Slashdot Mirror
Shortcomings Revealed in nForce4 SLI Redux
EconolineCrush writes "Slashdot recently covered the launch of NVIDIA's nForce 4 SLI chipset for Intel processors, and although early reviews fawned over the chipset's performance, closer examination reveals several shortcomings that the initial wave of coverage failed to document. Problems with stability, drivers, and the chipset's oft-praised hardware-accelerated firewall and Gigabit Ethernet controller escaped the scrutiny of many reviews."
I respect his kung-foo, but his last line is off the wall.
These kinds of problems, which we readily acknowledge aren't total showstoppers, may pass muster for Athlon 64-based enthusiast systems. NVIDIA will probably find, however, that competing against Intel's chipsets requires a higher standard of competence.
As a serious gamer and one who has built several Athlon-based machines, I can't imagine for the life of me what he's talking about here. AMD's chips are the undisputed king of the hill when it comes to performance. His insinuation that as an AMD fanboy, I am unable to discern the lack of power of XYZ technology is a little irritating.
AMD is not the also-ran that it was back when Cyrix was kicking its ass. These days, AMD is the singlemost important chip maker on the planet, second only to Intel. Intel may have the edge when it comes to "cutting edge" technology, but AMD is like the Japanese, they take a good technology and make it better and faster and smaller.
So, again, WTF is he talking about? Is it just a dig at us real gamers out here who actually know a thing or two about gaming rigs?
The same is true of anything. I saw a pre screening of Samuel Jackson in shaft and LOVED it. Why? I don't know now.
Their brand of in-depth, hard-hitting coverage is probably why Intel conveniently passed them over for the first round of Dual Core reviews; can't have any bad press at release time.
What the hell does the incompetence of an nVidia chipset have to do with the performance and reliability of an AMD processor? You can simply not us the nForce 4 boards--how does this give the reviewer the right to bash AMD? Or is he just an Intel fanboy?
I'm shocked... shocked!... that hardware review sites would make a half-assed job of their review just in order to be the first to publish.
Whatever next!?!?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I wonder why they escaped the attentions of the early reviewers. Perhaps because the shortcomings weren't included on the press release the early reviewers regurgitated.
[Someone in the green suit taps me on my shoulder]
Go AMD, Go AMD, Go AMD
May
Here
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
The reviewer seems to be contrasting the stability of the Nforce 4 chipset with the stability of the... lets say 925XE chipset, this isn't about processors. Intel produces realy rock solid boards lately, more stable than any 3rd party board even with the same chipset. (don't buy a Supermicro desktop board... trust me)
So... what he was saying is that an Intel user may be disapointed by the Nforce 4's shortcomings, but an AMD user is acustomed to this level of quality, still good just not the best.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
'Paid reviewers skip the unflattering parts' - SHOCKING!!!!
The first review bunch of every hardware item is PAID ADVERTISING. Well, at least close to it. To get the product for such review requires signing of NDA and cooperation of the manufacturer. Trashing a product in such launch review ensures that you won't get the next shiny thing to review. Yes, some hardware reviewers are corrupt. Shocking.
The 'active armor' firewall has never worked right on the AMD64 NF4 either. Also on AMD64 NForce4 the gigabit ethernet has it's own problems - for example, many MMOs simply disconnect you (you go linkdead) if you have the Hardware Checksum Offload feature of the LAN chip in use.
And unsurprisingly when you compare ANY other chipset to the rock solid Intel chipsets, they look unstable. NF4 isn't the worst of the bunch, but it can't be helped. Last STABLE (rock stable) chipset on AMD platforms was AMD760. Yes, it was lacking features, but it WORKED. After that it's VIA this, nVidia that, SIS this - all suck more or less. Thankfully the suckiness has gone down over the years, and today I can say that KT800 VIA on AMD64 is usable. Still not perfect, but works. NForce 4 has bunch of quirks and unfinished drivers, but it's probably the best PCIe-based chipset so far.
[...]being in on a 'sneak peak' makes a person feel like an insider... part of the team. [...] this feeling alone accounts for a lot of over positive reviews.
Sounds like a familiar concept to me.
Being the 'proud' owner of a NVIDIA nForce4 board for AMD, I can only say that the sloppy drivers and support of NVIDIA irritate AMD owners A LOT (just google around or visit some forums like the one of NVIDIA themselves). Even early adopters hate it when hardware gets thrown on the market without proper and stable drivers... Peter
Just because this article mentions that the nForce4 for intel CPUs is unstable and has issues doesn't imply anything about the AMD nForce4 chipset. There are many major server vendors (Tyan comes to mind first) that are using the nVidia chipset. These vendors don't just slap anything into their motherboards you know. A lot of validation and testing going into every part they use. I am very happy with the stability and speed of Tyan's boards. If Tyan says it's good enough for them, then it is probably good enough for me. I don't see why people would even say somthing like: "The nVidia shipset sucks on Intel, I guess it's ok for AMD because people in that market are used to crap!" It just doesn't work that way. The Intel and AMD nVidia chipsets are very different.
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
Anyone who jumped on the 939 bandwagon at the start of its release will see this for what it is, teething problems.
:)
This is not a fault of nVidia chipsets (they are very good imho) and its not a fault of intel chips (again, very good, just showing their age a bit now).
The stabillity problem smells heavily of the same sort of goings on gigabyte had with their initial flagship nf3-250 board, the k8nsnxp. Between bad temp sniffing (minor read error causeing the cpu fan to shut down because it thought the cpu was 20C below what it really was) and a huge problem getting the dual channel memory working, these boards were shunned. After much patching of bios' code they are rock stable and burning up memory benchmarks.
Lets give these things 3 months on the market to get the bugs out then see what they can do
...
What a non-story. SLI is very cool tech, and if you get an early build of just about anything you are going to be updating the BIOS, heck I bought an Intel 865 motherboard and it was shipped with a Rev. 12 BIOS had to update it to Rev. 19 or 20 just to get it to work with the RAM I had. Sounds like ATYT FUD to me (not that NVDA doesn't FUD also)...
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
Dude thats how its always been.
Each tick of the clock runs one of these micro instructions which eventually does your fetch-decode-execute cycle for a full instruction.
With pipelining, RISC can do the entire fetch-decode-execute every tick: 1 full instuction every clock cycle.
With CISC it can take dozens of microinstructions (clock cycles) to do a full instruction so it is less efficient.
Although saying that you can usually do more with the more complex CISC instructions.
I reviewed the new HP xw9300 for a print magazine. Didn't find any stability problems, though I tested it mostly against 3D apps like Maya. Not too many network tests. I ran it in production for a while and it was great. In fact it's still here sitting next to my desk.
We did request SLI, but HP sent a single card system because they told us SLI wasn't quite ready.
I have another system on my review schedule from another vendor, and when we suggested they ship us an SLI system, they backed off.
Looks like SLI isn't quite ready for prime time.
I'm going to be in the market to upgrade a Linux machine within the next month or so (this machine is still running an old Via KT133a chipset). I'd like to go Athlon64. nForce 3/4 factor prominently in this space. How well does Linux work with these? Is nForce support under Linux a nightmare of proprietary closed-source drivers?
Automobile enthusiast magazines give positive reviews to advertising auto makers! that's what's next!!!
Get paid to code OSS
BRB
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
A chipset barely on the market for three months, sporting two brand-new technologies, is hounded for non-showstopper bugs that have already been fixed, or are scheduled to be fixed shortly.
And yet, Intel doesn't get hounded because THEIR latest chipset saw a recall in the first two months of release?
Sure, Intel is more stable, if you don't live on planet Earth. NOBODY is perfect.
Oh, and I'd like to dispell another long-standing rumor, that 3rd-party chipset makers cause the A64 platform to be "unstable". This may have been somewhat true in the distant past, but is no longer the case. Both Nvidia and Via make excellent chipsets and solid drivers.
The reason such rumors get perpetuated is a lot of people are cheapskates...they go with AMD looking to spend as little as possible, and skimp on components. Anyone who has EVER bought an ECS, Elitegroup, PCCHIPS et-al mainboard, or spent 50 bucks or less on the most important component in their system, and then had the audacity to complain about stability...I'm looking at YOU.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
As highlighted by Charlie over at the Inquirer, many hardware site reviewers receive certain 'incentives' from hardware manufacturers to NOT publicise these issues.
I've been an AMD user ever since the release of Athlon XP.
I have never built a computer that didn't have an NVDIA chipset in it. I've owned NForce, NForce2, and NForce3 250GB systems, and I've built NForce4 systems.
NForce, NForce2, and NForce3 250GB rock. No compatibility or stability issues, great drivers, and good performance. Excellent all-around.
NForce4 blows. I've had compatibility problems with all four systems (two with ASUS boards, one with an MSI board, and one with a DFI board), and the drivers are immature. Not to mention the fact that NF4 runs *freaking hot*.
The Via K8T890 chipset doesn't interest me a whole lot, but the ATI Radeon Xpress chipset looks good.
AMD users are *not* less interested in stability. I won't build a system that doesn't pass 48-hours of Prime95 and 48-hours of Memtest86+. If a system fails, the parts go back - and I get parts that work.
My current DFI NForce3 system has 110 days of straight uptime under its belt (it's a media PC). I'd call that stable.