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Gigabyte 8N-SLI Royal (nVidia nForce4) SLI Intel Edition

The first version of the nVidia nForce chipset was released far back in mid-2001. That time, released was the only version for AMD SocketA platform which at the consumer qualities was somehow inferior to the VIA KT333 chipset (appeared a bit later) but surpassed KT266A. At the same time, from the technological viewpoint the chipset offered a number of strong points. First, when overclocked, it blocked the PCI bus at the nominal frequency 33 MHz. Secondly, the memory controller was dual-channel, which allowed attaining a very high bandwidth = 6.4 GB/s. But that didn't give any essential advantages to the AMD Athlon architecture since the bandwidth of the processor bus was restricted to 3.2 GB/s. But to the Intel Pentium4 platform that would have made possible to achieve simply fantastic results in terms of performance. That time, Intel's best chipset was i845E that offered support for the DDR PC2100 memory (released late in 2001), and the bandwidth of the processor bus was not balanced by the memory bandwidth. This balance appeared only in 2003 when Intel released its E7205 Granite Bay chipset with the dual-channel memory controller.

Of course, Intel's management could not afford to let nVidia chipset hit the market versus which all then existing chipsets would have looked like toys. As a result, a license for the Pentium4 bus was denied to nVidia, so the company had to submit with that. Interestingly, VIA also was not given a license for the processor bus, but continued with "semi-bootleg" production of chipsets. It ended up in that sanctions were imposed upon the company so VIA's chipset business almost withered away. And in no earlier than 2004 Intel supported half-dead VIA through issuing the above license (which actually hasn't brought any benefit in the end so far).

As regards nVidia chipsets, the company had been building up its efforts which finally brought success. The nForce2 chipset proved to be the most popular platform among PC enthusiasts (despite the problems with reliable storage of BIOS settings during overclocking), and with the release of Athlon64 processors the company first produced nForce3 followed by nForce4 that offered support for the PCI Express and SLI.

In my view, it is just the SLI that was the last drop that compelled Intel to conclude a cross-licensing agreement with nVidia. Immediately afterwards, there appeared numerous rumors in the Internet about the forthcoming release of nForce chipset for Intel processors. De facto, the chipset was announced during the CeBIT in March. That time, nVidia held a press conference where a new chipset was presented, and the leading motherboard manufacturers displayed their produce. By the way, the chipset was dubbed nForce4 Intel Edition.

nForce4 Intel Edition Chipset

If we partition the nForce4 chipset for AMD processors into the north bridge and south bridge areas, we get an amusing picture: numerous features are fully gathered in the south bridge, whereas the north bridge offers merely support for 16 channels of the PCI Express. We won't find the memory controller at all, since it is embedded in the Athlon64 processor. Therefore, engineers at nVidia released the nForce4 as a single chip.

With the nForce4 Intel Edition version, that trick hasn't worked though: Pentium4 has no integrated memory controller, so engineers at nVidia had to release the chipset in its traditional make (north bridge + south bridge). Traditionally, they were dubbed SPP (System Platform Processor)

and MCP (Media and Communications Processor).

The bridges are interlinked with the 800 MHz HyperTransport bus.

The capabilities of the south bridge for AMD and Intel versions are fully coincident: support for the PCI Express x1 (4 channels), ParallelATA-3366100133 (2 channels), SerialATA II (4 channels), PCI Masters (5), USB 2.0 (10), AC'97 2.3, and Gigabit Ethernet.

Note that features like hardware Firewall as well as advanced capabilities at setting up RAID arrays (levels 0, 1, 5 and 0+1 for both SerialATA and ParallelATA, including the shared operation mode). Note the new operation mode, the RAID 5. It is some sort of Intel MatrixRAID analog that combines the benefits of both RAID 0 and RAID 1 modes. However, unlike the MatrixRAID, three (not two) hard disks are required to set up an array like that. At the same time, one third of each disk is allocated for the "system info" (i.e. unavailable to the user).

Both the nForce4 chipset for AMD version and that for Intel Edition offer two standalone controllers for disk storage units.

