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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.
I'm very happy with my nForce2 motherboard right now. It's a phenomenal chipset by a phenomenal company, IMO. It's goot to see someone leading in this kind of development. The question is, who/what will follow? Or will Nvidia's wonderful ideas be ignored by other major chip manufacturers and the like?
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not want firewall duty being handled by my new systems, I would much rather have it handled by a nice router or really outdated system in a closet.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
Do more firewalls make a more secure machine? There will be a firewall built into your chipset, your OS, your router...
I have a feeling it's got to do with pointless features more than anything else.
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
But the Gigabit and RAID have been available in other earlier models.
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.
...a Gigabit Ethernet MAC...
I've always wanted a Mac inside my PC! I can't wait to pick up my nVidia G5/ia64-based computer!
How will we be able to patch it?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Will any one from OSS support it? Because all there video drivers are Tainted module
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.
The security is only good if the user turns it on.. or doesn't turn it off as the case may be.
Just three more hours seapeople and you can finally take me away from this crappy God Damned planet full of hippies
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.
RAID, which is a totally distinct system, has no business being there.
It would be better still if we could believe the design will be properly tested and validated to the point anyone could have confidence in it.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
But... Does it run linux?
:) I could actually have 8-12 in this machine and it be justified.
Cause if it's like the early nforce boards, I was much better off with Via's stuff.
Nvidia's great suff, but I just haven't been impressed with their provided drivers yet. Comparing several build ATI+VIA systems to Nvidia core systems, I have far less problems, hassles, and overall better performace out of the ATI+VIa ones.
Like take the Asus offerings. The A7NX's rocked, but the nforce eqivalent.. sure it had like extra nic's, and other goodies, just didn't hold pace with a clean linux kernel and 3 gig's of ram.
I switched the $150 nforce chipset board with a $60 Via, and ended up with a MUCH better high end workstation.
Of course, I guess not everyone needs 3 gigs of ram.
-=fshalor
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.
"NVIDIA is even letting third-party software developers take advantage of the nForce3 250Gb's dedicated firewall hardware."
It doesn't say that they've published the necessary APIs and/or documentation for taking advantage of this feature, only that they're "letting" people take advantage of it. Does this mean it will remain closed and non-free like the nForce ethernet driver on previous chipsets? While they do release a "tainted" Linux driver, they don't allow groups like the OpenBSD project access to the documentation in order to write their own driver.
All that hardware off-loading of processing from the CPU is not going to benefit everyone unless they freely provide documentation for using it.
Here's hoping they release the necessary documentation instead of hoarding it like Intel has done with their on-NIC IPsec off-loading.
Other than that, I really like the integrated firewall for two reasons:
1.) It starts before the OS would have the ability to start a firewall
2.) It (apparently?) works regardless of OS (that's a big question mark)
Someone is WRONG on the Internet!
i look forward to seeing the documentation for these devices, so they can be fully supported by [insert any os besides windows].
oh wait, did you say nvidia? nevermind. buggy binary drivers, no support for advanced features, drm, and linux only (no bsd allowed).
The problem is with companies being hesitant to provide open source drivers, will the cause only headaves for OSS users?
good point.
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!
I think we reached that point long ago. The chipset performance difference is often less than 5%, and usually less than 2%. Are you going to notice that in day-to-day activities? Not likely. Chipset loyalties, features, past experiences, these are the things that matter. After 2 years of rock solid performance on my Nforce 1, I would have to be hard pressed to switch to Via if they had a performance difference. Plus Nvidia's drivers generally work, and they try to make drivers that work no matter what board you have, just like their graphics cards.
Not that I'm a die-hard Nvidia chipset fan. At the time I bought the board two years ago, however, only the Nforce board provided all the features I wanted at the budget I was shooting for. The integrated video isn't horribe either, unlike Intel's Extremely Nasty solution.
Differentiating on features more than performance? I thing the legions of Small Form Factor junkies kind of make the argument that that bridge was crossed quite a while ago. They settle for less performance, and practially all reviews of those boxen focus on the features, and less on performance.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
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...
