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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."
The big question is, will all this stuff, half of which I will never use, slow down my computer?
Now that motherboard chipsets for athlons don't use a memory controller (the 64 bit ones have em on the chip processor) is that why we're starting to see all this stuff integrated into the motherboard?
Photos.
It sounds nice except for the firewall which strikes me as misplaced. I do not want firewall duty being handled by my new systems, I would much rather have it handled by a nice router or really outdated system in a closet.
vampirical
In the words of the immortal Id Software, SPOOOOGE!!!!!
This card has awesome features. I can't wait to get one and use it with DooM 3 when it's released.
From TFA:
> Although its throughput is impressive, the 250Gb does show higher CPU utilization in NTttcp. However, the chipset's throughput performance is easily worth a couple of extra CPU cycles.
I concur. With faster CPUs on the market, this might not mean much in the long run anyway. Cycles that can take the load off could be worth the performance risk, and I would love to see it run DooM 3 and a custom map from Headshot or ZTN. I bet it'll handle level design pretty well too, from the specs.
> However, the relative closeness of most of our benchmark scores isn't conclusive enough to declare the nForce3 250Gb a winner on performance alone. That's where the 250Gb's robust arsenal of integrated peripherals and excellent ForceWare software enters the picture.
Very true. The extras do matter, and I can't wait to hear the difference with the audio apps that go with this, for example. Is it me or are companies like Nvidia going the extra mile with all the features lately? This trend is impressive, rather than annoying to me... I don't see it like a cop-out... but like they seem to care more for the details, which is good.
Maybe Sun is not the first but its a core part of their ideology. This link to OS News has a link and discussion about this.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
Onboard audio I don't really care for, but a nice NIC and an onboard SATA controller are key to grabbing my purchase. I've got an ASUS P4P800 and it has been quite good to me. By the way, what kind of security do you look for in a motherboard? Aside from the (brand new) onboard firewall, I can't think of any integrated security features except for the bios password.
I definitely agree with keeping things modular. Especially with the advent of the new PCI standards that provide more bandwidth and higher speed, it will be easier to just pick and choose the features that you really want and not pay extra for things you're never gonna use anyway.
I hope manufactures start to notice that a lot of people who buy the high end motherboards are the same people who are likely to use linux exclusively or at least dual boot. Initially, most of the popular serial ata chipsets included with motherboards, silicon image 3112 comes to mind, had lousy linux support particularly for the raid features. 2.6 has come a long way with ide raid support mostly due to developer's working to reverse engineer, but maybe just maybe manufactures will start to realize that linux support early on is a good and profitable business practice.
Onboard audio I don't really care for
I thought the same as you.. but ever since I got my Asus A7N8X Deluxe, I've changed my mind about onboard audio. This baby has an amplified main output, 6.1-channel dolby digital capability, and an SPDIF output, onboard!
It also has *2* NICs onboard, an SATA controller (with RAID), Dual channel DDR 400mhz memory controller, AGP8x, 6 USB2.0 ports, 2 Firewire ports (both 4 and 6 wire), and something I thought had long gone missing from PCs: the midi/joystick connector!
This motherboard has everything, and the kitchen sink (the bus is actually 8-bit HyperTransport v1.0 from what AIDA32 claims), and it's ROCK SOLID stable.. what more could you ask.. oh yeah, it's relatively cheap too.
(Disclamier: I have nothing to do with Asus, just a very satisfied customer)
DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
Why is it so cool to have more features? It is just simple product differentiation. With the current chipsets all being practically the same now, for both intel and AMD (which is far supior ;), they need to make the products stand out. There really is no difference bettween an Asus and an Abit motherboard. Both have about the same features and performance. It is only natural that this would happen...
is it's ability to overclock. This is the first confirmed chipset with pci lock and agp lock.
NJ Local Music Scene
But keeping things modular is more expensive -- it's much more efficient to integrate everything on one or two chips rather than producing a PCB, chip, and supporting electronics.
