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NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition Launched
Spinnerbait writes "NVIDIA took the wraps off their nForce 4 SLI chipset platform for Intel
Processors today and
there's a full review and showcase with benchmarks up at HotHardware.
As with NVIDIA's AMD version of this chipset, motherboards based on the
technology will support dual PCI Express graphics cards for load sharing in 3D
Gaming applications. What's perhaps even more interesting is how
the new NVIDIA memory controller actually allows the platform to out-pace
Intel's own i925XE in virtually all of the benchmarks."
Here
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
At this rate soon we will have processors that are capable of rendering real video instead of animation. Or say animation as real as videio footage. Imagine you can select characters like Brad Pit or Tom Cruse for the game. Way to go...
fuvoo: watch something
I remember reading on the Inquirer, that on a one on one comparison, the nForce Intel boards weren't able to keep up to the AMD ones, on more than just a processor basis. Was a few weeks ago though, so possible could have been fixed, i.e. driver probs
You'll be glad you kept your old steel PC case when we get this sort of speed out of MBs
Pete
that nVidia were able to create a memory controller which out performed Intel comes as no great surprise when you look at the history of both companies Intel of course has the inside information on their cpu's but they have always been trying for a performance reliability compromise or the other hand nVidia try for cutting edge 300 miles per hour or nothing technology and thats why we love em of course nVidia have always pulled off this speed with stability anyway so you may not see where i am coming from
"I reject your reality, and substitute my own" - Adam Savage
Doesn't this move undercut AMD processor sales? Do they get a better margin on motherboards? I don't see the logic to this move.
All the motherboard manufacturers who dumped R&D into having to build alternative SLI solutions? One example being the Tyan S2895 which uses dual nForce4 chipsets to achieve true 16x pci-e in SLI mode. I'm hoping that nVidia didn't try to hold this information back from motherboard manufacturers otherwise we may see a lashback against nVidia. And considering I spent months hunting and waiting for a true 16x pci-e SLI solution I am a little disappointed in nVidia for waiting so long.
Sure benchmark is good when it reflects what most gamers have at home. ---- Sure they score 20 gazillions points with 3dmark but it's almost a machine fit for nasa that would cost around 3000$ to buy. ------ why cant they use a normal machine like a pentium IV 2,4 ghz with a ultra-ata 166 and 1 gig of ddr 400.That's more common and more realistic.
Seems like we're trending towards multiple everything recently.. multicore CPUs, SLI.. how long before this propagates to everything?
As a sys admin, I love the prospect of redundancy, but are there any benefits to bringing this multiplicity to anything else from a consumers perspective? Or does it stop here?
3D gaming, 3D schaming.
Back in my day we had the Voodoo 2's and the ol' 6mb of ram, 12 if you were rich! Couldn't even get two separate sprites on the screen without extreme lag... but we liked it!
Will it work with the new dual core P4 CPU's? It doesn't make much sense to buy a high-end motherboard if you can't get the high-end CPU to go with it.
The one thing the Intel version has over the AMD version of this chipset is RAID 5 support. A RAID 5 controller card by itself is over 100 bucks. Dammit this is going to make me want to turn over to the dark side.
Office and Zangband will now run faster on my computer. Yay!
Hmm, let's see. Let's take an Intel processor with these characteristics:
* Fastest consumer CPU they offer,
* Priced at about $1100, street
And compare it to the AMD offering, with these characteristics:
* Second fastest CPU they offer,
* Price of about half of the Intel offering.
Yes, that is a most fair review. It makes perfect sense to conclude that, on mostly identical chipsets, that Intel is faster.
How much are these sites paid under the table?
For some applications they are powerful enough to be a nuisance. Forget picking up weak amateur radio stations when you are close to a PC. I guess AM broadcast (if weak enough) could even be disturbed by a nearby PC. And indeed also at other frequencies than the clock: your machine may run at 1 GHz, but probably has higher harmonics. Also subharmonics and in short ALL kinds of noise will be created.
Your PC would indeed 'fry' if placed in a powerful enough electromagnetic field, such as a microwave oven. This is why we usually don't put it in. However this has nothing to do with the PCs clock speed, except maybe that technologically, to increase the CPU clock you need to decrease the gate length and the oxide thickness of your digital technology, making it less robust to fields.
Could help thinking of that article in my fave online hack-mag the Inquirer.
I have even heard about a guy with TWO complete individual PCs...
Yes, that is a most fair review. It makes perfect sense to conclude that, on mostly identical chipsets, that Intel is faster.
... but AMD's processors are superior in most gaming scenarios".
Uh, did you read the article at all? The AMD wins virtually all the benchmarking scores, especially the games ones. The conclusion says "more attractive for SLI gamers
I wouldn't consider Nvida RAID a feature worth buying into at this point.
I have one box under Windows using Nvraid, and it is just terrible. It drops drives from the RAIDs seemingly for fun, and configuring a bootable RAID is difficult under XP, and impossible under Win2k (even with an SP4 slipstream install, in case anyone was going to point that out).
