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NVIDIA Rushes Into PCI Express With nForce4
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1. NVIDIA Rushes Into PCI Express With nForce4

NVIDIA's nForce4 is finally about to arrive. While the actual real-world availability of nForce4-based motherboards remains questionable, two versions of the chipset are being officially launched: the nForce4 and nForce4 Ultra. The most interesting member of the family will follow later: the nForce4 SLI, which splits the x16 PCI Express graphics port into two logical ones running x8, for dual graphics.

nForce4 was not designed entirely from scratch; rather, it is a logical evolution. In a nutshell, it adds value typical of that which has been separating the Athlon64 platforms from Intel's latest 900 series chipsets. Those AMD platforms have access to lots of marketing-friendly buzzwords and features such as PCI Express, High Definition Audio and quad SATA ports with sophisticated RAID. Given the new feature set and AMD's recent introduction of lower-speed 90 nm Athlon64 processors for Socket 939, the battle for market share will definitely heat up again soon.

There is no technical reason to opt for a PCI Express enabled platform right now, but the technology will become more and more important over the next couple of months. While upcoming generations of graphics cards will certainly be available both for AGP and PCI Express, we expect the latter to become predominant in about a year, if not sooner.

NVIDIA is making the transition to PCI Express particularly easy due to the vast number of features that have been crammed into the nForce4 chip. There are four Serial ATA (SATA) ports capable of running at 3 GBit/s, a more advanced native Gigabit Ethernet controller with integrated hardware firewall, a total of 10 USB 2.0 ports, and of course three x1 PCI Express lanes in addition to the x16 graphics interface. However, NVIDIA decided to abandon their Sound Storm audio as well as the Firewire controller used in nForce2.

2. nForce4 Facts

The nForce4 media and communications processor (MCP) is still a single-chip solution, which helps reduce latencies compared to two-chip sets. On the other hand, the relatively large chip size (10.5 x 8.1 mm) is more dependent on decent yield rates for economical production, than split solutions using the traditional north bridge / south bridge approach.

All major components inside the nForce4 are decoupled, allowing for comfortable overclocking of the HyperTransport bus without the need to touch PCI Express, SATA or PCI clock speeds. Our first nForce4 motherboard review will definitely include some overclocking tests - we are looking forward to it.

Click to enlarge
3. nForce4 Facts, Continued


4. nForce4, nForce4 Ultra, nForce4 SLI
Chipset nForce4 nForce4 Ultra nForce4 SLI
Design Single-Chip Single-Chip Single-Chip
Socket 754/939 939/940 939/940
CPU Support Sempron, Athlon64 Athlon64, Athlon64 FX Athlon64, Athlon64 FX
HT-Link 800 MHz 1 GHz 1 GHz
Memory DDR400
Dual-DDR400
Dual-DDR400 Dual-DDR400
ECC Support No No No
Max. Memory 4 GB 4 GB 4 GB
AGP No No No
PCI Express 20 Lanes,16+1+1+1 20 Lanes,16+1+1+1 20 Lanes,configurable
PCI 5x 32 Bit PCI 2.3 5x 32 Bit PCI 2.3 5x 32 Bit PCI 2.3
USB 2.0 10 Ports 10 Ports 10 Ports
Firewire/1394 No No No
UltraATA 2 UltraATA/133 Channels 2 UltraATA/133 Channels 2 UltraATA/133 Channels
Serial ATA 4 SATA Ports 150 MB/s 4 SATA2 Ports 300 MB/s 4 SATA2 Ports 300 MB/s
RAID SATA & UltraATA SATA & UltraATA SATA & UltraATA
Networking Native GbE Native GbE Native GbE
SN Engine No Yes Yes
Audio AC97 7.1 Sound AC97 7.1 Sound AC97 7.1 Sound
Firewall 2.0 Yes Yes Yes
nTune Yes Yes Yes
SLI Support No No Yes

Active Armor With Firewall


Active Armor is the name for the first integrated hardware engine for network firewall operations. We don't need to mention the importance of securing your computer from unauthorized access. Now, there is a hardware unit that takes care of TCP/IP packet inspection.