I'm all for integration - i think it will be more reliable, consume less power, and be more environmentally friendly in the long run. If you don't require all the 'features', then buy a motherboard with fewer integrated features. I just don't see the point of favoring a PCI NIC over an integrated one.
Eeeks Hardware Firewall.. That just smells like a bad idea... Exploit at the hardware level anyone?
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
Host firewalls are "A Good Thing(TM)". With the abundence of malware, trojans, and application attacks that are allowed to breeze through firewalls (because that's not what network firewalls were designed to block), having a host firewall is an asset, not a liability.
It's not like an on-chip firewall is going to slow down your box, and no one said you have to configure it to allow access to the rest of your network (like a gateway firewall), it's just an extra layer of protection that you can tailor much more specifically to that host's needs.
This doesn't mean you have to throw away your current firewall, this means you get more (and better) protection. In fact, features like this would be great for deployed application servers. Each DMZ host can be protected from the others even though they're on the same switch, and it doesn't require buying licenses and installing more software (like ZoneAlarm).
Someone is WRONG on the Internet!
The reason I use a PCI NIC over an onboard one is because if it dies, I can replace it readily...
:( ) but it's a valid point, though since I'm not a hardware expert I can't really comment on whether third part components aren't as power friendly as onboard ones...
:)
Reliability... well, I don't really agree with you there.. KISS is the most reliable in my opinion.
Less power is a non-issue for me (yes, I suck as an environmentalist
Each to their own opinion...
Open Your Mind. Open Your Source.
If it's as bad as the rest of nVidia's Linux support, it's nothing to be excited about. nVidia's drivers taught me why open source drivers are so important.
And they're "good" about Linux support. That just underscores why open drivers are a must.
Any home user doesn't need a hardware accelerated firewall. Windows XP comes with a simple firewall that handles this kind of stuff with ease. The only rules a home users needs are block every port, and maybe let a few through, nothing fancy. Additionally, this'll apply only to about 4 megabits of bandwidth at most, considering the speed of even the fastest broadband residential connections.
This may just be somehting that the people at compusa can read off the tag. "Integrated firewall firewall for increased security". Either that or another feature for power users to tick off. Possibly similar to how pentium ads talk about optimization for streaming internet video when any processor made after 1997 can stream anything on the net today.
Photos.
I also used to hate onboard audio... but all motherboards that use the Nforce/Nforce2 chipsets quickly changed my mind, enough so that I sold my creative soundblaster live because I didn't need it anymore. I like having a freed up pci slot and less clutter in the case. Not to mention the onboard audio on my Abit board using Nforce2 had one hell of a gui to control all the features. Nvidia does a great job with drivers, and their onboard sound is no different. I did have another Abit board using the nforce1 chipset, and the onboard nic started acting up so I had to turn it off in the bios. I knew 3 other people with the same board that eventually had the same thing happen. Eventually, the whole board started acting up... so having things onboard isn't always a great idea, especially if one of those things goes bad.
Nvidia has some serious talent that produce great graphics cards, & chipsets with audio/ethernet/integrated graphics.
The next logical step would be an Nvidia CPU, perhaps integrated with other technologies. Wishful thinking?
Why didn't they just include a processor core like PowerPC or ARM core? Might as well make a super duper all-in-one cpu on a chip.
Word to all that. I got the same mobo a few months ago and I'm loving it. Was terrified to leave my precious 440BX behind, but its worth it. This one's got performance, features *and* stability, though I'll readily admit that it gave me all kinds of trouble with Linux to start with, but I guess thats just the cost of moving to modern hardware.
Sad that these otherwise snazzy NForce3s don't have near as nice onboard sound as the NF2s though.
