nForce 4 SLI X16: Full Speed PCI Express
by Derek Wilson on August 8, 2005 1:56 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
The first motherboards are only available from Dell, and other vendors will be bringing out products shortly. NVIDIA is shipping chips now, so it shouldn't be too long before we are able to buy an SLI X16 based board. Normally, we would lament the break in NVIDIA's recent trend of announcing a product with immediate broad availability, but if that's what it takes for NVIDIA to get a deal with Dell, then more power to them. Getting the SLI X16 into the new XPS 600 is quite a big deal for NVIDIA.NVIDIA is touting the added bandwidth as a performance increasing factor for the future. They acknowledge that current games don't see much benefit from the added bandwidth, but stand firmly behind the assertion that future games designed for PCI Express and SLI will take advantage of the increased bandwidth offered. We certainly aren't expecting to see any major gains under current titles, but we will have to wait until we get our hands on a board to play with before we can say for sure what we think of the performance.
We did take a couple of shots at comparing workstation class hardware to current nForce 4 SLI (nForce Professional enables 2 full x16 PCI Express connections with 2 processors), but due to the processor and memory configuration difference, we couldn't devise a fair test that could narrow down the impact of PCI Express bandwidth on real world games. Hopefully, we will have an SLI X16 board in our labs sooner rather than later.
There are no downsides to the convenience and market impact factors of this launch. On the high end, not having to flip a paddle is a welcome change. The added configuration options that motherboard makers will have for PCI Express slots can only help speed adoption. As motherboards based on the SLI X16 chipset will come in at current high end prices, the current SLI boards will fall in price and mainstream users will find little reason not to grab an SLI based system over the NF4 Ultra. More people with SLI systems means more impact from things like budget and mainstream GPUs supporting SLI. Here's the new price structure for NVIDIA based motherboards as NVIDIA sees it.
This is also a preemptive blow to ATI's Crossfire. With Crossfire motherboards not offering more than 2 x8 slots and many manufacturers going with the paddle design rather than ATI's recommended ICs for auto configuration, the new ATI enthusiast board will be stuck competing with a now mainstream product from NVIDIA. To be sure, the Crossfire motherboards are very good performers, but with this new option from NVIDIA and the price drop in current SLI products, ATI will have an even harder time getting their motherboards to end users.
We also see some possibilities for the GPGPU crowd with this addition of bandwidth to SLI configurations. This setup does more than just make it easier to move data around on each card. GPGPU stands for "General-Purpose Computation on Graphics Hardware" and with this setup, there is more than twice as much bandwidth dedicated to graphics as there is to system RAM in an AMD system with DDR 400. Depending on the latency, this opens up quite a number of possibilities for using the storage space available on graphics cards when they aren't in use. If some program (or even Windows itself) decided to treat unused graphics RAM as a separate memory node, we could see a total theoretical memory bandwidth of well over 20 GB/sec. Since system busses don't get guaranteed latencies, we would have to expect something like this to only benefit very high bandwidth stream processing. There was some talk at NVIDIA about GPGPU projects that they have under wraps, but they didn't give us any indication of what they are looking at doing right now.
In the end, even if performance impact isn't great (and even if NVIDIA's promised future performance benefits never materialize), this launch is a very good thing. Pushing prices on SLI systems down to more affordable levels and offering the potential for more PCI Express expansion slots (each with higer bandwidth) is definitely welcome. This is not the kind of solution that will entice current nForce4 SLI users to upgrade and the verdict is still out on whether or not there will be a real world performance difference, but the existance of the nForce4 SLI X16 solidifies NVIDIA's position in the core logic market and helps to push prices down across the board.
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quanta - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
Why does AMD version of nForce4 north bridge only has 18 PCI Express lanes instead of 20, especially when the AMD north bridge doesn't have to include DDR2 memory controller? It sounds like yet another crippleware move to 'justify' the purchase of some upcoming nForce4 Pro chips.Tanclearas - Tuesday, August 9, 2005 - link
As others have stated, you gain nothing from x16 vs x8 PCIe. I would honestly be surprised if anything is even gained for GPGPU applications, but it is possible.Any performance differences would be easy enough to examine, even right now. An SLI motherboard can be configured for x8/x8 even if you're only using a single card. I know that all of the benchmarks I ran came out virtually identical. I'll be trying again when my 7800GTX shows up, but I'm willing to bet I'll get the same result. So you don't like switching the "paddle"? Just set it for dual cards and be done with it.
