Nforce4 will improve from reference?

[Stiganator]

I have a moderate system now

1800+ XP
9800 AIW
1.5 GB RAM
Lots of HDs

Should I get a nforce 3 or will nforce 4 be out in the next week or two? also, should I snag a PCIe video card, I kinda want a x800 but they are expensive. Also will the nforce 4 get better, the performance looked pretty weak in anand's review.

 

[Excelsior]

getting a pcie video card will not improve performance cause it is PCIe, but because it would be a better card (if you were to get an x800). Your current card is nice..

 

[stelleg151]

I think the best thing about NForce 4 is purely upgradability. There have been rumors of the new 90nm cpus coming out next year and how awesome they will be for 939. Also, the option of SATA II will be nice, as well as option of upgradable PCIe, because before the death of 939 I bet the PCIe bandwidth will be utilized(aka better performance over agp). Basically with an NForce 4 board you will be at the top of the food chain for a good year I bet.

Edit: the performance is not astounding, but definately at the top of the 64 series, minus the Farcry marks. However, with that card you would probably save a lot of money going with an agp board, unless you really want to upgrade your video card, then I would go with Nforce 4.

 

[magomago]

Originally posted by: stelleg151
I think the best thing about NForce 4 is purely upgradability. There have been rumors of the new 90nm cpus coming out next year and how awesome they will be for 939. Also, the option of SATA II will be nice, as well as option of upgradable PCIe, because before the death of 939 I bet the PCIe bandwidth will be utilized(aka better performance over agp). Basically with an NForce 4 board you will be at the top of the food chain for a good year I bet.

Edit: the performance is not astounding, but definately at the top of the 64 series, minus the Farcry marks. However, with that card you would probably save a lot of money going with an agp board, unless you really want to upgrade your video card, then I would go with Nforce 4.

but then 6months done the line people will say to wait for the second revision of nforce4 boards and once they come they'll say wait for the nforce 5 boards


anyone else noticing the pattern?


And as long as AGP8X remains a gimmick over AGP4X, i doubt we'll come close to utliizing the bandwith of PCIE

And what new 90nm CPUS? They are already here

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Weak? From what I saw nF4 is showing a clear improvement in performance, if anything its biggest weakness could be problems with tweeking such a system. Once retail boards hit the market we'll see if the chipset is a clear successor.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: magomago

Originally posted by: stelleg151
I think the best thing about NForce 4 is purely upgradability. There have been rumors of the new 90nm cpus coming out next year and how awesome they will be for 939. Also, the option of SATA II will be nice, as well as option of upgradable PCIe, because before the death of 939 I bet the PCIe bandwidth will be utilized(aka better performance over agp). Basically with an NForce 4 board you will be at the top of the food chain for a good year I bet.

Edit: the performance is not astounding, but definately at the top of the 64 series, minus the Farcry marks. However, with that card you would probably save a lot of money going with an agp board, unless you really want to upgrade your video card, then I would go with Nforce 4.

but then 6months done the line people will say to wait for the second revision of nforce4 boards and once they come they'll say wait for the nforce 5 boards


anyone else noticing the pattern?


And as long as AGP8X remains a gimmick over AGP4X, i doubt we'll come close to utliizing the bandwith of PCIE

And what new 90nm CPUS? They are already here

For once, this is actually a pretty good buy. The CPU wars are over and we're moving on, and with it our motherboard upgrade motivation is gone. What else is someone going to put on one of these boards? There's no new SATA revison for the near future, no PCIe, no Ethernet, no audio, not even a CPU upgrade that will need a new board(multicore will work with 939). Other than the somewhat high prices of the 939 processors, this is a really good time to get a system; it looks like it's going to be 2006 before anything new even comes out, and even longer before there's a compelling reason to upgrade. Even the S754 users are happy, the 3400+(which runs at 2.4ghz) is about to hit $230 or so, and that'll be a solid upgrade for quite some time.

 

[stelleg151]

Originally posted by: ViRGE

Originally posted by: magomago

Originally posted by: stelleg151
I think the best thing about NForce 4 is purely upgradability. There have been rumors of the new 90nm cpus coming out next year and how awesome they will be for 939. Also, the option of SATA II will be nice, as well as option of upgradable PCIe, because before the death of 939 I bet the PCIe bandwidth will be utilized(aka better performance over agp). Basically with an NForce 4 board you will be at the top of the food chain for a good year I bet.

Edit: the performance is not astounding, but definately at the top of the 64 series, minus the Farcry marks. However, with that card you would probably save a lot of money going with an agp board, unless you really want to upgrade your video card, then I would go with Nforce 4.

but then 6months done the line people will say to wait for the second revision of nforce4 boards and once they come they'll say wait for the nforce 5 boards


anyone else noticing the pattern?


And as long as AGP8X remains a gimmick over AGP4X, i doubt we'll come close to utliizing the bandwith of PCIE

And what new 90nm CPUS? They are already here

For once, this is actually a pretty good buy. The CPU wars are over and we're moving on, and with it our motherboard upgrade motivation is gone. What else is someone going to put on one of these boards? There's no new SATA revison for the near future, no PCIe, no Ethernet, no audio, not even a CPU upgrade that will need a new board(multicore will work with 939). Other than the somewhat high prices of the 939 processors, this is a really good time to get a system; it looks like it's going to be 2006 before anything new even comes out, and even longer before there's a compelling reason to upgrade. Even the S754 users are happy, the 3400+(which runs at 2.4ghz) is about to hit $230 or so, and that'll be a solid upgrade for quite some time.