Assuming your motherboard has PCI slots, nothing is stopping you from putting in third party components. I'm perfectly content with the onboard nforce2 audio on the MSI board I have at home for gaming. It sounds the same, if not much better than the SB PCI 512 I had my old machine. The nvidia ethernet works fine as well under Windows XP. Now that I think about it, the only thing that isn't integrated into my motherboard is my graphics card, since this is my gaming system, and a firewire card. Everything else onboard is more than adequate if not superior to what I had in my 2-3 year old former gaming system that had all third party components for sound, graphics, nic, etc. If it dies, so what... it was $68, I'll just buy another one. A decent sound card used to cost at leasta hundred bucks and a good NIC used to be $60 (3com 3c905) by itself.
Do more firewalls make a more secure machine?
Yes.
It is clear that edge firewalls are not sufficient. A network with squishy insides is doomed the first time some "salesrep" wanders in from who-knows-where and plugs his broken, virus ridden, misconfigured, obsolete laptop into your switched network. Every cotton pick'n host connected to a network needs a basic stateful packet filter, and wouldn't it be nice if it was entirely OS independent?
There will be a firewall built into your chipset, your OS, your router...
Nothing wrong with that. Since when has choice been a problem? If it's responsible for passing packets it should have a means of filtering them. A simple principle, really.
A basic stateful packet filter (a.k.a firewall) is a fairly simple, well understood mechanism. Firmware is the ideal place to implement it. It will work regardless of which operating system is installed/upgrade/misconfigured. It will work before the OS boots! Many good commercial firewalls are based on only low-power embedded CPU's and flash memory, yet provide very comprehensive firewall functions, multiple interfaces with complex routing, VPN, SNMP, etc.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Yes, assuming. Read up on Intel's plans for future motherboards and you'll find that lots of slots (or any slots) may not be on the menu. The idea is to produce machines with enough on-board I/O to serve the needs of the majority of users, and keep board costs down as much as possible. Slots will eventually become a luxury that you have to pay a premium to get.
And from a maintenance standpoint, I disagree with you. Yes, motherboards are cheap, but there's a considerable difference in the labor required to swap out a motherboard, and replacing a single card. That may not be important to you or me, but to a user that is dependent upon his local computer store (or a large corporation that has limited IT resources) it can be. Yes, you can just shotgun the entire motherboard, but the odds of the new one being register-compatible with the old one are low, and given that current Windows OSes aren't particularly drive-portable you're probably screwed.
A decent sound card goes for $30 and a decent NIC for $5 nowadays, so you really aren't saving much by going with onboard I/O. The idea is to save computer makers money, not necessarily to provide you with a better or more maintainable product. One of my favorite older motherboards was Abit's KT7A-RAID: no sound, no network, no video, just a bunch of PCI slots, AGP, and even an ISA slot. Their thought was that they were selling to people that wanted control. Ended up being one of the best boards I've ever owned.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I once found on Canon's website a manual on how to clean an digital SLR sensor.
Basically a digital SLR is a body+electronics+sensor and you can screw on your own lens. Note that while professional camera bodies are expensive, good lenses are also very expensive, so it makes sense to keep your lenses when you change body to a new camera. And, of course, if you are going to change the sensor you need to change the electronics too - which leaves the metal case which is not that expensive (look at regular film SLRs - they go for around $150-300 nowadays).
Now back to cleaning: the manual said something like this:
What happens is that the CMOS sensor is bare and anything harsher will likely damage it. So you really want it sealed - which implies having something transparent (like a lens ;) in front of it that you can't remove.
Good lens are expensive so you can just as well make it a part of the lens system to reduce the price.
MS and Phoenix are planning to incorporate several features including TCP/IP in the BIOS. With the prospect of an onboard firewall, nVidia may very well be both ahead of its time and an (un)intentional partner with MS and Phoenix.
Is it feasible to have iptables run in hardware? I mean, if NVIDIA say they're going to help third parties set up their software to use the hardware, they had better help the only firewall software we care about.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
If one chip breaks, the whole machine is useless! That's exactly what I want in a computer.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Not MS's Window XP default firewall.
Apparently the board's firewall is based on a modified Linux kernal in the firmware that boot's a embedded processor before the bios finishes loading & WinXP's bootloader start's running.