NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition - Page 3

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 04/27/2005 07:00 AM [ ] 0 comment(s)

DDR2 & Memory Controller

Somewhat of a new trend this year will be DDR2 memory. Make no mistake as it has been around for a while now, yet it just doesn't seem to be taking off. The mainboard is equipped with two luxurious bars of Corsair XMS2 5400 DDR2 memory that is capable of achieving 667 MHz datarates, which is standard issue for the nForce4. Intel's solution for example will go up-to 533 MHz. Quite interesting is that the memory controller in theory can manage 1T timings, it's too far fetched to explain this right now though but simply remember this, quicker timings equal better performance. NVIDIA has started a DDR2 validation program. Basically NVIDIA will test DDR2 memory for a manufacturer and after it's approved it'll get the two thumb up.

As some of you might or might not know, an AMD 64 processor has a built in memory controller. Pentium 4 does not have that, meaning NVIDIA had to integrate it into the mainboard chipset. The memory controller of the nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition is however a nice and impressive piece of technology.

We all know that the Pentium 4 craves the need for memory bandwidth to achieve best performance, with that in mind numerous technological advancements have been integrated in order to drive the memory interface at 667 MHz (and higher) data rates to keep up with the bandwidth demands of the Pentium 4 processor. Here are a few of them:

Asymmetrical and symmetrical interleaving schemes - CPU access is sent concurrently to both channels
Dedicated (vs. shared) address bus per DIMM - achieves a 1T timing resulting in less latency
Increased memory bus utilization - burst length of 4 and 1T address timing
NVIDIA Dynamic Adaptive Speculative Preprocessor 3.0 - data prefetch per core and thread
NVIDIA QuickSync Technology - reduces latency that occurs when FSB and memory speeds differ

What I like very much is that if you do not have the same specification memory you'll still be able to setup a Dual Channel configuration. So you can actually mix a 512 and 256 MB part and even insert them asynchronously. It's a really nice revamp of all Dual Channel implementations and we see all this because the memory controller had to be designed from scratch. And with that in mind NVIDIA improved it and simply opted a different approach.

Next to all of this goodness I also noticed that NVIDIA Dasp 3.0 was introduced. Dasp is short for Dynamic Adaptive Speculative Preprocessor and guarantees that your Level 1 and level 2 memory cache is running at its optimal level. DASP works by pre-fetching the data for the L1 and L2 cache on the processor, which helps make memory access (Level 3) as quick as possible. It's too technical to go in-depth on this as 90% of you guys (and the 4% girls that visit our site; how you doin'?) right now will go... "yeah right, like I care dude."

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In this article we'll cover all that you need to know about the nForce 790i Ultra SLI. This is the mainboard that applies to you guys. We'll do the review in Guru style. Meaning the real hands-on experience combined with all data you like to learn, gamers style. Obviously we'll test and compare a little as well. But first let me show you the technical specifications of the NVIDIA nForce 790i Ultra SLI before we attack it with red peppers and drive it to the extreme. NVIDIA made sure that the nForce 790 series is one of the if not the best overclocking platform available. But you will pay top dollar for it, yet by overclocking you will gain that invested revenue back, that's a guarantee.

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NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI Intel preview
Reason enough for NVIDIA to release the nForce 500 series for Intel's processors (Core 2 Duo as well). Today we'll be taking a brief look at the reference NVIDIA NFORCE 590 SLI mainboard. It by all means is test done with a reference board that is not 100% finished and unfortunately we did not receive a final product from a board partner like ASUS. Nonetheless .. even with this very Beta reference mainboard I was shocked by the combination of Conroe and NFORCE 590 SLI for Intel, in very positive way I must add.

NVIDIA nForce 590 + AMD FX-62
In this article will specifically test the NFORCE 590 SLI platform, yet obviously we'll also have a brief look at the entire NVIDIA NFORCE 500 series of chipsets. We also look at the New AMD64 Athlon FX 62 processor and this'll also be a meory review with Two Corsair DDR2 1066 MHz memory kist that have (Sli Ready) EPP functionality.