nForce4: PCI Express and SLI for Athlon 64
by Wesley Fink on October 19, 2004 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
nTune: Performance Configuration Utility
While nVidia has provided configuration utilities with past nForce chipsets, their implementation was dependent on the manufacturer building the necessary hooks into the BIOS for the nForce board. In the new nForce4, nVidia has made a much stronger commitment to the Performance Configuration utility, which nVidia calls nTune. All 3 versions of the nF4 chipset, even the basic nForce4 value version, support nTune.nTune provides performance configuration features - with as little or as much automation as you want.
The main menu has options for benchmarking, performance tuning, updating BIOS, monitoring the system, and managing profiles, which are configuration utilities that can be loaded when the system boots.
The Performance menu allows automatic tuning of the memory, disk performance, and graphics performance.
You can also benchmark these three areas and compare performance at various settings.
For those who prefer to dial their own settings, a click on the clock icon at the bottom of the main screen brings up the settings screen.
Here, you can check and/or adjust a variety of settings like the memory speed, PCI Express speed, memory timings, and GPU settings for core bus and memory bus. With the ability to save and load profiles at boot, these adjustments provide much more flexibility than the coolbits Registry tweak used by many enthusiasts.
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Viper96720 - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
Hope a 754 version of the sli capable board is made. Woldn't mind getting the board and a 6600GT. Then getting the second 6600 later on. Since I got an 754pin cpu already. Guess I know what I want for Christmas.swatX - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
drool!!!!!!!!!!ViRGE - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
#17, there is no Soundstorm, it's a figment of everyone's imaginations. Nvidia has already stated with the nForce 3 that they really aren't interested in doing another advanced sound solution (in part due to Creative's purchase of Sensaura, I'm sure), so there's no reason to really harp on them.Rys - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
NDA has yet to expire on nForce4 (5.5 hours early at the time of posting this).Davediego - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
What happened to SoundStorm2? Why isn't audio even mentioned in this article other than 1 line in the basic feature table on pg7? This is a major feature many many enthusiasts have been waiting for, and if it doesnt exist in nforce4 why is anandtech not harping nvidia for it?allnighter - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
Not trying to be rude, but there is an abundance of good articles on nVidia's SLi that will help better understanding and answer many of the questions asked here.#15 I believe each card will load textures for the part it will render and the driver will handle that load on the fly.
Kovie - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
Probably a stupid question but does anyone know if in SLI mode the system has to keep two separate copies of textures in video memory (each card has the same textures loaded) or if they can just keep it on one card and make two 128mb cards into a 256mb?Doormat - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
Is that SATA 3Gb/s real SATA II? I remember seeing something about switches that allow 4 drives to hook into 1 sata 2 port. Is that a feature NF4 supports?xsilver - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
A little off topic.. but why doesn't intel bring out 1066 products now? my year old northwood is already running 1000 fsb...GhandiInstinct - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
Roger that, also can the SLI or Alienware have Agp also? Will the N4 have agp?