Oh come on, its nothing like what Microsoft does. Microsoft uses underhanded tactics to search and destroy any company that they think they can take over and profit from. These guys added a logical feature (a firewall), and made a logical progression (from 100base to gigabit ethernet).
You say security is what you look for in a motherboard - how is this motherboard, with a well designed, built in, hardware level firewall, any less secure than any other motherboard that is the same except for the firewall. Or are you complaining about the SATA? Motherboards with SATA should be banned, and we should all still stick with ATA alone? Or maybe its the onboard RAID? Or is 100base onboard ethernet somehow better than GB?
The more I think about it, the more I realize that I shouldn't respond to this at all, but should have given you a -1:Flamebait. I mean if " Security, stability, and performance are the top features I look for in a motherboard", then RTFA and notice that performance is ahead of its class, and its very stable, not to mention the extra steps taken for security. Hopefully some mods will take care of this.
is it's ability to overclock. This is the first confirmed chipset with pci lock and agp lock.
NJ Local Music Scene
Go into the bios and disable it, or flash the bios.
Do they still call it bios?
This looks pretty good for the network performance alone, plus the RAID controller is pretty nifty. If it works nicely under Linux (and nVidia's site appears to have drivers) it'll make a good chipset for a low end server. I like what I've seen of the new AMD stuff, particularly their new system design (Hypertransport etc) . Had a presentation from Sun recently on their coming Opteron lineup and that looks pretty sweet too (looks like IBM is offering them as well).
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.
I agree. It's becoming silly to have a new port come out every year with driver problems.
I wouldn't mind seeing a real high-quality port that can be used for 10+ years and can be performed with all purpose. Imagine a USB-like port that can do scsi, network, VGA, and every thing in between.
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.
"Oh come on, its nothing like what Microsoft does"
I was referring to Microsofts tendency to include everything and the kitchen sink with an Operating System, e.g. Media player, Internet Explorer, Games etc
"You say security is what you look for in a motherboard - how is this motherboard, with a well designed, built in, hardware level firewall, any less secure than any other motherboard that is the same except for the firewall. Or are you complaining about the SATA? Motherboards with SATA should be banned, and we should all still stick with ATA alone? Or maybe its the onboard RAID? Or is 100base onboard ethernet somehow better than GB?"
Actually, I do think that motherboards should come without Network cards, without raid controllers etc. If the network card stops working, replace the network card. Better than replacing the motherboard. As for security, the less it does, the less chance of a security flaw. That's all.
"The more I think about it, the more I realize that I shouldn't respond to this at all, but should have given you a -1:Flamebait. I mean if " Security, stability, and performance are the top features I look for in a motherboard", then RTFA and notice that performance is ahead of its class, and its very stable, not to mention the extra steps taken for security. Hopefully some mods will take care of this."
I am sorry that you feel so strongly against my opinion. Generally I just believe that there can't be flaws in hardware that doesn't exist, and when something breaks I prefer to replace a component rather than replace the whole motherboard.
Maybe you are wanting to mark my post as flamebait because of the Microsoft reference appears to be a general Microsoft bashing fest... It was merely a colloquial reference of modular stripped down linux vs Monolithic all inter-twined Windows. No, I'm not an expert in hardware, I only put together my computers, not design them. It's just my opinion, expressed civilly.
Open Your Mind. Open Your Source.
Couldn't agree more. I look at computers in much the same way that I look at my stereo ... keep everything as disintegrated as possible. My stereo has the power amp, tuner, CD/DVD player and everything else as separate components. And for my computer, I like to be able to decide what sound board I want, what video card I want, what network card I want, and so on. I also like repairs to be more granular: having to replace a motherboard just because an Ethernet port dies is ridiculous.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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 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.
But if your motherboard NIC dies, you can still replace it with a PCI NIC. Unless motherboards actually start dropping PCI slots, reliability is a non-issue.