The management software is crude at best. It cannot, for example, email alerts when a drive drops off.
My $.02.
jh
Multi chicks? Lining up women in an SLI mode that would be willing to do so with me? THAT my friend, would be a great thing.
Mind you, it's price range is beyond my means, but that's why you have online shopping carts you can always clear out.
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
Check out the Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI board which has SATA-150 RAID-5 via an extra chip.
Damien
Maybe some knowledgeable /.ers can explain why VR seems to have died/stillborn on the personal computer? If we can get 100+ fps in Doom3 at 1600x1200 and wireless networking and battery consumption have dramatically improved, what's the deal? Is it consumer apathy? Is there some other technological hurdle that needs to be overcome (LCD's seem to be getting pretty damn small and good, ie PSP)
Yawn... As the edgy new-age exteme computer user that I am, I am just not that exited about electronics that do not use "Extreme" as a marketing device. Thanks a lot Intel, for desensitizing me to less than Extreme PC components.
Current microwave ovens operate at a nominal frequency of 2450 MHz, a band assigned by the FCC.
... :)
I think you'll find that the physics of water molecule resonance had something to do with choice of this band.
Funny how every other country in the world chose the same band, despite not being ruled by the FCC
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Whoa!
This post is like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle - I can see what you wrote, but it just passes before my eyes way too quickly.
Carry on, nothing to see here...
Ignore this signature. By order.
So, is Soundstorm gone for good?
I recall reading somewhere how the benchmark of memory interleave performance on 865/875 left most other chipsets in the dust, but in real world has only marginal gain over other chipsets.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I just bought an SLI board (AMD) and was wondering how well the raid and SLI video configuration is supported under Linux.
I've booted my machine into it and to my suprise the ethernet devices worked out of the box with Xandros (based on debian sid). I still do not know about the raid or SLI video, however. I'm using a crappy old S3 PCI video card right now, but am about to receive two GeForce 6800 GTs in the mail. Can I use these bad boys in linux? Anybody know?
I think you'll find that the physics of water molecule resonance had something to do with choice of this band.
Less than one might think. Microwaves over a fairly broad range of frequencies work--more than enough for different countries to choose different frequencies. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they have.
If you haven't taken a gander at it yet, you may want to take a look at OpenRT and projects using OpenRT such as Quake3 Raytraced. Also take a look at the hardware architecture as well.
.. with traffic, crowds, etc.
Ray-tracing presents a much more detailed rendering of a scene, but was always considerably slower than rasterization. If hardware-accelerated ray-tracing architecture grows in the market, you may see your skyline beautifully rendered in real-time
My wife operates a VR research lab (they still exist) and all the new hardware is just great for them. Unfortunately, it only addresses one of the concerns which must be addressed before we can all live in the world of "Snow Crash". The basic problems for mainstream VR are as follows:
... so you won't be playing WoW in them.)
... Teamspeak is a long way from a person's voice emanating from their position in a shared world with lots of people.)
1) The headsets really haven't "tipped" price-wise. Kind of like LCD screens for a long time, they stay expensive (around $10k) while slowly improving in features (e.g. resolution, motion tracking). Until they get "good enough" the prices won't trend downwards. (There are cheap headsets, but they make you sick pretty fast. Even the pricey ones make you sick after 30 mins or so
2) The big issues w.r.t. UI remain unsolved. E.g. a lot of VR setups involve complex motion tracking and setting aside a room for subjects to walk around in. Usually a second person watches the subject to prevent them from, say, running into a wall... There are rigs that allow you to suspend the subject to allow them to walk through theoretically infinite landscapes... we're talking six figures though.
3) Behavior capture. The solutions to tracking movement remain pretty experimental and invasive. All the stuff we've talked about so far will, at best, get you walking around in a virtual landscape, capture your head movements (kind of), and maybe capture some of your arm and finger movements. Even assuming your $500,000 suspension rig captures all your body movements perfectly, we still to capture facial expression and lip synch. (So far, spacial 3d audio is pretty primitive too
4) Force Feedback. All this VR is going to seem pretty lame when you can walk through solid objects or your hand passes through an item you're trying to manipulate. Arguably, this is a subset of item (3) above, but in fact just allowing people to walk around in an unlimited expanse is a big enough problem...
There are plenty of finer grained issues to deal with, but the rendering of VR scenes (at least, so far) has turned out to be the easy part. At the moment, if you wanted to play WoW in VR you'd need to set aside a large room, buy an expensive HMD, and a really expensive suspension rig. (Luckily, WoW lets you run straight through people so the UI will match this perfectly.)
Yoda Hawking? Is that YOU??
What did you do to your hair...
My biggest concern is the fact that NVIDIA can't get drivers right it seems... Their Unified ForceWare Drivers don't ever seem to work right all around the board, no matter what card or what version you're using... Maybe I just don't get it, but I think a 1 year old mongaloid chimp that's crippled in one hand could write better video drivers... Fix what you have before you release something else is my policy... Note: I own and only have owned Nvidia graphics cards since I have been gaming... It just frustrates me that this good of a chipset can get ruined by sloppy programming...