DDR and PCIe on nForce4?

[DoK]

According to this article, at least 1 variation of the nForce4 board will support DDR instead of DDR2. . . am I reading this right?

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2248&p=7

Will this also apply to SLI boards? If so, Yay!

[JoshKorn12]

Try nvidia press release about this topic (http://www.nvidia.com/page/nforce4_family.html).

[Rudegar]

as far as i know then the memory controller of amd64 based cpu's is onboard so nvidia can make as much support for ddr2 or gdr3 as they like the cpu deside which ram is supported

so far amd say no ddr2 and prob with good reason so far because ddr2 is slower then ddr1 at the same frequency do ddr2 have a long way to go before it can replace ddr1 but in time it will of cause but ddr2 would require a new athlon64 arc and most likely a replacement of all current amd sockets

[bluegreenshxt]

so far amd say no ddr2 and prob with good reason so far because ddr2 is slower then ddr1 at the same frequency do ddr2 have a long way to go before it can replace ddr1 but in time it will of cause but ddr2 would require a new athlon64 arc and most likely a replacement of all current amd sockets

i am gettin two stories...

one - ddr2 will require a new socket from amd
two - ddr2 wont require a new socket from amd

now im damn confused :confused:

[Avid6eek]

As of right now, DDRII should not require a new socket from AMD. AMD hopes to have the current sockets last as long as socket A did.

DDRII is not in AMDs immediate plans, so all nForce 4 boards will support DDR for now. Even the SLI boards.

[Devils00Champs]

Nforce4 is DDR only is every version of the board

[bluegreenshxt]

ahh..whew..that is good news....i'm praying we never have to switch to ddr2 till i getta job...simply cant afford it...:P

[DoK]

Wow, that's terrific, now I have no reason not to spend my tax refund on a new mobo, 2 GPU's, and a new CPU (with a little help from savings, of course ;) )!

[Avid6eek]

Wow, that's terrific, now I have no reason not to spend my tax refund on a new mobo, 2 GPU's, and a new CPU (with a little help from savings, of course ;) )! I'm right there with you, except I'd like to do it before tax season. Taxes don't come back until the end of February...that's 2 upgrade cycles away for me ;) :)

[an3cdote]

About this multi GPU possibility.
Any video card (PCI-E)can be mounted on the new SLI mobo when using the double video card option, or will it need to be a card designed specifically for this feature?
I understood that both cards will be connected together with some clip or something...

[bluegreenshxt]

only certain cards can....not every card will be able to use the sli feature

[Avid6eek]

As you can see on the right side of this card, there is a slot for the SLI connector. All 3 6600 GT cards at NewEgg have this connector. If you look at a PCIe 6800 GT or Ultra, it would probably have this connector as well.

http://images10.newegg.com/productimage/14-145-098-02.JPG

[Devils00Champs]

You cannot mix cards thou, like a 6800gt and 6800 Ultra

[JoshKorn12]

I'm more interested in Alienware's idea. I like the idea of being able to combine a Geforce 6800 Ultra and a Radeon X800 XT PE. But, knowing the problems that will probably occur with that, nvidia's SLI will probably still pull ahead in most games.

[Avid6eek]

You run into enough problems trying to install nVidia drivers after having ATI drivers installed. It would be nearly impossible to get an ATI and nVidia card to work together. Even if you did, it would be buggy as all hell.

[bluegreenshxt]

it would be cool if that would work...along with specifically programmed drivers that would make the x800xt do what its best and the 6800 ultra do what its good at too...combining the features togehter...it's a nice dream :cool:

[Rudegar]

"I'm more interested in Alienware's idea. I like the idea of being able to combine a Geforce 6800 Ultra and a Radeon X800 XT PE. But, knowing the problems that will probably occur with that, nvidia's SLI will probably still pull ahead in most games.
"
heh when nvidia and ati have different ways of doing AA and aF and such
and if the alienware let each card process every other line it would look odd if it worked :P

also if ati wants then i suppose they could license nvidias tech and give their cards the sli support

[Sadistic]

I thought that it was possible to mix and match but the SLI is ultimately as fast as the slowest card being used.