And the really nice part? When/if you DO stick an even better card in the AGP slot, you can still use the onboard for a second monitor.
For quite some time now, all of the machines I've built for our office have used NForce2 IGP chipsets, for precisely those reasons. A board that costs $100 (or less), is rock-solid, has terrific driver support, stellar performance, sound, network, etc. makes my life very, very easy. In fact, $450 will put together a VERY nice system (sans monitor) based on them.
Plus, the fact that they'll play quite a few games (Q3, WarCraft III, Counter-Strike) incredibly well makes staying late very enjoyable....
As a matter of fact, I'm going to upgrade my machine at home in the next month or two, and chances are that I'll keep using the same boards!
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
"Actually, I do think that motherboards should come without Network cards, without raid controllers etc. If the network card stops working, replace the network card. Better than replacing the motherboard. As for security, the less it does, the less chance of a security flaw. That's all."
You know you can turn off these things in the BIOS and justuse a seperate card in a PCI slot. If the onboard networking, RAID or SCSI stops working, get a network, RAID or SCSI card and pop it in and away you go.
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?
I'm with you on this. I have been building my own PCs for about 12 years now. I've ALWAYS been of the opinion that the motherboard should not have any video/sound/net hardware built-in. That all changed when the A7N8X came out. This is a superb motherboard with commodity sound and network hardware that does the job quite well. I'm not an audiophile, so the sound hardware is more than adequate. And 100mbps on the NIC is far more bandwidth than most of my home PCs have (all of the others are 802.11b). I recommend this motherboard to all friends who are building PCs because it allows them to save money on the NIC and sound card and redirect that money to where it counts: hard drives, RAM, CPU, and video card.
.-.--
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.
yes it is rediculous you could just install a network card then
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!
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.
Ok - well just to clear it up - in an unoffensive way, as someone who has worked in this industry for long before it became cool to...
Actually, I do think that motherboards should come without Network cards, without raid controllers etc. If the network card stops working, replace the network card
Well yeah - except you can disable the onboard nic from the BIOS - so its still just a nice added value. My home is all wireless, but its nice to be able to use the onboard nic when the need arises. Its really a convenient thing, and frees up a PCI slot for me. "when something breaks I prefer to replace a component rather than replace the whole motherboard"
I've seen an onboard soundcard 'break' before - So a new soundcard was bought - no need to replace the motherboard. Yes, while " As for security, the less it does, the less chance of a security flaw. That's all." feels pretty good, and can be true about a lot of things, as someone who works in network security, and who deals with some pretty complex corporate firewalls, its usually not true. If it were true, the big companies would keep little openbsd boxes to maintain their network connections - with really simply rulesets. This isn't the case. Most corporate firewalls are terrifying, intricate things.
As far as your "colloquial reference of modular stripped down linux vs Monolithic all inter-twined Windows"... Remember, that yes althought Linux is modular, It is hardly stripped down most of the time now. A default install will provide 5 or 6 Media players that all play the same media, 3 or more web browsers, a full office suite (or two if you include the KDE office suite), dozens of games and countless tools for almost anything. Windows - not so much. Maybe this is why most Linux installs are 3 or 4 cds now, while windows is one. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Linux user at work and home, and love Linux very much - but calling it stripped down is like calling a P4 RISC.
Wish there was a really good, stable, fast mobo anymore that just gave buses and a cpu socket or 2!
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.
Chatgris:
"Oh come on, its nothing like what Microsoft does" I was referring to Microsofts tendency to include everything and the kitchen sink with an Operating System, e.g. Media player, Internet Explorer, Games etc
Of all the operating systems that come to mind, linux distros, bsds, macOS and solaris I'd have to say that Microsoft includes the least number of programs with its OS. A typically linux distro has hundreds of applications compared to MS Windows's uhm... 10? Not that is relevant to the real topic (motherboard) but anyway...
This seems a little counterintuitive.
Surely having everything on the motherboard would increase security, stability and performance simply because AMD can guarentee that all of the parts of the system work optimally together.