Based on that, the developers implemented features like RAID Morphing and Cross-Controller RAID. The former (RAID Morphing) substantially facilitates RAID array configuration. In particular, the user can add new disks into the RAID array "on the fly", and change the RAID level as well (e.g., convert RAID 1 into RAID 0).

The other feature, as is evident from the name (Cross-Controller RAID), allows merging both SerialATA and ParallelATA disks into a RAID array. By the way, a feature like that was already available in the nForce3 150 chipset (it even supported 3 channels of ParallelATA). On the whole, all the disk handling features are gathered in the common concept dubbed MediaShield. Also, remember that along with support for SerialATA II the nForce4 IE chipset supports NCQ (Native Command Queuing) hard disks, as well as the "hot swap" feature.

Personally, I did like it that nForce4 IE supports two ParallelATA channels versus one in the latest Intel chipsets with the south bridge ICH6(R). The thing is, two PATA hard disks and one PATA CD drive are used in the test station. Therefore, all these three devices can be plugged in to nForce4, whereas none to motherboards on the base of i925X(E) and i915P.

The north bridge of nForce4 Intel Edition supports the PCI Express (20 channels) which can be used for two video cards united by the SLI technology (16 channels are used). Besides, a dual-channel memory controller with support for DDR2-400,533,667 (bandwidth = 10.6 GB/s) is implemented in the north bridge. As regards support for the DDR-I memory, we still haven't got precise data yet. It is quite likely to appear in the cheaper versions of nForce4 IE (e.g. an analog to nForce4X).

On the whole, the flow block of nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipset looks like this:

Let's look into the memory controller separately:

To reduce the costs of accessing the memory, engineers at nVidia implemented QuickSync and DASP 3.0 blocks. The DASP (Dynamic Adaptive Speculative Pre-Processor) appears to be a preprocessor with cache memory and offers quite powerful predictive features and data-prefetching from memory. This has resulted in reduced memory latency or time taken for accessing the required data.

The second block, QuickSync, is designed for memory optimization in asynchronous modes. Besides, the specific trait of the memory controller (they are two, actually :) in nForce4 chipset is that data and instructions are fed to each DIMM module via a dedicated line. Therefore, the chipset developers have gained more freedom at choosing the chipset operation algorithms. In particular, high stability at both high frequencies and in asynchronous modes was attained through enabling the "1T Command Rate" feature. According to some reports, boards on the base of nForce4 IE were able to operate with DDR-2 modules with absolutely incredible latency timings 3-2-8-2 (mentioned were memory modules made by Corsair).

All these improvements should result in that the overall performance of the nForce4 IE can be on par with high-end chipsets of other Intel chipset manufacturers. Moreover, two 64-bit memory controllers (running together in the 128-bit mode) provide more flexible operation with various combination of memory modules. In particular, it is quite possible that two 256 MB modules at one memory channel with one 512MB module on the other can be installed (once we get the chance, we'll certainly experiment with these modes). Note that something similar will be implemented in the new generation of Intel chipsets but their release is scheduled at a later time.

The maximum number of memory slots makes four. At the same time, the maximum memory capacity supported by the chipset is 16 GB! For reference - the maximum memory capacity in Intel 955X (not yet released officially) makes 8 GB.

Even having not started tests of nForce4 IE, we can make the first conclusions. At the expansion capabilities, the nVidia chipset is an absolute leader and no other chipsets are comparable to it. This situation will persist until the release of Intel's new-generation chipsets (i955X and i945P). But even after their release, nForce4 will have a powerful trump - support for the SLI technology. It is also quite probable that the SLI will be supported by Intel chipsets (as per the cross-licensing agreement Intel has acquired nVidia's developments in this field).

Now, they are talking about the consolidation of four chips in the SLI (which means four video cards or, more likely, two double video cards). As a result, in the nearest future a high-end computer may look like this: a dual-core Smithfield processor (with support for HyperThreading it is able executing four command instruction threads simultaneously) and four video cores consolidated within the SLI! And of course a 1kW PSU to feed the locomotive :)).

