nForce 4, Athlon 64 4000/FX-55, and the Industry

A Little Bit of Everything

by Josh Walrath

SATA Controller

                NVIDIA has taken a good look at its previous SATA controller and decided improvements were needed. The first is that there are two separate SATA controllers located on the nForce 4 chip, so each controller only handles 2 of the 4 total SATA devices. This can increase overall throughput by a significant degree, especially in RAID situations. But this is not the only advancement.

                NVIDIA looks to have the first SATA-2 controller on the market, which increases the overall throughput to 300 MB/sec theoretical per channel. Only the nForce 4 Ultra and SLI will feature SATA-2 functionality, as the standard nForce 4 will only have a SATA-1 controller. Having two independent controllers on one chip also means that it will have double the I/O transactions over its previous version. All in all, NVIDIA looks to have one of the most impressive SATA controllers on the market, and they definitely have the most impressive one supporting AMD processors.

When a drive fails, the nVRaid program will warn the user which SATA port has the bad drive.

                The changes do not stop there! The entire RAID interface has been given the once-over, and the user no longer has to go into the BIOS to create or delete an array. NVIDIA provides the tools to manage/create/delete/morph arrays from within Windows. This is a feature on many high end RAID cards, and has been sorely missing from the integrated motherboard scene. The ability to take a drive with data on it, boot into Windows, and then be able to integrate that into an array without destroying the data is very appealing to many power users.

                Diagnostics have not been overlooked either. If a SATA drive in an array goes bad, NVIDIA will even tell you which one and which SATA port it is connected to. With this software NVIDIA can show a picture of the motherboard (which the manufacturer provides) with indicators over which SATA port is active and in good condition or which connector has a bad drive on it. This helps to make the user’s life a bit more easy.

Firewall/GbE

                NVIDIA completely overhauled their GbE controller in the nForce 4. With the nForce 3 250Gb, they already had one of the more impressive integrated controllers on the market, but improvements were made to make this perhaps one of the absolute best on the market. Overall throughput was increased, and NVIDIA claims it is a world class controller. This GbE controller is included from top to bottom, which is a significant change from the nForce 3 series, which didn’t include GbE at the bottom.

                The Firewall functionality of the nForce 3 250 series was mainly software based, with the firewall functionality included in the nForce driver package. While this feature was quite nice, many users found an unacceptable amount of CPU time was spent in firewall functions. As such the firewall was disabled by many users hoping to get better performance in their applications. NVIDIA took this idea and included dedicated firewall circuitry into the nForce 4 Ultra and nForce 4 SLI. The standard nForce 4 does not include this feature, but it of course does support the software firewall functionality that NVIDIA offers.

                All packet inspection is handled on the MCP, which can be a performance hog on the CPU. Instead of taking upwards of 70% of the CPU cycles, NVIDIA has made it so the firewall only takes up around 10% of the CPU cycles. This way gamers and users can continue to be protected by the integrated firewall while using their CPU intensive applications. This hardware functionality is termed “Active Armor” by NVIDIA.

nTune

                The final feature that NVIDIA is putting forth is a totally redesigned performance enhancing software product. The original nTune was a good idea, but not widely accepted or used. NVIDIA hopes to make this a well used function, and the thought behind this is pretty stunning. Not only can the user control nearly every function/timing/performance enhancing feature, but the software can automatically configure itself to increase performance and still be stable. When the auto tune functionality is enabled, the software takes control of the system and tests hundreds of configuration permutations. All of this takes about an hour, and at the end it can show the user how much faster it is running, yet still keep 100% stable. I think the majority of users will use this as an easy way to increase the performance of their machine.

nTune has turned into a very sophisticated application which can help nearly any user tweak out their system to achieve the highest possible performance.

                NVIDIA has taken nTune to the next level in terms of functionality as well. Not only can it optimize all of the hardware, but it can also control the system on a per-application basis. If a certain application is run, then the nTune software can adjust the hardware timings and properties to better address the needs of that particular application. nTune also brings the ability to overclock the GPU on the video card, as long as it is NVIDIA based.

                nTune not only addresses the performance of the system, but also the maintenance. It has a built in BIOS flash functionality, and it will automatically adjust the settings on the motherboard so it will be 100% stable when the flash occurs. I have not seen this part in action, but if it works as advertised, then users will have a quick, easy, and safe way to update their BIOS when it is needed.

                nTune also has the ability to create information logs and text file dumps of the system and the errors it may encounter. For those running tech support, this is a quick and easy way to diagnose any potential problems.

 

Next: Availability and Socket Support

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