One of the biggest problems with PCs is that the huge number of vendors means incompatibility between components becomes a factor impacting overall system stability and performance.
Funtage Factor: Purple
I'll call a P4 RISC-like - it's translated from the x86 instruction set to a RISC-like instruction set before execution.
And for how many years did the x86 faithful deride the Mac motherboard for this very issue? It contained every thing you needed (in the day) without the need for extra PCI slots (audio, nic, etc)...
Ah, how the chickens come home to roost. The bottom line is quality of the parts on the motherboard.
Probably with a firmware upgrade.
?Who controls the past now, controls the future.
Who controls the present now controls the past.?
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).
Don't know about NForce3, but my NForce2 chipset board works great under Linux (Shuttle NForce2 Ultra 400; 2GB DDR400). There are even official drivers if you want (I use a PCI Gigabit nic, and ALSA includes support for the audio - so I don't use the drivers).
Great strides have been made since the first NForce.
Don't get cocky. And my point is that you won't be able to do that, if the current trend to reduce the number of and then eliminate PCI slots continues. Look at the Mini-ITX boards that are coming out from VIA: one PCI slot if you're lucky.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
From lightly reading the article, it sounds like the hardware helps with the firewall but the firewall config (and maybe alot of the firewall itself) is still software.
Besides, people have trusted hardware firewalls for a long time now. If they're done right, they're better than software.
It looks like dropping PCI slots will be a trend for the future. I looked at some reference board designs for BTX boards, and all but the largest have very, very few slots.
Then again, the majority of us will be buying the largest size, so maybe it's a non-issue.
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.
The firewall most likely acts as a co-processor, similar to the cryptographic co-processors found in some 3Com cards. I doubt any serious vulnerabilities are present if it's implemented right.
Notice that the article mentions the possibility of 3rd party developers using the hardware component -- perhaps iptables can utilize it as well.
If they ditched the parallel ata, they could save a ton of pins. People couldn't reuse their old drives, but using those pins for other features would be better.
I would like to see gigabit ethernet integrated onto the AMD64 cpu. That way my blades won't even need a chipset.
Maybe you are wanting to mark my post as flamebait because of the Microsoft reference appears to be a general Microsoft bashing fest... It was merely a colloquial reference of modular stripped down linux vs Monolithic all inter-twined Windows.
actually you've got that backwards.. windows utilizes a microkernel architecture where as linux has mucho crapo built into the kernel. much more to break, it's just well built. also, I know it depends on the distro.. but you can't say windows comes with more crap out of the box. your average linux distro is 1gb+ out of the box, way more than windows comes with. I tend to think of that as a good thing though
bite my glorious golden ass.
Linux distro yes, but that's not Linux. I personally use gentoo, and only install what I actually use.
Open Your Mind. Open Your Source.
Whats wrong with them having onboard RAID? You dont have to use it, but its nice that its there. Simple RAID configuration in the BIOS must be great compared to a seperate controller card taking up a slot on an inefficient bus.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
You're kidding about the XP firewall, right? In the version that ships with vanilla XP and SP1, calling it worthless would probably be an understatement. You're the first person I've heard that takes it anywhere near seriously.
That said, SP2 will ship with a much improved firewall that could be called a Zone Alarm lite, but honestly, my preference is still for a hardware level firewall. The reason for this is you're stopping the traffic before it ever touches the system, helping to stop a vulnerability in software from turning into a break-in of the actual system.
what is coming next week. NV40 geforce 6800. time to own that company called ati.
Those are some really high temps for that Zalman cooler you've got. Are you sure that you installed it properly? Are you using enough thermal compound? Maybe you're using too much thermal compound. Maybe your case has bad airflow. Try taking the side off and see how it does.
hey!
I am actually kinda suprised that nobody has mentioned it, including the poster.
meep
FYI, I have an A7N8X-X (not the Deluxe) at work and I found it would lock up hard every couple of days until I turned off SMP support in my kernel. This is enabled by default for all kernel sources, and I imagine it gets turned on by some vendor kernels as well. You should try that to see if it helps; I haven't had any problems with my machine since I tried, but it's only been a week or so. However, several co-workers reported exactly the same thing, and they've all been fine since they disabled SMP.