Since conventional software firewalls running under Microsoft Windows consume a considerable amount of processing time (see image above), NVIDIA's approach is to take care of most of the steps required to parse and inspect network packets in hardware. While we did not have the time to do extensive testing of all the nForce4 features, we were at least able to confirm a noticeable drop in CPU usage under high network traffic conditions.

For further information, please consult the following articles, where we already took a look at NVIDIA's firewall:


5. SATA: 4 Ports At 3 GBit/s

Four ports are available. In the event of a hardware problem, NVIDIA's Disk Alert system, which is part of the NVRAID manager, is able to clearly show which hard drive failed.

NVIDIA is the first chipset company that actually implemented a full-featured Serial ATA II controller. Features include:

  • 3 GBit/s or 300 MB/s data transfer per port
  • Hot swapping support
  • Native command queuing support

While Serial ATA II is not yet required in terms of single hard drive bandwidth, the faster standard could emerge as useful when combined with port multipliers, which allow two drives to be operated using one port.


The NVRAID utility allows for monitoring and administration of RAID arrays.
6. NVIDIA NTune For Enthusiasts


NVIDIA is currently trying to create some kind of multi-purpose system tuning interface, which is meant to be usable on all nForce4 motherboards. nTune is the name of this latest approach, which provides an automatic search for ideal overclocking settings and BIOS updates, as well as system monitoring and profile management tools for setting and saving different schemes. nTune also allows all the other NVIDIA software utilities to be directly accessed, and includes the nTune monitor, a little service utility located in the Windows toolbar.




7. Processor: Athlon64 FX-55


The Athlon64 family has gained two members today: The Athlon64 4000+ and the Athlon64 FX-55, now hitting 2.6 GHz. Please check out the separate review here .

8. The Board

Click to enlarge

Unfortunately, NVIDIA’s reference board hit our lab only a couple of days before launch. Because of this, we had little time to test all the features. The board is equipped with a Marvell GbE chip and an AC97 sound system based on a Realtek PHY. There are four PCI slots, two x1 PCI Express slots and the x16 PCI Express graphics slot. Talking about layout would not make much sense here, since this board is meant for testing and benchmarking only.

While we did not have problems going through our benchmark suite, we faced some troubles when trying to exceed the boundaries of regular testing that is performed by most magazines. Here’s what we have found :

  • NVIDIA’s integrated SATA RAID seems to have problems with other add-on storage controllers. When installing a Promise FastTrak S150 TX2 Plus (BIOS 1.00.37), the system would not detect the presence of any SATA storage devices connected to the integrated ports.
  • Due to the problem just mentioned, we repeatedly had to reinstall Windows when our array, located on the Promise controller, was lost.
  • Memory SPD values of the Corsair memory used were detected incorrectly.

In addition to these problems, there were other minor issues that mostly could be attributed to a broken motherboard sample. We don’t want to comment on that too much as we’re talking about a reference board that will never be sold. But the findings make clear that there is still some way to go until the new platform is ready to be released to customers.

We were not able to get the network interface running with NVIDIA’s first driver version, which we downloaded from the press FTP server.

9. BIOS Screenshots


10. SLI To Come!

Click to enlarge
This is how MSI's nForce4 SLI board will look.

NVIDIA decided to split the launch of the nForce4 Ultra and the nForce4 SLI versions, because the company feared that if launched concurrently, insufficient attention would be given to general nForce4 features. As soon as SLI hardware is available, we will post an additional review in our Graphics Guide.

A Paper Launch Again?

As our nForce4 Ultra sample did not exactly work as smoothly as expected, we asked the three big motherboard guys - Asus, Gigabyte and MSI - for their opinions on nForce4 availability.

Asus


Availability of nForce4 Ultra motherboards A8N-E (Premium/SLI):

second week of November


Asus is considering bundling two GeForce 6600GT graphics cards with the A8N-E SLI.

