A64 - nForce3 250Gb PREVIEW (UPDATED 2004-03-24)

TheRod · Mar 10, 2004

I WILL NOT UPDATE ANYMORE THIS POST IN THIS BOARD, I MOVED THIS LIST TO THE CHIPSET BOARD. IT'S WHERE I SHOULD HAVE POSTED THESE INFORMATIONS ANYWAY.<A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=558483#558483" target="_new">Go to the new location</A>

Here is the preview (in FRENCH) :
<A HREF="http://www.hardware.fr/articles/490/page1.html" target="_new">http://www.hardware.fr/articles/490/page1.html</A>

Previews in english :
<A HREF="http://firingsquad.com/hardware/nforce3_250gb/default.asp" target="_new">http://firingsquad.com/hardware/nforce3_250gb/default.asp</A>
<A HREF="http://www.short-media.com/article.php?142.0" target="_new">http://www.short-media.com/article.php?142.0</A>
<A HREF="http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/urltrurl?url=http://www.computerbase.de/news/hardware/prozessoren/amd/2004/maerz/a64_3400_sockel_939_sandrabenchmarks/&lp=de_en&tt=url" target="_new">Computer base "sneak peek" Translated from German</A> (Thanks to <A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=174050#174050" target="_new">Schmide</A>)
<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=2004" target="_new">AnandTech Preview - Part 1</A>

The SHORT-MEDIA preview gives a lot of infos/screenshots about the "nvSystemUtility" and "nvRAID" application. And it looks promising. VIA will have to do major upgrades in both fonctionnality and software support to stay competitive with this new nVidia chipset.

Performance are on par with VIA chipset. And the nForce3 have a couple of great features : hardware firewall, full-speed GigE interface and dual cpu support. We will only miss the nForce2 great APU. nForce3 only support AC97.Edited by TheRod on 03/24/04 11:31 AM.

P4Man · Mar 10, 2004

looks nice indeed. Especially Ethernet performance is spectacular ! I didnt read the entire article yet, but if this chipset support SMP, it could make a killer opteron chipset.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

Spitfire_x86 · Mar 10, 2004

Seems that nVidia nailed it again.

Performance leader just like nForce2. Featurewise, it doesn't have legendary nForce APU, but comes with the best Gigabit ethernet and hardware firewall.

It will be great if they release a SMP version of this chipset or a southbridge only version to use with AMD 8131 chipset.

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Snorkius · Mar 10, 2004

I bet they want to make an ultra version with the APU.

Or maybe they want to sell it as an ad-in sound-card.

A long long time ago, but I can still remember, how that music used to make me smile... <A HREF="http://www.nexus.hu/zonix/DIGGER.MID" target="_new">Digger rulz</A>

Spitfire_x86 · Mar 11, 2004

nVidia has a plan to release PCI-Ex version of nForce APU

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TheRod · Mar 11, 2004

Greedy nVidia! No more incredible APU included in the chipset... Maybe they sold not much of them?

Does anyone know what was the sales of nForce2 with the APU?

For me and my friend I usually recommended NON-APU nForce2 based board, because many of my friends already had an SB Live 5.1 or like me, they have only a pair of speakers. Which is enough for me and many people.

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Spitfire_x86 · Mar 11, 2004

I hope they will include APU in a later revision

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Spitfire_x86 · Mar 11, 2004

BTW, an interesting fact

nForce = APU present in Both MCP and MCP-D (MCP only didn't support 5.1)

nForce2 = APU present in MCP-T only

nForce3 = No APU at all!

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Schmide · Mar 11, 2004

Thank you <A HREF="http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/urltrurl?url=http://www.hardware.fr/articles/490/page1.html&lp=fr_en&tt=url" target="_new">Babelfishy</A>

Dichromatic for your viewing plesure...

Crashman · Mar 11, 2004

nVidia should go straight to ATI's throat and wipe off Creative's smirk in one fell swoop, with a PCI-EX video card that has:
1.) A very fast GPU
2.) A/V inputs
3.) The nForce APU
4.) Hardware MPEG1/2/4 compression
5.) A Multimedia Control Center, similar to Creative's Live Drive II, but with a built in TV-Tuner. This would take the tuner off the card so all video outputs could be on the back of a single slot.

Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!
Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!

Mr_Nuke · Mar 11, 2004

Is that article translated in english, somewhere on the Net? I'd apreciate the link.

Schmide · Mar 11, 2004

Click on the Babelfishy link in my post above and you get an almost readable version.

Dichromatic for your viewing plesure...

P4Man · Mar 11, 2004

I'm not sure I'd be happy replacing my audio card, Tv tuner and all that each time I upgrade my videocard. MPEG encoding acceleration would be great, but everything else, I'd very much prefer on a different card, if it works, i don't want to pay for a new one every 6 months.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

Crashman · Mar 11, 2004

LOL, you wouldn't mind so much if:
1.) New cards could use the same tuner/bay panel, if you bought the VIVO version (just like you could use your Live Drive II from your Live Platinum 5.1 on your Audigy/Audigy2).
2.) The sound chip was on the head unit/bay panel, or was nearly free

OR

3.) You had a 2 bay SFX case and really needed the PCI slot for another card.

Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!
Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!

Crashman · Mar 11, 2004

Hey, by the way, you just became a contributor. Make the card VIVO with an internal interface for a drive panel that contains everything else. The interface would cost nearly nothing on the card, and you could use any nVidia card (with VIVO) you liked and keep the drive panel for several model cycles before it became outdated.

Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!
Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!

kinney · Mar 11, 2004

Thats the best idea to come out of this forum ever.

I see what your saying, put the connector for the audio output on the video card... then if you dont want to use it, dont connect the PCI slot tab that contained your audio outputs/inputs.

Much like how midi/gameports are connected to modern motherboards.

They wouldnt have to put the APU on all cards anyway, just more multimedia rich models.
Leave options up to the board maker if they want to include the sound, or the sound and personal cinema...
I'd just take the sound personally.

There is going to be much unused bandwidth with PCIX16 slots and this is the perfect way to utilize it.

Hardware Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding, combined with all the hardware MPEG modes that have been recently confirmed (1-4 along with WMV9).

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RESIDENT FORUM WARRIOREdited by kinney on 03/11/04 04:55 AM.

Crashman · Mar 11, 2004

That was my original idea, but now that I think of it, they could just use a proprietary data link (cheap) and put all the multimedia hardware on an expensive head unit. The interface would have a negligable affect on the card, but the head unit could have all the expensive add-on features. It would be a great way to use some of the extra bandwidth PCI-Express has to offer.

Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!
Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!

trooper11 · Mar 11, 2004

well the thing is, evne on pci e x16, youll hit a wall if your trying to do multiple things at once. doing hd video work and the surorund sound work , plus gaming and tv tuner aspects, your eating up alot of bandwidth. i guess its possible, just dont try to use everything at once. One thing i think that will be cool is for video card makers to set up dual card set ups, using two pci-e slots. its similar to something voodoo tried when 3d was just getting started. two cards linked by a cable and thus used in dual set up, that would be great.

Crashman · Mar 11, 2004

Nope! Here's why:
1.) Sound streams take up very little bandwidth, a USB 1.1 connection is actually fast enough, except for latency and so forth that causes minor lags on todays top-end USB soundcards. If 1MB/s is enough for sound, 5MB/s would be the most you'd ever need to reserve for the soundstream, negligable impact on video performance.
2.) TV-Tuners DOWNSTREAM. Games and so forth require very little downstream. The PCI-EX is not only twice as broad as AGP8x in upstream, but they offer that same bandwidth in downstream, separately. That means for TV, you're only using bandwidth you didn't have a use for previously. This is described in THG's recent article.

So you don't need two cards, you need a small upstream (with negligable impact on video performance) and a moderate downstream (around 50MB/s peak, with no impact whatsoever on video performance). You must need an interface to tap into the unused bandwidth of the X16 slot.

Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!
Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!

Johanthegnarler · Mar 12, 2004

Then what do we have to build :/... all this intergration means less components.

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Xeon · Mar 12, 2004

Thats a good thing though.

Xeon

Scratch Here To Reveal Prize

trooper11 · Mar 12, 2004

well whne im talking about the dual card i wasnt refering to it becuase one card couldnt do the job, it was becuase im interested in dual dispalys. Its also true taht dual cards woudl acta bit like dual cpus, if the software is designed to take advatage of it. that would be cool to see. as far as the bandwidth, I guess your right, but im just wondering whne your passing hd video, thats alrge amount, I would think that it would nearly saturate the bus, maybe not the x16. what if it had to do with 3d rendering at the same time.

Crashman · Mar 12, 2004

You see, that's the funny thing about x16, it's supposedly 4x as fast as AGP8x, but really it's 2x as fast upstream. And video rendering is nearly 100% upstream. x16 also has the same bandwidth downstream, separately. You're not using it for video rendering, but you could use it to input video from a tuner, etc. It's not being used for rendering, so you might as well put it to use with something else. What I'm saying is that upstreams and downstreams are separate paths, unlike with AGP, so without something like a TV-tuner, one of these paths is virtually unused.

Even then the input signal would only take up a fraction of the downstream ability of the x16 slot.

Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!
Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!

TheRod · Mar 14, 2004

nForce2 = APU present in MCP-T only

NOT TRUE!

I have an A7N8X NON-DELUXE and the south bridge is marked MCP-T but it doesn't support Dolby 5.1, it's only an AC97 south bridge. I read somewhere that ASUS had a "speacial version" of the MCP-T, but I never believed it. On the other hand I never found a way to activate the APU on my MCP-T.

--
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Spitfire_x86 · Mar 15, 2004

You don't prove me incorrect.

Seems that some MCP-Ts had APU disabled. Just like cache disabled Celeron, "Thorton" AXP, "Applebred" Duron

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A64 - nForce3 250Gb PREVIEW (UPDATED 2004-03-24)

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