It's still a pretty pointless board to run in Linux - why bother getting something with all sorts of fancy onboard crap if there's no good drivers to use it all? They definitely should have gone with a KT600 chipset board.
You know what I hate? Wait, what do you like? I hate that!
This is good stuff, people! Really!
Once we get past the "dumb beast" stage, the stage at which we believe bigger-is-better (in this field, more MHz), we reach a point where quality and smart features that are useful in today's world are what differentiates products. I've wished the market supported proper chipsatz (I just like how it sounds in German say it, so shoot me) development for a long time, now this news seems like bringing that a step closer to reality. It's a known fact that Intel, when they were interested in doing so, produced kick-ass chipsets. BX440 ring a bell?
These are smart features. Features that a lot of people will make good use of. But make no mistake - these are not marketing gimmicks (at least generally speaking) - these are not your useless AMR slots of yesteryear!
We are paying a lot of money for diminishing-return upgrades until these feature trends start being implemented. The fact that your computer calculates an Excel formula in 1/100th of a second faster than mine is not worth anything in reality, yet people are wasting good money on perceived upgrades. Yes, it's very nice that you get 1000 fps in your FPS of choice. using a Radeon 9800 Pro. My older now-$50 card gets 200 fps, which is fine for me. In fact, my monitor can't even display it that fast, and your LCD sure as heck can't! What I really want is to get rid of that firewall sitting next to my machine, with it's brick-style power adapter (anyone listening? get rid of those things!). What I really want is SATA RAID-5. Or thereabouts. It makes sense. We're ready for it. It's just a matter of time till someone steps in and delivers it. No more BS!
No more BS, no more RAMBUSsing, no more HyperBS-ing, no more FXing, no more Presscotting! Just do it, do it well, do it right! We'll buy it! We're buying your crap now, you can only profit by doing something smart and giving us what we really want.
P.S. Hat's off to nVidia for the nForce2, I hope the nForce3 250Gb is equally good in it's market. Although I'd change the name.
Must-not-watch TV!
For now, untill TCP takes hold. I think only pheonix has that now however. Dont buy pheonix.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Have you looked into Server class boards?
For example, Tyan's S2707 is a real nice P4 board with onboard video and dual gigabit LAN. No IDE Raid, though it may be an option.
Pretty fast, but more of a server board than a workstation.
Fellowship 9/11
Guh?
This may be quite a bit OT, but I have an A7N8X running 2.6.4 *quite* well, Athlon XP 3000+ running at speed, 1GB of Corsair DDR 333, with no problems at all. Everything stays reasonably cool (granted, I did up the heatsink/fan to something a bit better than the one out of the PIB), none of the onboard components turned off, and really it's been quite a robust system. 2.4.22 faired somewhat the same, though I had no sound when I first installed Slackware on this box.
The only problem I did have was infant failure when I built the machine last summer. A quick RMA later, and I had a working board that I honestly can't be more pleased with.
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.
Another thing to avoid like the plague if you want to run linux is Serial ATA. My main rig has two of them running in raid 0, and it runs beautifully in Windows -- doesn't even get recognized in linux. In fact, I can't even get knoppix to work... So be aware of that...
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
I've been using the A7N8X running Suse 9 as my primary desktop at home since the board first came out. For the first month I had terrible stability problems, until I figured out it was a bad IDE cable. Since then this motherboard has been rock solid under Linux for months now. Of course, that might change now that I've bought this SATA drive... :-)
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.
The article mentioned a couple networking things, beside the firewall, which are very cool..
- Gig-E on the chipset. Most NIC's attach via the PCI bus. Even the integrated NIC's on the motherboard, they connect via the PCI bus. Since a standard 32bit/33MHz bus tops out at 1Gbps, you've got a bottleneck if you want to do anything else - like access the disk. They bypass that, and give it direct access to the system bus. Their performance results are impressive.
