nForce3-250: Which Boards Have On-Chip LAN?
by Wesley Fink on August 6, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
How Can You Tell if a Board Has On-Chip Gigabit LAN?
According to nVidia, the easiest way to determine if a motherboard has on-chip Gigabit LAN is to "look for nForce3 250Gb/Ultra badges or the NVIDIA Firewall as a feature, since they have to use nForce's GigE controller. Some boards brand NVIDIA GigE separately; others do not...those boards with a regular nForce3 250 badge do not have the GigE controller."
To give you a clear idea of what nVidia is talking about - if the board has any one of the 3 logos above, then you can assume that the board has on-chip LAN.
To provide a better idea of how manufacturers are using the logos, take a look at the Gigabyte 939 board above.
The Asus K8N-E shows the 250Gb label that you will see on some Socket 754 boards.
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Boat - Saturday, September 25, 2004 - link
I see from their site that the new Asus non-"E" model K8N board has the firewall but does not offer Gigabit Lan. Is this right or just a marketing snafu?MavAnan - Saturday, August 14, 2004 - link
Does the comment below have any relevance to whether the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum (aka MSI 7205)has the full implementation of the on-chip GB LAN?"MSI has included two Gigabit LAN connections, but neither of them courtesy of the on-board NVIDIA MAC. They are instead powered by the Marvell and Realtek chipsets"
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=57&type=e...
Thanks for any clarification.
loafier - Wednesday, August 11, 2004 - link
Hello. Anyone know the jumbo frame size supported by nVidia gigabit ethernet? I hear that jumbo frames is supported, but I am unable to find the exact size and options for jumbo frames.johnsonx - Saturday, August 7, 2004 - link
I notice the Socket-754 GA-K8NSNXP is now off the list, but the 939 version is still there. It shouldn't be on the list either, or at the very least have a special mention that the NV MAC port is 10/100 only, and that the Gigabit port does NOT use the NV MAC.From: http://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Prod...
3. Marvell 8001 Gigabit Ethernet controller
4. ICS 1883 LAN PHY chip
The board is further described as having 1 Gigabit and 1 10/100 Ethernet port, and we also know from other documentation that the ICS 1883 is a 10/100 PHY.
operator - Saturday, August 7, 2004 - link
#8I've had no problems with the onboard lan at all, with BT or whatnot.
gtech41 - Friday, August 6, 2004 - link
Ha, yeah scratch that Biostar too. The other one is fine though.aznknight696 - Friday, August 6, 2004 - link
isnt the biostar k8nbp motherboard the one used in their sff system, ideq 200p, which is the nforce3 150 chipset?gtech41 - Friday, August 6, 2004 - link
Wesley-all the other boards are OK. Post 15 summed it up nicely. I assume that the plain 250 has a built-in 10/100 MAC which explains the ICS PHY on the K8NSNXP. It's use on the Ultra defies explanation though. I can only assume that they wanted to get an Ultra board out before anyone so the just recycled the 250 board design and dropped in the Ultra chip.Incidentally, back when the Intel ICH4 was big news for it's integrated features, Gigabyte did the exact same thing by bypassing them all in favor of PCI components.
johnsonx - Friday, August 6, 2004 - link
In other words, I think GigaByte should be off the "uses NVidia GbE" list entirely.Again, I don't think what GigaByte did here was cool at all; If you buy a board that says "NForce3-Ultra", and you see a Gigabit Ethernet port, you ought to be able to assume it's the well-advertised NVidia Gigabit Ethernet with the dedicated port to the northbridge, not some bandwidth starved PCI-based solution.
johnsonx - Friday, August 6, 2004 - link
The GA-K8NSNXP for 754 uses the standard Nforce3-250 that doesn't have the Gigabit port; so they stick the ICS-1883 PHY on the NForce3, and add the Marvell Gigabit controller to the PCI bus.For socket 939, the GA-K8NSNXP-939, they switch to the NForce3-Ultra, but don't change anything else on the board. So oddly, the on-chip Gigabit-capable ethernet port is still linked to the ICS-1883 10/100 PHY, and the Marvel Gigabit LAN still links to the 33Mhz 32-bit PCI bus (much too slow for Gigabit Ethermet, SATA controller, firewire and PCI slots!)
Piss-poor execution I say. Would it have been that hard to switch out the ICS 1883 PHY for a Gigabit capable one? They could leave the Marvel one alone, and offer Dual-Gigabit at essentially the same price.