NForce
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- The correct title of this article is nForce. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.
| NVIDIA nForce | |
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| Successor | nForce2 |
The nForce is a computer motherboard chipset created by NVIDIA for AMD Athlon and Duron microprocessors and Intel processors.
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[edit] nForce and Intel
The nForce 500 and 600 series chipsets are available for Intel Processors in the form of the 570i, 590i, 650i and 680i chipsets.
[edit] nForce1
At launch the nForce offered innovative integrated features not found on other Athlon chipsets of the period, including optional integrated video based on the GeForce2 MX core, dual-channel DDR SDRAM support, and high quality integrated sound based on NVIDIA's own sound chip. nForce was the result of AMD's design for the XBox until Microsoft shifted their CPU sourcing to Intel; AMD then partnered with NVidia to bring their XBox chipset to the desktop instead. The chipset shipped in 3 varieties; 220, 415, and 420. 220 and 420 are very similar with each having the integrated GPU, but 220 only has a single-channel of memory available whereas 420 has the 128-bit TwinBank design. The 415 variant again has the dual-channel memory interface, but has no integrated graphics.
[edit] Innovations
[edit] Dual Channel & GeForce2 MX IGP
The nForce chipset was remarkable for several reasons. It introduced a dual-channel memory controller to the mainstream motherboard market, doubling theoretical throughput, and offering very competitive performance most especially in workstation class benchmarks. This dual-channel design was deemed necessary largely because of the added integrated GeForce2 MX class video hardware. For the relatively fast GeForce2 MX IGP to have adequate memory bandwidth available it needed more than to simply share a single memory channel with the Athlon XP CPU. In fact, the K7's EV7 CPU bus was unable to take advantage of more than a single-channel DDR memory interface because the frontside bus bandwidth was equal to this. So, the second channel of the TwinBank boards went almost entirely to the IGP.
[edit] Ethernet and DASP
NVIDIA also touted both their built-in ethernet controller, and a new memory prefetch mechanism called the Dynamic Adaptive Speculative Pre-Processor (DASP). The NVIDIA-built ethernet controller was supposedly capable of reducing CPU overhead while being also very fast. The DASP unit helped reduce memory latency for the main CPU by prefetching often needed data, or data that the DASP predicted the CPU would need. Many considered it sort of an advanced Level 3 cache device.
[edit] nForce APU a.k.a. Soundstorm
NVIDIA debuted their advanced NVAPU audio solution, branded Soundstorm, on the nForce MCP-D southbridge chip. It is the same as the audio processor in the Xbox chipset and supports many hardware-accelerated 2D/3D audio channels and advanced HRTF 3D audio spatialization. It also has a built-in processor for encoding computer audio into a Dolby Digital signal for external receivers to decode into a 5.1-channel audio spread. With its hardware acceleration, the difference in CPU usage when running popular multimedia applications was as much as 10-20%, potentially allowing faster performance in programs that are limited by the system CPU.
Soundstorm offered the most advanced audio technology to ever be integrated into a motherboard. However, there were pitfalls. First off, because the analog audio signal had to be routed over the entire motherboard and through a separate (often very cheap and low quality) codec chip, the quality was often substantially inferior to what separate sound cards such as Creative's Sound Blaster Audigy were capable of. Secondly, the initial drivers proved to be quite buggy, with EAX compatibility issues, and the audio was even known to cut out or garble under intensely demanding gaming situations.
However, overall the solution was applauded by gaming enthusiasts for its high capability and usually good performance, and perhaps most notably for its Dolby Digital encoding feature which was not replicated in the industry until years later. Still, Soundstorm failed to gain mass popularity in the motherboard/system market on the whole, because the more expensive southbridge chip was usually seen as unnecessary. Even many gamers could not tell the difference between standard AC97 audio on other motherboards, and NVIDIA's own simpler MCP, and the advanced NVAPU. The PC market is extremely competitive and the addition of an expensive audio APU was not an option for most system builders when viewed from a high volume perspective simply because most computers do not play games. Because of this, NVIDIA ceased further development of SoundStorm after its implementation in nForce2, and nForce3 onward launched with simple AC97 audio only.
[edit] Performance and Issues
The original nForce chipset was let down by patchy driver support and a less than optimal hardware design. Performance of the dual-channel memory controller and DASP did not greatly surpass the VIA Technologies KT266A chipset, which was very popular at the time, usually as fast, and was cheaper. The optimised IDE support was introduced and then withdrawn after hardware incompatibilities showed up, and the much heralded SoundStorm audio was seen to crackle under heavily loaded scenarios. In fact, the IDE driver would remain an issue at least into the life of nForce4 where it was still known to cause problems with some hard drives and even more so problems with optical drives.
However, considering nForce was NVIDIA's first foray into the chipset market, it was considered a success if only because it was able to be competitive on performance, reliability, and stability with veterans such as VIA, SiS, and Intel.
[edit] External links
- NVIDIA's nForce product page
- NVIDIA - Windows Vista Capable nForce MCPs
- nForcersHQ: a nForce chipset community forum/website
- Anandtech: NVIDIA nForce Computex 2001 Preview
- Anandtech: NVIDIA's nForce 420/220: It's finally here
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