- The article claims that it supports "TCP and checksum offload". TCP offload to hardware has been talked about in high performance network services (iSCSI, SSL accelerators, SANs) for a couple years, but doing this in a PC is a big leap. It can have a huge benefit in CPU performance.
- Of course, the firewall in hardware is interesting. I'm curious to see how flexible it is, but to be able to do firewalling and TCP in hardware shows how much network intelligence they put into the chipset. A hardware firewall can have some benefits in DoS attacks. The system doesn't need to see the packets, service interrupts, etc.. the packets are dropped before they hit the OS (depending on how the firewall was implemented).
The big question for me is: How open will the spec's be for these developments? Even though they are done in hardware, they will rely heavily on software for setup and full functionality. Without open spec's we won't be able to take advantage of these things in Linux.
> When is the last time you saw an onboard NIC,
> sound, HDD controller, graphics controller, or
> anything else integrated into a chipset fail?
My Mac's onboard NIC is quite quite dead.
> - Even if that 1 function of the IC did fail and
> the rest of the chip still works fine, what is
> preventing you from just adding the damn PCI NIC then?
It's a Mac? No expansion but USB, and no driver support for any existing USB NICs?
Good thing I don't ever use it anyway, else I might be annoyed.
Different segments of the market. The Mini-ITX is for a very specific purpose -- low power, decent performance computing. You can still buy mobos with a half dozen or so PCI slots that have integrated peripherals, they're just a couple feet down the aisle. Yes, lots of people like integrated solutions, but lots of people like to build their own. From what I've seen, there are no signs of mobos with lots of lots being a dying breed.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
Er. Wildly OT, but shouldn't a Pedantic Spelling Troll be capable of spelling 'ridiculous'...?
...Unless I got it all wrong, and you're actually trolling for pedantic spellers. In which case -- Damn. Guilty as charged.
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
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!
You really should use 2.6.x kernel, like 2.6.5 if you wish to use SATA. 2.4.x suck with SATA.
> Like take the Asus offerings. The A7NX's rocked, but the nforce eqivalent..
There's is no motherboard that I'm aware of called the A7NX. Asus does make the A7N8X, which is generally considered one of the better motherboards available, supports 3 gigs of ram, and is based on the NForce2 chipset.
The N in the product number reveals that it uses an NVidia chipset. If it was a Via board, it would have a V instead of the N.
(I personally own an A7N8X and love it. I haven't had much luck with Linux on it, but that's my failing, not the board's.)
Stupid like a fox!
Thats wayyyy too hot. I know its apples and oranges but my 3200 a64 idles at 35C and hasnt broke 50C under full load even (differnt MB though). In fact I have it set to go into shutdown at 60C!! Check the thermal compound etc because something is wrong there.
Maybe A7Nx as in A7N*. Just a guess at what the poster was thinking.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
I'd have to agree that it's probably the temps that are killing you. I've have the same board and it runs fine under Redhat 9 and Win2k. My temps were getting a bit high so I took the CPU heatsink off, re-applied the thermal paste more carefully and voila! it runs at 38C no load and 45C with full CPU usage. Plus its only a Athlon 2400, but I've got it clocked close to 2700 speeds with no problems. Who knows? Maybe I just got lucky, but temps over 50C definitely aren't helpful.
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/
unless it has open source
drivers. Without good
support for GNU/linux AND
BSD, it's not much better
than a doorstop. I am
tired of pissing away good
money on vendors' hardware,
when they only furnish lame
binary drivers that break
with a new kernel, or a
new improved X11. Best support
for Microsoft? FSCK 'EM.
Well I recently set up a Tyan Tiger dual Xeon mobo with software RAID. Had to use a 2.4 kernel, and took a little ..... no ..... a lot of mucking about ..... trick is you hafta add a standard HDD temporarily, just to get a kernel with SATA support onto the thing. What chipset are you using? This one is an Intel ICH5R and the official Intel driver (which I couldn't get to work) is software RAID anyway, so I said sod it and used the normal kernel md drivers. I set up RAID1 for most of the partitions, but /boot is unRAIDed and /swap is just two separate swap partitions (if /swap goes down it's taking the system with it anyway so there's no point putting it on an md device).
