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Chipset Integrates Gigabit Ethernet, RAID, Firewall
EconolineCrush writes "Tech Report has a review of NVIDIA's latest Athlon 64 chipset, the nForce3 250Gb. The 250Gb is especially interesting because it's the first core logic chipset to integrate a Gigabit Ethernet MAC, hardware-accelerated firewall, and RAID across four Serial ATA and four "parallel" ATA devices. NVIDIA is even working with third party developers to help their software take advantage of the chipset's hardware firewall components. Looks like we've reached a point where chipsets will differentiate on features more than performance."
It's an integrated hardware firewall. I RTFA'd and it seems pretty cool. It starts up along with your system, so you don't have to worry about malware infecting your system during the short period between booting your system and the operating system and necessary drivers loading up. It also has a software interface reminiscent of Smoothwall and has several security profiles available for those unfamiliar with firewall configurations, but there is also a command line interface. Combined with those nifty antivirus features in the new athlon 64 chips, you've got yourself a pretty secure box.
> The big question is, will all this stuff, half of which I will never use, slow down my computer?
No, if anything it will be arguably faster than traditional north/south-bridge pairs.
The unofficial
It looks like the chipset can more than hold its own, even with beta drivers.
d s/ nf3/n250/001.htm0 04q2/nforce3-250gb /index.x?pg=1
http://www.gamers-depot.com/hardware/motherboar
http://techreport.com/reviews/2
Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
If you aren't looking to use the firewall, it looks like it's pretty easy to turn it off.
In the Forceware screenshot it shows a line labeled "Firewall Setup: Change firewall profiles including turning Firewall on/off." But, I guess if price was an issue, and you the firewall kept you from getting it, I could see that. Seems to me, this would be cheaper than a spare system in the closet. I guess you would have to test it with the firewall on/off to know if it was stealing your cycles, though.
The ForceWare software that comes with it looks semi-decent. I like how it has a built in statistics graph for the firewall, too.
No difference between an Asus and an Abit motherboard?
From the numerous Abit NF7-M and Asus A7N8X-VM motherboards I've used to build all of the office machines for some time, I can tell you that there's a BIG difference between an Abit and an Asus motherboard:
The Abit works.
Now, I know, that sounds a bit cynical. And I can't say that none of the Asus boards have worked. But I *can* say that the Asus boards have been quirky, odd, and just plain wankery. The Abit boards have been solid, reliable, and terrific.
As an example, I've had to add a PCI NIC to most of the Asus boards. The onboard LAN is just too flaky. I've watched as users rebooted, only to have their onboard NIC disappear, even though still enabled in the BIOS.
I'm by no means anti-Asus. In fact, the Asus boards have some tweaks in the BIOS that I really like. But my time is valuable, and the Abit boards take a lot less of my time.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
BTW, since this is Slashdot I should mention to people that if you plan on running Linux, avoid this board like the plague. It is HORRIBLE under Linux. I've got one with 1 GB of Infineon DDR RAM and an Athlon XP 3200+. I've had to underclock my processor down to 2500+ and completely disable APIC support and compile a vanilla Linux kernel with absolutely no reference to APIC or ACPI before the system would run stable for more than an hour. Now I MAYBE get 2 weeks out of it before it just crashes hard... sometimes it locks up, sometimes it just reboots itself. memtest shows memory is fine, replaced video card, and am using the onboard ATA controller and an Intel gigabit ethernet card with onboard NICs disabled. 2.4.25 kernel still causes crashes. I don't know if it's temperature or what, but this system sucks ass. Average (remember, running at XP 2500+ speeds) is 48C idle. If I bump it up to 3200+ it sits at 52-53C idle and gets up past 70C on high CPU load and is probably going into thermal shutdown. This is with a huge Zalman flower cooler on it and 3 other fans blowing onto it. Piece of shit system.. I wanted a Mac G5!
Then I tried this mobo in linux. SuSE did a normal install fine. As soon as I installed video and motherboard drivers, the whole OS was FUBAR. Pretty much the same thing in Red Hat... except I sorta got most of it usable (sound is still iffy).
Well I have an Asus A7N8X-E and it is amazingly stable and the best machine I've owned in Linux - that said it's sound card that needs a good linux driver.
p hp?t=36 337&start=15
Basically - for those that don't know there are major problems with the sound support - it's a great card, works amazingly under windows.
Here is a link with more info:
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/viewtopic.
A forum user has posted his correspondance with an nvidia rep/dev(?) in which it is stated that they are working on linux support. . . he also clarifies why the APU is a sore point for nvidia (not just in linux but in general)
So in linux you can get it to work easily, but only with one channel (ie everything has to play through arts/esd/whatever...) - but in kde this is useful:
http://ripi.net/software/kickarts/
Actually it is *very* interesting to filter in hardware. Filtering a gigabit link can be quite expensive on it's own.
I don't think NVidia implemented some kind of connection tracking since that would require a different hardware implementation for every protocol, but to bypass the interrupt handling would save us a lot!
--
Wiktor
I work at NVIDIA and the firewall isn't really hardware accelerated. That is just a bunch of hype. There is some software (firmware) running on the motherboard on a dedicated processor. If you want to consider that hardware accelerated, then fine.
But that processor is pretty slow and it just runs a modified linux kernel for the firewall. I wouldn't really call that hardware accelerated, but it is better than having the CPU run the firewall code, I suppose.
The average home user just needs to make sure their ports are blocked. No it's not a 'good' firewall, but it's massive improvement over none.
Photos.
Yeah, much better to have two or three chips in a machine where if any one of them die than the whole systme is useless! That's what we've got now, where most chipsets come with 2 or 3 discrete chips, and you better believe that if any one of them dies then your system won't boot.