NVIDIA nForce Professional Brings Huge I/O to Opteron
by Derek Wilson on January 24, 2005 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Introduction
AMD is not going to offer a PCI Express based chipset for its Opteron line. They are, instead, relying on third party partners to provide core logic for motherboards.
Stepping back to look at the professional space, it seems quite odd that NVIDIA would have taken so long to provide a PCI Express based Opteron chipset in light of the fact that their flagship Quadro FX 4400 graphics card is PCI Express. This seems like the kind of graphics card that would have made sense to be paired with dual Opterons and an NVIDIA chipset. Until now, anyone who wanted more than a desktop board for PCI Express would have been forced to go with an Intel platform where NVIDIA had previously not been invited.
Of course, all that will change very soon, now that NVIDIA has launched their nForce Professional line of core logic chipsets. These single chip core logic solutions for AMD Opteron based servers and workstations will bring the professional level of support that NVIDIA offers with its professional nFroce 3 line to a PCI Express based setup.
A whole host of other features are offered as well, including an implementation of the SATA II spec, which supports the connection of SATA 3Gb/s devices, support for 10 USB 2.0 devices, and much more. Shortly, we will also be able to find both NVIDIA based Intel motherboards as well, but without the advantages of HyperTransport, it will be hard for NVIDIA to offer the kind of advantages the nForce Professional line has.
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Googer - Tuesday, January 25, 2005 - link
From what I have gathered, TCQ and NCQ are similar but not the exact same thing. Kind of like SCSI and IDE HDD's are similar but not the same.tumbleweed - Monday, January 24, 2005 - link
I've read before that NCQ as implemented by SATA is equivalent to the 'simple mode' of SCSI's TCQ, rather than being the same thing.DerekWilson - Monday, January 24, 2005 - link
#30:you cannot run 32-bit 33mhz cards at 66mhz ... There are 32-bit pci cards that can be dropped into 64bit 33mhz PCI slots. Not 64bit/66Mhz, and not PCI-X.
DerekWilson - Monday, January 24, 2005 - link
In using two seperate displays, 2 x2 PCIe connections is fine for two graphics cards. The system can't saturate graphics cards.The fact that NVIDIA uses both over the top and PCIe to send data for SLI means that bandwidth does impact SLI to a point. We haven't yet seen the impact of two x16 SLI slots, but the article I linked to about NF4 Ultra modding that Wes wrote shows that x16 + x2 and x8 + x8 are close, but there is a difference.
We'll be sure to test as much as we can -- hopefully someone will stick in PCIe lane configuration controlls in their BIOS.
Googer - Monday, January 24, 2005 - link
#31 TCQ has been a feature of Hitachi/IBM PATA for many years now since the 120gxp and the only controller that supports PATA tcq is Pacific Digital's "Discstaq" ATA 100 controller with propietary cables.Googer - Monday, January 24, 2005 - link
#26 sound storm lives! Chaintech nFORCE4http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?desc...
Googer - Monday, January 24, 2005 - link
#12 Why wouldn't you want PCI-x for your existing pci cards, since it can run legacy 32-bit pci in 66mhz instead of 33mhz you are doubbleing your bandwith. It is something (pci-x) I am looking for on my next motherboard along with x16 and an x4 pci-e slot for skt 939.Here is an ananadtech article on the motherboard you
were referring to.
http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.aspx?i=2370...
Jeff7181 - Monday, January 24, 2005 - link
Jesus... 2 16X PCI Express slots... that's nutty! Yay to AMD and nVidia for building in more parallelism!Dubb - Monday, January 24, 2005 - link
Kris: x2 is sufficient? I thought things started to drop off around x4...coulda sworn I saw that somewhere.I have a question though, does the scenario change if you're running separate cards as opposed to SLI? If I had the funds, I'd be looking to power a couple 9MP displays (or a 9 MP + 30" cinema) off separate 3400s or 4400s
I'm pretty sure the 2895 (K8WE) was confirmed 16 + 16... their website claims "two x16 slots...with x16 signals"
If I was actually looking to buy though, I'd be looking to the tyan regardless - I like the layout and features better.
KristopherKubicki - Monday, January 24, 2005 - link
Dubb: I do not even believe that the Tyan is a "true" dual 16 lane configuration, but I sent them an email waiting a response.Of course - to be honest - it doesnt matter. two, two lane solutions are enough for modern SLI to scrape by - dual x4 or dual x8 are more than enough bandwidth for symmetric vector processing. I have a feeling full saturation of 16 lane PCIe, particularly for graphics, is a long way away.
Kristopher