If yours is an ICH5R, contact me separately and I'll explain the procedure.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
My Nforce 2 runs great under 2.6, but I had some problems under 2.4 when it first came out. Considering the popularity of Nvidia and the fact that the company does release drivers I am sure that it will eventually be supported, but I will probably wait for six months or so after the chipset has been released before I would risk it. After all, I really don't plan on going to Gigabit ethernet in the house until the switches drop to the under $60 price range and while SATA hardware RAID 0,1 would be nice, I can do the same thing in software with linux. I definetly plan on going AMD64 on my next system, but I will probably get VIA based system initially.
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.
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.
You've obviously never used an Nforce motherboard under linux
From my experiance one's useally able to turn off all the unused motherboard crap in the BIOS.
Ever heard of the BIOS?
From my experiance most say to turn it off.
For example neither Telstra or Optus cable broadband will work with it enabled. Well that is unless both have upgraded their cable systems over the last 6 months, or MS has since patched out that problem.
Actually I think he's talking about the motherboard's embedded firewall, not the bloody MS one.
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.
Remember PC Chips motherboards (like their Super 7 boards with double the L2 cache of just about everyone else), they had a reputation of high returns (hence they mostly now trade under another name, ECS), well they sold a number of Socket 7, Super 7, Slot 1 & Socket 370 boards with embedded Video cards.
The Videochip gave the appearance of a extra Northbridge, complete with a tiny heatsink just like a Northbridge heatsink, while they useally had 2 Video RAM chips on the board that looked just like cache chips on earlier boards. As FSB speeds increased to the 100mhz to 133mhz level they eventually stopped adding the 2 embedded video RAM chips & started to tax the main memory instead.
Who cares though? 1000baseT isn't going to be supplanted in the timeframe your motherboard is viable, firewire2 isn't going away, neither is serial ATA. Having 1 or two PCI-Express slots on your machine coupled with an all-in-one motherboard isn't a bad thing. If one small part of your motherboard breaks, sound, nic, etc, you replace it with a new card. If more than one thing breaks, you'd naturally be thinking about a replacement anyway.
As long as I still have my PCI-express 16x slot, and a couple PCI-E 1x-4x slots, I'll be happy, for those rare things like video capture/etc that aren't onboard already (or aren't good enough in USB/firewire models).
Let's face it gents, slots are going away for general purpose devices...
Just installed a server with an Assus board with the VIA8237 sata raid chip. One driver disk later, fully functional mirroring raid and man the SPEED of this things is a joy.
And, I don't know how, but now it boots straight from the raid. I really don't get how does it get the driver from the discs!?!
It was a 686 chip with embedded logic chipset (memory controller, Floppy/IDE controllers, Serial/parrallel/PS2, etc, etc), video chipset & Audio. The concept was to make really super cheap Pentium clone systems as nothing would be need on the motherboard but a propietry CPU socket, a RAM slot, the drive connectors, the backplane connectors & the BIOS flashchip.
Only problem, Cyrix (& then National Semi, which bought Cyrix) were having even more trouble ramping these babies up to speed than their MIIs (basically just a 686 on a smaller process core with MMX added), by which time they weren't competetive with contemporaneous desktop chip releases anyway.
Well National Semi ended up selling Cyrix to VIA, but they kept the MediaGX for themselves, as it complimented their embedded chips business & the 'Cyrix MediaGX' became known as the 'National Semiconductor GeodeX86'. It then formed a family within National Semi's embedded line & there was a push for it in the Network/Web Appliance scene. National Semi even started a new dept that developed it's own family of Network/Web Appliances for it, for 3rd party developers to market.
Well guess what, about 6 months ago AMD purchased the Geode & the National Semi Information Appliance (IA) unit, taking it's 120 odd employees with it.
