New nForce Boards Previewed

s3k writes "Firingsquad.com takes a look at nVidia's new nForce4 chip. It now includes a hardware-based firewall for improved CPU utilization, support for Serial ATA 3 Gigabytes/second hard drives, Gigabit Ethernet, and most importantly, 20-lane PCI Express. Firingsquad includes game performance numbers with nForce4 Ultra and a few performance notes on nForce4 SLI, which, according to nVidia will need a 550-watt power supply!" pacmanfan adds a link to PC Perspective's article (including benchmarks), Necroman points out the coverage at Bjorn3d and Anandtech, and Atif Butt would like you to check ATIF Approved for their take. The same boards, the same NDA -- don't be surprised to find the reviews cover similar ground, and are mostly positive.

Comments

SATA 3Gb/s hard drives...

[madprof]

So what technology is going to be able to produce this sort of throughput from a harddrive?

Re:Mmm. Goodies.

[swordboy]

You'd be insane to risk losing 1-2TB of disk (assuming 4-8 250GB disks) on a raid-0 array!

Once again, a slashdotter forgets that he does not represent Joe User at which a product is targetted.

If you want RAID-5, then go buy your favorite PCI-Express RAID card and do it yourself. There is no since in making this more expensive for the 99.999% that won't be using it.

550 watts hey...

[Amiga Lover]

How long until an entry level machine needs 3 phase power, 16GB ram, terabyte hard drives and networking quick enough to stream the entire iTMS all at once... (don't mind me, I'm an ancient git who's been reminiscing about 1mhz 8 bit machines today)

Re:550 watts hey...

[mccalli]

don't mind me, I'm an ancient git who's been reminiscing about 1mhz 8 bit machines today

The best way to cure this, I find, is to go and buy one. Not emulate, actually go and fetch the hardware you're reminiscing about from eBay.

I have a 48k Spectrum, a C64, then some newer and still vaguely useful machines like an Atari ST (dedicated MIDI box) and an SE/30. Try actually using them for real, and you'll soon go scurrying back to your platform-de-jour remembering how hard it was to make these things do anything useful.

Of course, it was fun and might still be fun, but on the whole the computing past is nice to visit but you wouldn't want to live there.

Cheers,
Ian

550 Watts = Bills

[Bruha]

If the computer industry does not get it's act together with high power usage they will begin to see a decline in these power systems sales. Running 450 watt systems can cost hundreds of dollars a year in extra costs in electricity. For this reason me and the wife are now looking into Mac solutions for standard work stuff and SFF pc's with 200 watt PS's to cut down on the electric bills. In fact it's just not the wattage pull you have to worry about. These systems are now putting off so much heat it puts strain on your home AC systems having to recool off the house as the heat spreads. I've seriously have considered a dryer hose hooked up to the PSU output fan and pipe it out the house.

Re:550 Watts = Bills

[fr2asbury]

Now, just because a PSU can put out 550 Watts, and just because a system needs a PSU that can put out 550 Watts, does not mean that a system is constantly drawing 550 Watts. A computer's energy consumption is variable depending on what you're asking the system to do at the time. If you're expecting to play DOOM 3, while encoding and burning DVDs 24/7 then maybe you'll max out the power and you will end up paying for that full 550W. Otherwise, there'll probably be long periods of time where the system is sitting idle or doing relatively light tasks and not drawing much power at all.
Running a computer with a 550W PSU is not the same as constantly running a 550W lightbulb.

Re:ActiveArmor

[Professeur Shadoko]

Well, the motherboard as an integrated gigabit port. You'd expect them to try the firewall with a ~1Gb/s traffic.