FatBurger

Illustrious
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>

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Sadly, your post is a waste of time.

Everybody wants to know what the Nforce board is like, but the fact of the matter is the thing is "vaporware." Reviews of reference boards, "press boards" and other pre-release stuff is okay to read, but it tells you nothing. Only when hardware/software is shipping can we really find out how good or bad a product is.

I am a new poster here, but I have been using computers since the IBM PC. In all that time the single most frustrating thing about using them is the fact that people say " this new widget is the best ever", then you have to wait for months or years before it is the hands of a user. Only when a product is in the market can you find out if it really is a good product. I get frustrated at the computer press when they tell you "this is good," then you never see it to buy it.

Frankly, I'm tired of waiting for the nforce, my next build will be something on sale now, not in 2002 or 2003.

Sincerely,

John Kay




We hold these truths to be self-evident...
 
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MSI is shipping nForce boards now, and have added their nForce board to the product line-up on their website. No they are not yet available to buy yet, but we are talking about a matter of a couple weeks, not 2002 or 2003. Also, considering that the product is shipping, and that most of the actual reviews of the nForce have come out quite recently (anandtech's being the exception) with most not even out yet, I would say the reviews are timely enough.

Regards,
Warden
 

FatBurger

Illustrious
You seem to have missed the entire point of my post. You obviously haven't seen all the posts about "When is nForce coming out?" "Will nForce be worth buying?" "Which should I buy, KT266a or nForce?"

I personally think the nForce (unless cheap enough to be an expensive sound card), will not be worth the price paid.

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sakattack

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<A HREF="http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-7746712.html?tag=mn_hd" target="_new"> nForce m/bs out next week according to cnet </A>

I can't wait to see some more tests and the prices (of course!)
 

sakattack

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My only concerns are: stability and o/c

Other than that, nForce should be the base for some very good m/bs:

1. Fast chipset
2. Great bandwidth (there will be no 2 seperate dedicated channels for CPU and GPU, the bandwidth will be availiable to both according to the demand)
3. Best sound
4. ethernet (modem ?)
5. best on-board GPU (equivalent to GF2 MX200)

This all-in-one chipset would be great for everyone who doesn't care much about 3D games. And you could even add a better video card latter. (or right now if you are a gamer).

My guess: it will all depend on the price and stability.

I can't wait!
 

FatBurger

Illustrious
What? What are you talking about, Girish?

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dejay

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I agree with your sentiments. The DDR access, although dual channel, does not do much better than the KT266A (in some cases worse).

The integrated 3d is fine for moms and dads, but any gamer or 3d enthusiast will be disapointed.

Integrated Dolby sound is a nice addition, which for my mind is the only real selling point. The onboard NIC is small potatos in a world where good NICs are dirt cheap.

Again, as you pointed out, the pre-fetch has been superceeded by the introduction of the XP processors.

I can see nForce being popular with OEMs, but this popularity would have increased 10 fold if it came in a Pentium flavour. For people who like to upgrade themselves, I can see only limited appeal.

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The onboard NIC is small potatos in a world where good NICs are dirt cheap.
I am curious what you mean by "good" and "dirt cheap." The average user's net card cost about $15, but it has the CPU do most of the work. The nForce southbridge does the network processing itself. An equivalent stand-alone card would be the 3COM 3CR990-TX-95, which listed just now on pricewatch for $67 to $95 (first 5 vendors listed.)

Check amddmb.com's <A HREF="http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleID=130&PageID=1" target="_new">article</A> on the nForce reference board. More thorough testing needs to be done, but a preliminary test was done in this article (<A HREF="http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleID=130&PageID=4" target="_new">page 4</A> near the bottom) by copying a large file over a network while watching the CPU usage. A regular net card produced a processor usage of "a steady 15%" while the integrated nForce ethernet used "steadily below the 5% mark."


FatBurger,

Just a couple small points from your post: First, both the CPU and the GPU can access one or <i>both</i> of the memory channels on the nForce, giving a maximum bandwidth of 4.2GB/s to the graphics processor. (In reality the GPU would never get quite all this as the CPU would always be using at least a little bit.) This is why the nForce can beat the GeForce2 MX 200 even though the graphics cores are clocked the same (175MHz). Second, current DDR systems <i>do</i> provide a full 2.1GB/s of bandwidth to the CPU, at least in theory (though like I said the nForce provides 4.2GB/s.) 133 (MHz) * 2 (for DDR) * 64 (bus width in bits) / 8 (bits in a byte) = 2128KB/s, thus the name PC2100 RAM.

Cheers,
Warden
 

dejay

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Regarding your coments on the NIC, I stand (or rather sit) corrected.