The new chipset is however a great move by Nvidia. Marketing works. Either Dell fell for the marketing, or Dell understands that their customers will fall for the marketing (probably the more likely).
I know that I have no plans to upgrade my A8N-SLI Deluxe just to get a board with the new chipset. I'm perfectly content sitting on what I have until I need to upgrade to M2. Who knows what chipset I'll look at then. Hopefully I'll have a lot of choices when I'm ready (ATI, Nvidia, ULi, maybe even Via [lol]).
ElJefe - Tuesday, August 9, 2005 - link
16x is freakin retarded marketing crap.so is pci-e. thats also marketing crap.
Sli is ALSO marketing crap. It was designed for you to spend 2x the money. "oh no its not, i can buy a cheap upgrade to my current card etc etc" No you cant. You want a better graphics card. *buzzer sound!* No you cannot get that card, because it isnt the same one as before. "Oh, well i have 6800 ultra's" *buzzer sound again* No point in spending for 2nd card even here, the 7800 will outperform it anways, and wouldnt you want 1 card for less heat and wattage consumption vs 2 that are now outdated?
SLI does give you a few things, one it makes you spend 20-60 dollars more for a mobo that has one, PLUS it gives you a 30-40 watt more power draw even if you use only 1 card! AND! I'll throw in a bonus: A super hot northbridge that if passively cooled, can exceed 70 degrees celsius. BUY ONE NOW!
What crap. I just called Asrock US sales office and they said they are about to release the m1695 board. At least one company doesnt force someone to get crap that is useless.
agp 4x is hardly broken by all but the 7800, we have 4x slots on pII boards.....
8x agp hasnt been tapped, BUt you SHOULD buy 2 pci x16 lane cards NOW!!!!!
Calin - Wednesday, August 10, 2005 - link
I want to disagree - PCI-E is not marketing crap, it is a way to put again all the external devices on a single bus again.While PCI will die under many kind of use the current PCI cards are able to generate (think PCI video cards, think PCI RAID cards, think PCI gigabit cards), the PCI-E are easily able to accept it. While the "top" of the line PCI-E (16x) offer no usable bandwidth advantages over the 8x cards, they still offer more power to the card than the 8x slots, and again more power than AGP slots and maybe even than AGP-Pro slots. Just think at all the last-generation ultra-super-extra video cards and their TWO 4-pin connectors to get extra juice. How about a AGP card that needs not two 4-pin connectors for extra power, but three? PCI'E 16x might have solved that problem.
Also, have you seen PCI cards (network cards mainly) that are long and thin to reach to the end of the PCI slot? a PCI-E 1x card can have a third of the PCB, allowing a better airflow, costing less, and so on. PCI-E is surely better than PCI
nserra - Wednesday, August 10, 2005 - link
I think the other guy was talking about AGP not PCI.... but your points are still valid.xsilver - Tuesday, August 9, 2005 - link
I think nvidia will be staggering these releases to force people to upgrade again and againSLI x16
and then ddr2
and then M2 socket -- all bought out over the space of 1 year?
or is ddr2 being released when and only when M2 sockets are released?
PrinceGaz - Tuesday, August 9, 2005 - link
All socket M2 boards will support DDR2 only, just as all S939 boards support DDR only. The memory-controller is on the CPU remember, so the socket change is to allow the switch to DDR2.lsman - Tuesday, August 9, 2005 - link
no. there are (soon to out)AsRook 939Dual-SATA2 that has M2 jumper build in... I guess it will have adoptor for M2..
nserra - Tuesday, August 9, 2005 - link
Wrong!The jumper is to enable an add in card/board with the socket M2 and memory banks.
So while is it possible to reuse the same socket you always need memory banks for DDR and DDR2. Of course the best is to provide 2 sockets like the combo-Z.
nserra - Tuesday, August 9, 2005 - link
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