nForce4
The nForce4 is a computer chipset released by NVIDIA in October, 2004. The chipset supports AMD 64-bit processors (Socket 939 and 754) as well as supporting Intel Pentium 4 LGA775 processors. Additionally, it includes support for DDR400 RAM (for the AMD version) and DDR-2 667 RAM (for the Intel version).
Types
The nForce4 comes in four different versions:
- nForce4 (standard)
- nForce4 Ultra
- nForce4 SLI
- nForce4 SLI Intel Edition
- nForce4 SLI x16
Common Features
- Support for up to 20 PCI Express lanes (up to 38-40 lanes for the nForce4 SLI x16). Reference boards are setup with one 16x slot and three 1x slots, leaving 1 lane unused.
- Support for up to 10 USB 2.0 ports.
- Support for 4 SATA and 4 PATA drives, which can be linked together in any combination of SATA and PATA to form a RAID 0, 1, or 0+1.
- NVIDIA RAID Morphing, which allows conversion from one RAID type to another on the fly.
- NVIDIA nTune, a tool for easy overclocking and timing configurations.
- Eight-channel AC97 audio.
- Onboard Gigabit Ethernet.
- NVIDIA ActiveArmor, an onboard firewall solution. (Not available on regular nForce 4)
nForce4/nForce4-4x
The vanilla version of the board has no special features, and has the HyperTransport link limited to 800MHz on Socket 754 motherboards. One of the reasons the hypertransport link was originally limited to 800MHz was due to technical problems with early revisions of the nForce4 chipset (revisions A01 and A02) that prevented full 1GHz HyperTransport speeds. These problems were rectified for revision A03, but caused a delay in the production of the other nForce4 chipset versions which required 1GHz HyperTransport speeds for Socket 939 support.
nForce4 Ultra
The Ultra version will contain all of the features of the vanilla version with the addition of:
- Hardware processing for the ActiveArmor to reduce CPU load
- Full 1000 MHz speed on HyperTransport
- 3Gb/s transfer speeds for Serial-ATA drives (SATA-II revision)
nForce4 SLI
The SLI version has all the features of the Ultra version, in addition to SLI (Scalable Link Interface). This interface allows two video cards to be connected together to produce a single output. This can theoretically double framerates by splitting work between the two GPUs.
nForce4 SLI Intel Edition
Unlike its AMD brethren, the Intel Edition is a chipset in the truest sense of the word as it has both a northbridge and southbridge. This change in design was necessitated because of the fact that, unlike the Athlon64/Opteron, the Pentium 4 does not have an on-board memory controller thus requiring NVIDIA to include one in the chipset. In addition to supporting Pentium 4 processors (with up to a 1066MHz fsb) the chipset includes support for DDR-2 RAM. Apart from these two differences, the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition shares the same features as the regular nForce4 SLI.
An oddity of the Intel Edition is the fact that while it works with the Pentium D 830 (3.0GHz) and 840 (3.2GHz), as well as the Extreme Edition of the 840, it does not work with the Pentium D 820 (2.8GHz) owing to the fact that the 820 has a much lower current draw than the 830 and 840. Attempting to boot an Intel Edition board with an 820 will cause it to shut down so as to avoid damaging the processor. NVIDIA have stated that they do not consider the 820 to be an enthusiast processor, and as such will not be enabling support for it.
nForce4 SLI x16
The nForce4 SLI x16 has similar features to the nForce4 SLI, except it now provides 16 PCI-Express lanes to both graphics cards in a SLI configuration (as opposed to only 8 lanes per graphics card with the original SLI chipset). This is the only version of the nForce4 for AMD processors that has a separate northbridge and southbridge. It comprises the existing nForce4 MCP for the southbridge and a new AMD nForce4 System Platform Processor (SPP). The two chips are connected via the HyperTransport link. This solution provides 38 PCI-Express lanes in total, and can be divided over 7 slots. It is also available for Intel processors, whereby it provides 40 PCI-Express lanes, which can be divided over 9 slots.
Performance gains from the extra 8 PCI-express lanes per graphics card have been proven to be margenal for the current generation of games. They are for now considered a "marketing point only", however progessional graphics cards (Quattro) do show promise in pro apps. for the extra lanes.