How would this relate to lan gaming, where data transfer is not as demanding, but more constant? I ask this question because, undoubtedly, a lot of people looking at this chip set, along with the Athlon XP, are gamers. Would the lan game player be advised to use the nForce instead of a generic NIC in order to get a few more frames per second?

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girish

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where are nForce mobos? Asus A7N?

and I know about the nForce architecture - I had done a repot on that.

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girish

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where are nForce mobos? Asus A7N?

and I know about the nForce architecture - I had done a report on that.

<font color=red>No system is fool-proof. Fools are Ingenious!</font color=red>
 

pvsurfer

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After reviewing AMDMB's reference board review (as well as other nForce articles), I'm somewhat confused over memory usage with nForce and I would appreciate it if you, or anyone else, can clear this up for me.

I understand that in order to take advantage of the nForce 420's extra memory channel, it's necessary to have a DIMM in the first AND second slots. What I don't understand is the utilization of the 3rd DIMM slot (which peculiarly, is offset from the first two). In order to continue to utilize the 420's 128-bit memory architecture (when one later adds more memory), I would still expect the necessity to add DIMMs in pairs, and if that's true, why 3 DIMM slots and not 4 (even the soon-to-be-released MSI board has only 3 slots!) and for that matter, why is the 3rd DIMM slot offset?

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upec

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I agree. I will go with KT266A. Most of the intergrated stuff in nForce are useless to me. I only want the Intergrated sound. If I am going to upgrade my computer I am only going to replace Ram, motherboard, and CPU. The rest I will just use what ever in my old system.
 

Ron_Jeremy

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An equivalent stand-alone card would be the 3COM 3CR990-TX-95, which listed just now on pricewatch for $67 to $95

You chose to compare an onboard NIC to a 3COM990? Hilarious.....

Cheers,

Ron_Jeremy

If you loan a friend $20 & never see them again, it was worth it.
 
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Ron_Jeremy,

If you read up on the nForce you would find that the integrated NIC is just as capable as the 3COM card I listed. I am well aware that every other integrated NIC is a craptastic sucker of CPU cycles, but the whole point here is that the nForce NIC is very different--it's like the 3CR990. Of course, finding something hilarious is well within your rights... :wink:

Cheers,
Warden
 
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dejay,

I too would like to see some hard data on just how the nForce NIC affects LAN gaming. The best I can tell you is that, yes, you would get more FPS with high quality network hardware like the nForce has, but would it be significant to game play? Dunno. :smile: The approximately 10% difference in CPU utilization referenced in that article I linked above is significant but not overwhelming. And of course CPU utilization isn't the only factor in game speed.

I hope some hardware sites will be giving these issues some more thorough investigation in the near future. The nForce is a hard chipset to properly gage as its integrated features do not represent the lowest common denominator of performance like we are used to seeing in integrated parts.

[edit]
Oh hey I almost forgot, but in Tom's nForce preview way back in June it lists multi player games as one genera that will benefit from the nForce "StreamThru" architecture. This is not actually a part of the NIC hardware, but is how that NIC (as well as all the other south bridge devices like IDE drives) communicate with the north bridge. StreamThru is better at handling data streams without interruption. Because of this, it has the potential to make the nForce NIC operate better than <i>any</i> standard NIC, which is stuck communicating over the PCI bus.
[/edit]

Cheers,
Warden<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by warden on 11/06/01 05:10 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
 
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pvsurfer,

Well I am no expert, but I will be happy to take a wild guess. :smile: First off, I bet they didn't include 4 RAM slots due to timing issues. Almost all current motherboards only include 3 RAM slots due to tricky timing issues, and those that do have 4 slots often don't work properly when you actually <i>use</i> the fourth one.

I don't remember if the nForce treats that third slot any differently than the first two. I almost think I read something about that but it won't come to me right now.

Finally, as long as the nForce has at least two slots to access, it can provide the 4.2GB/s bandwidth, which I guess is what's important. Having a third slot wouldn't prevent that as the nForce could just pick and choose which two slots it wanted to access at any given time. This still doesn't sound like the most ideal situation to me, however, having to divide things unevenly like that. To that end, I have read on some sites where people suggested testing the nForce with 128 MB sticks in the first two slots and a 256MB stick in the third. This way at least the <i>amount</i> of RAM would be evenly split.

Cheers,
Warden
 
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There are two memory pipes to the DIMMs. The first slot gets a 2.1 GB/s pipe for itself and the other two DIMMs share the second 2.1 GB/s pipe. That's why you have to have two sticks of RAM to be able to use the full 4.2GB/s.
 

IntelConvert

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Pursuing this further, say I get an nForce board and initially put two 256MB PC2100 sticks - each into slots 1 and 3 respectively. If I later find that some of my apps could use more memory than my 512MB total, could I then put another 256MB stick (or a 512MB stick) into slot 2? Or would that have an adverse effect on 'inter-channel balance'?