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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."
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.
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.
;-)
Hardly. Most game-style rendering today is mostly smoke and mirrors; while 3D graphics hardware has improved at a ridiculous rate over the last couple of years, there's still a long way to go before certain, everyday scenes can be rendered.
Something I'd like would be a 'city-renderer', capable of rendering a decent-sized European city (i.e. not a grid) from aerial views down to individual rooms. While a clever level-of-detail system could go a long way towards this, there would still be an utterly horrendous amount of geometry for a typical skyline shot.
Now add traffic, crowds of humans (typical FPS-style games give up after about ten or so, strategy games use crude mannequins for more), properly reflective surfaces and whatnot, motion blur and decent HDR and your quadruple-SLI Geforce 9000-Hyper-Pro-Matic setup will still grind to a halt.
Things are slowly getting there, but I'm still waiting - but like a gas, FPS-style generic corridors will expand in processing requirements until they saturate even the greatest hardware. Look at Doom 3, for example...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
What's the big deal with microwaves anyway? They arn't ionising. Even visible light is of a higher frequency, and I'll bet you have light bulbs in your house.
OK, I'm responding to a troll that called me a troll :)
Normally, in a processor comparison, the processors are comparable for a reason - same positioning by the companies involved, same price point, whatever.
In this case, it appears that the only reason why the AMD proc was chosen was to give Intel "wins" in close contests, like LAME MP3 encoding, and to not make Intel's best look too awful in the cases where AMD won.
Point is, Intel was represented with its best game. Why should AMD be presented in a less favorable light?
There is little journalistic integrity with these enthusiast sites.
Pamela Anderson? She's so 90's! Now, Natalie Portman and Keria Knightley....that would be almost like watching twins!
One example being the Tyan S2895 which uses dual nForce4 chipsets to achieve true 16x pci-e in SLI mode.
The Tyan is an insanely specified server board with something like 40 PCI-E lanes is it's basic config. It's not like that because Nvidia wouldn't release specs. It's like that so you can run several high performance workstation level video cards. I don't even think it uses two NForce 4 chipsets, I think you've just misunderstood the specs. Do you have evidence to the contrary Mr Coward?
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.
Now this is just funny.
Are there any cards that can fully exploit a 16 lane PCI-E slot available? No.
Are there going to be in the near future? No.
So why are you so desperate to get hold of a motherboard that supports it? Because you don't really know what you're talking about. You just want to be fully buzzword compliant, even if it costs you thousands.
It's hooked up to the chipset, not the motherboard. That means a RAID array created on eg. a Silicon Image 3114 RAID controller can be transfered onto any motherboard with the same chipset.
And besides, using mdadm under Linux to create a RAID array out of the same drives using exactly the same configuration will work fine. I've tried it.
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.)
If anything the test was "fixed" to make the Intel CPUs look better.
For example the test systems were Intel 3.73GHz versus the AMD 4000+ at 2.4GHz.
Considering the competitive AMD CPU is the 2.6GHz FX55 model, this is obviously a skewed result.
They pitted an $1,100 Intel P4 against the $500 AMD Athlon64 4000.
Even if they had compared against the much faster AMD Athlon64 FX55, the price delta is still huge. The FX55 is an $835 chip versus the $1,100 Intel!
Even so, on most tests the AMD soundly won.
Some of the tests would have been so embarrassing they skipped testing the AMD altogether.
Where are the Sysoft Sandra results for the Athlon64?
Add to that the other hidden factor: Chipset Cost!
With the AMD64 on board memory comtroller, the Intel version of this chipset costs nearly double the AMD version.
So, let's sum up the cost results:
$1,100 Intel CPU, with $400 RAM on a $250 motherboard. $1,750 total.
Versus:
$500 AMD CPU, with $250 RAM, on a $150 motherboard. $900 total.
The only reason anyone would buy this is if they are an Intel fanboy, or are still drinking the Intel KoolAid.
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907