So you think that somehow having all these features implemented by different companies and trying to bodge all their drivers together will INCREASE stability?
Compare a motherboard chipset from nVidia, a NIC chip from 3Com, a graphics chip from ATI, an IDE controller from Promise and a sound card from Creative Labs to getting ALL of those features from nVidia. Which situation do you think is more likely to be tested together and less likely to cause interoperability problems?
If I can get GOOD quality components integrated onto the motherboard and pay next to nothing for them I am VERY happy. On my old system I had tons of problems getting my Creative Labs sound card to work with my VIA motherboard chipset, and my no-name Tulip chipset NIC didn't want to play at all with my nVidia video card.
Now I've got an nVidia chipset board with integrated sound, NIC and video and it works VERY well. I've had MUCH better stability with this integrated solution than with discrete chips.
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.
The Intel i875 chipsets integrated NIC is only a 10/100 chip. The Communication Streaming Architecture (CSA) bus is used to directly connect the chipset to an add-in NIC chip, by-passing any bandwidth and latency hit you might take if going through a shared bus.
The difference is perhaps a bit academic though, since Intel sells the NIC chip to you plug onto the far end of the CSA bus, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they have some sort of deal where you can buy an i875 chipset together with an Intel 82547 CSA ethernet controller. As far as I know, Intel is the only company producing CSA ethernet controllers, so it's kind of like getting it as one "chipset".
I haven't tried to play any games on this system - I simply use it to do video editing, listen to mp3s while I code, and watch DVD movies on it. It works great for all that. I especially like the NVIDIA SoundStorm with real-time Dolby Digital 5.1 encoder. I'm sure you're right about the fixed clock and all that, but the average person, including me, doesn't notice a difference. I have nice speakers hooked up to my computer, and as far as sound goes, I don't hear a difference.
The Intel i875 does NOT include Gigabit ethernet in the north bridge (aka Memory Communications Hub, or MCH). What it has is a separate bus (CSA or Communication Streaming Architecture) that is designed to directly connect to a discrete gigabit ethernet controller. To the best of my knowledge, Intel is the only company producing those disctere CSA ethernet chips.
The only new thing about the RAID support is that this works with both SATA and Parallel ATAI drives together. Previous solutions could only use either SATA or parallel ATA in any given array. Not a huge advance, but a nice little extra.
They exist. Check out the Mamiya 645AF-D. Available 6, 11 and 22MP backs, plus 220 and 120 Film backs.
Of course, these are Medium Format SLR's, not 35mm. Hasselblad offers something similar in their 645 line.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
NT hasn't been true Microkernel since NT 3.51 when they moved the GDI into the kernel. After that it was all downhill. They had to do that to get decent workstation performance because thunking between Ring 0 and 3 multiple times for every graphics operation just kills performance, that's why no one has the graphics and other core drivers outside of the kernel anymore.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Otherwise I'd give you a bump.
Sorry.
I ran a KT7-Raid mobo for 8 months or so with debian, then pulled it out to give to my sister. Tried to install windows --- lockup.
Tried again (Windows XP Pro).
Again (Windows XP Home)
Again (Windows 2000 Pro)
Again (Windows 98).
All locked up during install or shortly thereafter.
Turned around, installed Debian. Rock Solid, ran all night.
I threw up my hands and figured that the mobo just "Doesn't Do Windows". Must be in the habit of running linux.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
Did you have the KT7 or the KT7A? That makes a big difference I found. I've been running a KT7A-RAID on my server (Win2K Advanced Server with dual mirrored drives) for over a year and other than one hard drive failure it hasn't crashed once. The original KT7 had some problems, though, and while the SoftMenu III BIOS is really powerful it does give you enough rope to hang yourself with, particularly with memory timing and interleave modes. Properly configured the KT7A is pretty solid.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
If the firewall is anymore more than a Basic NIC.. I am sure it can be exploited..
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
dumbass. all i can do is laugh now.