But let's turn back to nForce4 Intel Edition and briefly list its specifications:

• Support for Prescott processors (of all steppings) and dual-core Smithfield processors
• Support for DDR2-400, DDR2-533 and DDR2-667 (memory capacity = 16GB).
• Support for the HyperTransport bus (1616; 1000 MHz)
• Support for PCI Express x16 (in the SLI mode - 2 x 8 channels)
• Support for the PCI Express x1 (four channels)
• IDE Interfaces: ATA -33/66/100/133 (2 channels)
• Support for SerialATA II (4 channels)
• Support for RAID arrays (levels 0,1,5, and 0+1) both for SerialATA and ParallelATA
• Number of PCI Masters: 5
• USB 2.0 ports: 10
• Support for AC'97 2.3
• Gigabit Ethernet on a dedicated channel
• Hardware Firewall

Today, we are testing the very first motherboard on the nForce4 Intel Edition chipset. Meet the 8N-SLI model by Gigabyte. Note that the manufacturer is the very first to present the press the specimens of boards on the most recent chipsets (e.g., a review of Gigabyte K8NXP-9 (nForce4 Ultra) which was released last year). However, there is another side of the coin: we often get а preliminary revision of the board having some shortcomings in the design and BIOS which have got to be regarded with understanding. In particular, the number of revision of the board to be tested is 0.2, i.e. boards of official revision may be different at both the performance and BIOS features and overclocking results.

In conclusion, let me note support for the nVidia nTune Performance Application utility offered by the nForce4 IE chipset. The program is aimed at fine-turning the motherboard, monitoring, tuning the memory latency timings, and overclocking. However, the latest version of the utility did not work "to the full": some features were unavailable. Evidently, programmers at nVidia are partly to blame for that, and developers at Gigabyte (again, it is a preliminary revision of the board and the BIOS version).

Gigabyte 8N-SLI Specifications

We are not reviewing the package bundle, since it is still an early test specimen of the board, and the package design may still be not ready yet. Also, the retail price is still unknown, which makes it difficult to draw conclusions on the package bundle.

However, note there is a Bluetooth module in a separate box

Besides, there is a DPS module as a separate bundle item aimed at enhancing the power supply to the motherboard:

Also note an additional bracket of quite tricky shape aimed at firm attachment of the SLI connector which in its turn links two video cards:

And here is the already mentioned SLI connector:

and also a SLI-terminator C19+RD1:

The thing is, the onboard SLI terminator is aimed at regular nVidia cards. The additional terminator is designed for joint operation of the motherboard and a dual-core Gigabyte RD1 video card which has somehow different scheme of PCI Express channel distribution.

Finally, the package bundle includes a fan for the north bridge. This approach is traditional for Gigabyte, which allows the user to choose between the active and passive methods of cooling.

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	Content:
	Specifications Board layout Expansion options BIOS, monitoring Overclocking and stability Performance and conclusions Top Stories: MoBo: ECS X58B-A (Intel X58) ASUS Rampage II Extreme (Intel X58) MSI DKA790GX and ECS A780GM-A Ultra MSI P7NGM (NVIDIA GeForce 9300) Intel X58 and ASUS P6T Deluxe MSI P45 Neo2 (Intel P45) Foxconn A7GMX-K (AMD 780G) VGA Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 – a new leader in 3D graphics! ECS HYDRA GeForce 9800GTX+. Water-cooled and SLI "all-in-one" Radeon HD 4830 CrossFire - better than Radeon HD 4870! XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition in the SLI mode Leadtek WinFast PX9500 GT DDR2 – better than GeForce 9500GT DDR-3 Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic: exclusive, with unusual features Palit HD 4850 Sonic: almost Radeon HD 4870, priced as HD 4850 CPU & Memory: GSkill high-capacity memory modules CPU Intel Core i7-920 (Bloomfield) DDR3 memory: late 2008 CPU AMD Phenom X3 8750 (Toliman) AMD Phenom X4 9850 – a top-end CPU at affordable price CPU Intel Atom 230 (Diamondville) Chaintech Apogee GT DDR3 1600