Gigabyte


nForce4 Ultra motherboards will be ready at the beginning of November. nForce4 SLI and VIA K8T890 will not be available before the beginning of December.
Product Name: Gigabyte 8 Sigma Series, e.g. GA-K8NXP-9 (NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra)

MSI


The K8N Diamond (featuring nForce4 SLI) is already slated to hit the shelves in late November. The product name might be changed to K8N Neo2 Extreme Edition in the US.
The K8N Neo4 Platinum will be the Ultra version, available two weeks earlier than the Diamond edition. It is supposed to be on the shelves by the middle of November.

11. Test Setup
AMD Processors (Socket 939)
200 MHz FSB (DUAL DDR400) Athlon64 FX-55 (2600 MHz 128/1024 kB)
Memory
AMD Athlon 64
AMD Athlon 64 FX
(Socket 939)
2 x 512 MB - DDR400
Corsair CMX512-3500C2 XMS3502 V1.1
Timing : CL 2.0-2-2-5
Voltage : 2.7 V
AMD-Motherboards
VIA K8T800 (Socket 939) ASUS A8V, Rev. 1.02
BIOS : 1006 (06/17/2004)
NIDIA nForce 4 Ultra (Socket 939) Gigabyte
BIOS : M07
Common Hardware
Sound Card Terratec Aureon 7.1 Space
96.00 kHz sample rate
Graphics Card
AGP
Gigabyte GV-N68T256D
GPU : NVIDIA Geforce 6800 GT (350 MHz)
Memory : 256 MB DDR-SDRAM (500 MHz)
Graphics Card
PCIE
NVIDIA 6800 GT Reference Card
GPU : NVIDIA Geforce 6800 GT (350 MHz)
Memory : 256 MB DDR-SDRAM (500 MHz)
Hard Drive (AMD System) Promise FastTrak S150 TX2plus (Bios : 1.00.0.37)
2 x SATA Maxtor 7B250S00 (Raid 0)
250 GB / 16 MB Cache / 7200 rpm
DVD/CD-ROM MSI MS-8216D 16x DVD
Software
Intel Chipset V 6.0.1.1002
NVIDIA nForce NVIDIA V5.10
NVIDIA Graphics AGP and PCIE Detonator 61.77
VIA Chipset VIA Hyperion 4 in 1 V4.53
DirectX Version : 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
OS Windows XP Professional, Build 5.10.2600 Service Pack 2
12. Benchmark Results

OpenGL

DirectX 8

13. DirectX 9

14. Video

Audio

15. Application

Synthetic

16. Synthetic, Continued

Other

17. Conclusion

Although we had only a couple of days to work on this review, during that time we were able to gain a decent overall impression of the new PCI Express chipset from NVIDIA. nForce4 is pretty much what everybody had expected: existing features were upgraded, such as RAID support and integrated Gigabit Ethernet, while the chipset's graphics interface transitioned from AGP 8X to x16 PCI Express.

While this is definitely one of the most important steps in bringing the Athlon64 architecture forward, it does not have a direct impact on performance today. The simple reason is that AGP 8X bandwidth is currently fast enough for the volume of textures copied from today's graphics accelerators to main memory. Also, there was nothing to expect with respect to memory performance, since this device is part of the CPU and works at maximum possible performance anyways.

Due to the short time between the arrival of the test sample and the release date of the chipset, we did not have enough time to go through all the features in detail. For example, there is NVIDIA's RAID support that allows RAID arrays to be spanned over all available devices such as UltraATA and Serial ATA. In addition, this is the first chipset with Serial ATA II support. NVIDIA's firewall was further improved and features a hardware packet inspection engine. And, finally, there is NVIDIA's nTune software that is meant to facilitate overclocking and monitoring.

The rush that accompanied the chipset launch is symptomatic of the entire industry these days: everybody is acrimoniously fighting to push new products to the market, whether they can be delivered or not. One of the few positive exceptions is AMD, but most others do not leave the best impression on customers -including NVIDIA.

We will bring you an in-depth, detailed chipset comparison as soon as all products from ATI, NVIDIA and VIA are finally available.