[defcon]

i been looking everywhere and to date havent found a board that will run 2 x 16 pci-e cards on a s939 board; to hell with it i aint even found 2 nvidia 6800 ultra 256 pci-e for sale even!!

Does Nforce 4 come with 2 x 16 pci-e slots?... and what mobo manufacturer?

who makes the best mobo and 6800 ultra? and where from, i wanna put my AMD fx-53 and corsair xll-pro ram (2,2,2,5) to some good use!

p.s also heard that u can use a 6800gt and flash it to upgrade to a ultra... is this true?


-----------------------------------
AMD FX-53
Abit AV8 3rd eye
1 Gig Corsair XLL-Pro ram
True Power 550watt pwr supply
MSI 6800 Ultra 256mb (x8 AGP)
Halls Ass! 17989 3dmark03 with everything running in background lol

[bluegreenshxt]

you shouldnt flash a gt to ultra unless it has better cooling...but it is possible...although you might experience stablility problems due to the lack of a few capacitors and a molex connector

the best 6800 ultra is Gainward's Goldensample...they're pretty hard to track down...

there will be a version of the nforce 4 that supports 2 cards in sli and another one that doesnt...it'll depend on the specific motherboard...if you overclock i would suggest a dfi lanparty motherboard with nforce4 sli...dont know when it'll come out though...

[defcon]

I've been reading about and from what i can see and please correct me if i am wrong, when using 2 cards in SLI the PCI-e x 16 is reduced to PCI-e x 8 on the nforce4 chipset.

When is there ever going to be 2 x 16 slots that will work as x 16 with both cards, or are the cards designed in such a way that it does not allow this?

I'd like to buy or pre-order my new fx-55 machine now but i dont want to buy something that falls short of my expectations

help?

[Avid6eek]

Apparently it is pretty hard to get a large number of PCIe lanes to work on motherboards. I think the max they can get to work right now is 32, and 2 x X16 would already put them very close to that lime. Motherboard manufacturers are playing it safe and trying to use a maximum of 20 tracings for now.

[bluegreenshxt]

16x compared to 8x makes no difference in gaming...

ok fine...0.2 frames per second...but really..not like you'd notice...especially if you're runing sli...

[gokusimpson]

They don't need 2 16x slots running at the same time becuase no card in the present or future will ever need that much bandwidth. They can't even fill up the 8x AGP bandwidth! They also can not have 32 channels because that would be very hard to make (as in making the chip). It might require 2 chips instead of 1. But it is all ok.

[bluegreenshxt]

They don't need 2 16x slots running at the same time becuase no card in the present or future will ever need that much bandwidth....

dont jinx it :p...i hope some card in the future will use more than that much bandwidth or it'd suck a lot for the gamer :(

[gokusimpson]

ROFL! Well...it's true...But hey, i guess you never know.

[therealwesty]

I don't see why they are all excited about the increased bandwidth between the system and the graphics board. The way that it is now the AGP bus is really only used to load textures into the onboard memory. Then the GPU works with what is in the memory to render the frames. If the GPU had to work with the system RAM or other system resourse to render frames it could dramatically reduce performance. PC3200 RAM in dual channel has a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 6.4GB/s. The GDDR3 on the 6800 Ultra delivers 35.2GB/s of memory bandwidth to the GPU. The x16 slot is capable of 4GB/s full duplex, a lot more than AGP (2.1GB/s) but still no where near the performance of the 1.6ns GDDR3.

The biggest advantage I see graphics cards getting from the switch to PCI-Express (aside from SLI) is the increase in power the motherboard slots will provide.

[gokusimpson]

Well that's nice to know too...I'm running out of molex connectors for my PSU!...I just checked and I have NO MORE! :eek: