nForce4: PCI Express and SLI for Athlon 64
by Wesley Fink on October 19, 2004 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
SLI Performance
For months, nVidia has been sneaking peeks at their upcoming Dual Video card capabilities, based on a technology known as SLI, or Scalable Link Interface. Not since the PCI Voodoo 2 from 3dfx in 1996 have we seen such a solution from a major graphics vendor. Of course, history saw the original 3dfx die in the market place. The single-slot AGP was introduced, 3dfx lost the video wars, and nVidia purchased what was left of 3dfx.We have been told that 3dfx engineers had quite a bit to do with the design of the new GeForce 6 series, and that is finally starting to make sense when we see that SLI capabilities are built into the 6 series video cards. Dual AGP would require a custom design, but PCI Express, like PCI in the past, finally provides the kind of platform that nVidia needed to launch a new SLI solution.
While nVidia was not ready to ship nForce4 SLI reference boards for review, they were demonstrating a major manufacturer's nF4 SLI board with a pair of nVidia 6800 Ultra video cards at 1600x1200 resolution at 4x AA. We also got to play with the SLI system with an Athlon 64 4000+ CPU, confirming benchmarks that were supplied by nVidia.
| Single GPU vs. SLI - nForce4 SLI | |||||||||
| 6600GT | 6800GT | 6800 Ultra | |||||||
| Single | SLI | % Increase | Single | SLI | % Increase | Single | SLI | % Increase | |
| Doom3 | 17.3 | 32 | 85% | 37.9 | 65.2 | 72% | 42.4 | 71.7 | 69% |
| Halo | 37.23 | 58.58 | 57% | 50.01 | 72.76 | 45% | 57.21 | 79.01 | 38% |
| 3DMark05 | 3186 | 5698 | 85% | 4588 | 8271 | 80% | 5211 | 9297 | 78% |
Increases in video performance from 38% to 85% are certainly impressive, and there are gamers and performance enthusiasts who will be flocking to the new nForce4 SLI boards as soon as they start shipping in the next few weeks. Perhaps the most impressive gain here is the performance leap with a pair of SLI 6600GT video cards. Two of these less than $200 cards are actually faster in most benchmarks compared to a single $400 6800GT. This provides an interesting upgrade path for many users. Of course, a pair of 6800GT or 6800 Ultra cards take performance to levels that we have never seen before.
Click to enlarge.
Shipping boards will allow a single video card of any brand at x16 PCIe or 2 nVidia video cards in two x8 PCIe slots in SLI mode. The SLI boards can be switched easily from x16 to SLI mode by switching a programming card on the board.
Click to enlarge.
nVidia says that the first nForce4 SLI boards will be available in the next few weeks from Asus and MSI. Other manufacturers will also be supplying SLI motherboards later this year.
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tc2k04 - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
I'm going to back people up on the annoyance of not having soundstorm or atleast something about the audio system. Any nforce2 owner knows how good sounstorm is, i've got an audigy2, and any non EAX source goes through soundstorm for me.I can't believe for enthusiast motherboards, they are touting features like firewalls, 90% of us use routers, its just not that exciting anymore.
Disapointed.
Wonga - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
I think I read somewhere (probably The Inquirer) that nVidia isn't including Soundstorm cos they don't want to pay for a Dolby Digital licence or something.If people don't like the onboard solution, they can just slap an old Sound Blaster Live in the system for peanuts. I do that and it keeps me happy.
don - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
NDA breaker ....knitecrow - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
there is this online petitionhttp://www.petitiononline.com/NVAPU/petition.html
knitecrow - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
dude, where is my soundstorm?This is a rip off to the general consumer, and would have hoped that Anandtech would have picked up on it and made a mention of the problem --
What doesn't nvidia get? there is a huge demand for soundstorm.
Nforce4 is a step back from all the other chipsets in terms of audio.
Intel is pushing hi-def audio, via has got its ENVY series, why would nvidia leave out soundstorm
boooo nforce4
booo Anandtech for not pickup on this
mrdudesir - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
One more thing,Would all the monitor hookups on the cards be active. That would be great cause you could put to gether quite a nice 4 monitor workstation for pretty cheap. you could get those 2 6600GT's and 4 Viewsonic VP171's for about ~$2200. No more expensive then a high end 20"-23" display, and a lot better picture and performance and space (564 square inches vs only 373 for an apple 23" HD Cinema).
Just wondering.
mrdudesir - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
holy crap i want one so bad.BTW, if any one wants a nice big tax write off, my college TV station is looking to replace our PII and PIII video editing and station machines. So if anyone has some extra hardware laying about.....
(No joke, we really, really need new gear).
zhena - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
wait a min,I've seen benchmarks on the web for NVIDIA SLI cards. I don't remember which exact cards were used, but I do remember that one ran in a 16x slot and the other ran in an 4x slot with a 16x connector.
The point, the 4x slot has more than enough bandwidth because it worked perfectly. With no perfomance loss.
Wish I had the link somewhere.
So any chipset that supports pci-e should handle sli just fine, as long as the mobo maker puts two physical 16x slot connectors, regardless of their actual bandwidth.
stelleg151 - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
Will mobo manufacturers increase the possible Bus speeds? Please say yes, I would love one but I want to get to 290... Page 7 says max is 250, that is not ok..plewis00 - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
Can you run, say a 6600GT and 6800 Ultra in SLI? Seeing as they are both Nvidia and the SLI connector should be in the same place?