I agree with you for the most part Virge, but I'm not so sure that this speculation that the CPU wars are over is valid. I think that because Intel is weakening people assume progress will slow down a lot. But I think AMD is still going strong, they are smoking Intel with their 130nm CPU's, and the 90nm ones look even more promising to me. I think it will be a good couple of years before CPU progress really starts to slow down. Now if you are refering to the war being over because amd has won, I wont argue...

 

[bunnyfubbles]

I think he's referring to the A64 delivering a final blow to the P4... AMD is king of the single core.

 

[funkforce]

Hi guys! I'm new here, so I'll hope you'll bare with me.

I just read the article about the new nForce4 chipset, and one thing that I can't really understand is why do the author say that it will have support for SATA with 3 GB/s ? Since when does SATA II support 3 GigaByte/second transfer? SATA supported 150mb/s and SATA II will support 300 mb/s if I'm correct, and I asure you that I'm not certain.

Is this the wrong topic to post this question under? If it is, where should I ask a question like this, refering to the nForce4 article?

Thanks for any help...

/Mike

Sorry if I'm wrong. I'm just a n00b

 

[Gamingphreek]

It is 300mb/s ... either you read it wrong or it was a typo.

I wish they would realease a board above the Nforce 4 SLI whcih included High Def audio. :-(

-Kevin

 

[funkforce]

Yeah I thought so, but a typo? He has it all over the article perhaps 10-15 times and he mixes GB with Gb, it's kinda confusing when it is an article on anandtech which you don't normally asociate with simple mistakes like this one.

But if you want to make the author aware of the typo, is it here or somewhere else you post?

Thanks in advance...

 

[Gamingphreek]

You just doint worry about it. If a person is reading that article in the first place they will pick it up and know it is a typo. Also if they want to change it they will eventually find it.

-Kevin

 

[Xernex]

I think what Virge said is about right. The nforce 4 is as future proof as a motherboard can be atm. There are no significant upgrades coming in 2005, short of BTX but no really gives 2 shits about it. AMD won't be supporting it any time soon and with Intel on the backfoot at the moment redesigning its roadmaps and working out what its going to do I dont think they are currently in a position to really be pushing BTX as hard as they would like.

One question though, will it really be worth waiting to get a SATA II drive? Will the 300mb/sec drive really make much of a difference performance wise? And does anyone know if WD are working on a third series raptor that supports this?

 

[GTaudiophile]

I hope someone adds on-board FireWire at some point. That's a negative for me.

 

[GTaudiophile]

My plan is to build an NF4 Ultra/AMD64 Winchester system in Spring 2005. By then both R480 and even maybe R520 will be available. But will NF4 boards play nice with ATi cards? I would bet that NVDA has done something to give their own videocards an advantage. (And I'm not talking about SLI.)

 

[iwantanewcomputer]

any one know when the next gen of video cards will come out?

i doubt it will be anytime soon so it looks like this winter will be a sweet spot for upgraders. the video cards of this generation are way better than last, 90 nm amd 64 cpus should get better as amd refines their technology, new boards, good overclocking memory reachijng new hights.

i think in Jan or Feb i will upgrade to a 90nm winchester/nf4/dual 6600 GT's and maybe some new hard drives with 16mb cache and nqc.

after that i won't even have a reason to wnat to upgrade for a long time.

also, anybody have a clue when cheap winchesters will be able to overclock to 3 GHz on water? I'm thinking a 3200 and a 50% overclock

 

[GTaudiophile]

R480 is right around the corner.

I have the feeling ATi has kept supply low of the X800 XT PE cards in order to shore up more supply of the R480...and perhaps even the R520 boards.

 

[GTaudiophile]

HardOCP noticed some SATA/IDE issues with NF4:

With that said, we have run into IDE and SATA RAID problems repeatedly on our testbench with nF2, nF3, and nF4 chipsets. While it probably should not even be mentioned here, I would feel remiss if I did not. We have seen CD-ROM drive compatibility problems that can crash a WinXP Pro OS and if you check the chipset errata reports, you will see some of these compatibility issues noted, specifically with Samsung CD-ROM drives. We have been able to nail down issues with multiple units over the years. We have also experienced one SATA RAID0 issue. Albeit one small issue with one single benchmark, that apparently no on else can reproduce. All that considered, we are hoping the issues we have seen are confined to us and we are certainly looking for retail motherboards to come to market to test.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: stelleg151
I agree with you for the most part Virge, but I'm not so sure that this speculation that the CPU wars are over is valid. I think that because Intel is weakening people assume progress will slow down a lot. But I think AMD is still going strong, they are smoking Intel with their 130nm CPU's, and the 90nm ones look even more promising to me. I think it will be a good couple of years before CPU progress really starts to slow down. Now if you are refering to the war being over because amd has won, I wont argue...

No, I really mean is when I say the CPU wars are over because we're not going anywhere. Without Intel around, it doesn't matter if AMD is having problems with the 90nm process or not, there's no reason for them to jeopardize their own sales by releasing faster chips; they're going to stop at the point where they beat Intel, and that's as far as they need to go.