and the IGP-128 is dual 64-bit channels.
The IGP contains an equivalent of 100MHz AGP mode, or 6x. This will most likely not affect the GPU performance any, since memory bandwidth will remain the same (without overclocking, of course).
The nForce boards will contain an AGP 4x slot, so that superior (traditional) graphics cards may be used. However, unlike some boards (some Tyan Thunders?), they may not be used at the same time. This is very unfortunate, since it would provide a cheap, simple and useful dual-monitor system.
The IGP also contains a DASP (Dynamic Adaptive Speculative Pre-Processor), in order to perform hardware memory pre-fetching. This is also included in the Athlon XP processors, and is much faster and more accurate when on the CPU, not in the memory controller. At this time, I do not know whether the two can complement each other or not.
nVidia has taken advantage of AMD's HyperTransport Bus, resulting in 800GB/s of bandwidth between the IGP and MCP.
The MCP (Media & Communications Processor, performing the same functions as traditional Southbridges), contains the greater number of interesting features. The onboard sound is a licensed version of Parthus' MediaStream DSP. There are two different versions, MCP and MCP-D. In the latter, the Dolby Digital encoding is enabled. In the former, it is not. The nForce reference board does not contain a digital audio output. This will leave it up to the motherboard manufacturers to include this feature. Otherwise, an ACR card (the nForce comes with one ACR slot), will have to be used to achieve Dolby Digital output.
Also included is onboard network, although the reference board does not have an ethernet header on it. It seems that the majority of major motherboard makers will include an ehternet header for the 10/100 networking, although this might not be the case with all the motherboards.
Links:
<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1484" target="_new">Anandtech's preview from June</A>
<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=1535" target="_new">Anandtech's review from September</A>
<font color=orange>Quarter</font color=orange> <font color=blue>Pounder</font color=blue> <font color=orange>Inside</font color=orange>