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nForce2 Preview
An anonymous submitter writes "I noticed that a review of NVIDIA's nForce2 chipset has been posted here. From what I can gather the chipset contains two 10/100 ethernet controllers, six USB 2.0 ports, UltraATA133 support, three 1394 ports, five PCI slots, and an integrated GeForce4 MX core including NVIDIA's nView technology and a TV Tuner." Tom's Hardware and NVNews also have looks at it.
On the topic of current Nvidia cards:
.plan:
Do not buy a GeForce4-MX for Doom.
Nvidia has really made a mess of the naming conventions here. I always
thought it was bad enough that GF2 was just a speed bumped GF1, while GF3 had
significant architectural improvements over GF2. I expected GF4 to be the
speed bumped GF3, but calling the NV17 GF4-MX really sucks.
GF4-MX will still run Doom properly, but it will be using the NV10 codepath
with only two texture units and no vertex shaders. A GF3 or 8500 will be
much better performers. The GF4-MX may still be the card of choice for many
people depending on pricing, especially considering that many games won't use
four textures and vertex programs, but damn, I wish they had named it
something else.
(all this comes from carmack's
http://webdog.org/plans/1/ )
It seems nvidia is going the same road as intel and sis with their cheap video-on-board motherboard. All of them sucked! Good luck!
The "controllers" are just a few extra pins out of hundreds on the chip. A very tiny patch of real estate is lost if you don't use it. A great amount of circuit board real estate is gained if you do use it as it only requires a few tiny inductors and connectors to impliment it.
I'd want to see a few more controllers on the chipset myself. What's another milliwatt and a few more pins among friends? Imagine the clustering potential of these chipsets...
I'm guessing that when you buy a computer, you aren't spending your own money.
The nFORCE concept is to capture low-end market share by providing much better specs than the alternatives, for people who are price-constrained. Suppose you had $400 to build a computer (not including the monitor). The nFORCE architecture is by far the best deal you can get. At this price point, a GeForce4 Ti was never in the cards anyway.
What nVIDIA has recognized is that the traditional price points for high-end ($3000+) or even midrange ($2000+) PCs have gone the way of the dodo. Ultra-cheap PCs are such a good deal for the majority of buyers that that's where most of the market share is going to be in a few years, if it isn't there already.
-Graham
DDR400 "corresponds to a performance level that SDRAM could only achieve at 400 MHz,"
Why is this inaccurate? DDR400 is DDR running at 200MHz, which is equivalent to SDR running at 400MHz.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
WOW! Someone that really gets what is amazingly cool about nForce. The only Dolby Digital 5.1
_encoding_ solution in this market (other than Xbox). Not via, not intel, not creative
soundblaster, not Playstation2, and not gamecube.
What happens when you play a game with your Audigy 5.1 hooked up to your dolby digital
receiver via coaxial/optical digital hookup???
Two channel stereo! Ha!
They talk 5.1 all over the box and conveniently leave out that it is for _decode_ of pre-encoded
material only (i.e. DVDs).