nForce3-250 - Part 1: Taking Athlon 64 to the Next Level
by Wesley Fink on March 23, 2004 11:55 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
nForce3-250Gb Reference Board: Basic Features
| Motherboard Specifications | |
| CPU Interface | Socket 754 Athlon 64 |
| Chipset | nForce3-250GB single-chip |
| Bus Speeds | 200MHz to 250MHz (in 1MHz increments) |
| PCI/AGP Speeds | Synchronous or Asynchronous PCI/AGP Fixed at 66/33 to 100/50 (in 1MHz increments) |
| Core Voltage | None available on Reference Board |
| HyperTransport Frequency | 1000MHz (1GHz) |
| HyperTransport Width | 16-bit Upstream and 16-bit Downstream |
| DRAM Voltage | None available on Reference Board |
| AGP Voltage | None available on Reference Board |
| HyperTransport Voltage | None available on Reference Board |
| Memory Slots | Two 184-pin DDR DIMM Slots Single-Channel Configuration Regular Unbuffered Memory to 2GB Total |
| Expansion Slots | 1 AGP 8X Slot 6 PCI Slots (up to 6 may be available) |
| Onboard Serial ATA RAID | nF3-250GB (4 Drives, 0, 1, 0+1) |
| Onboard IDE/IDE RAID | Two Standard ATA133/100/66 (4 drives) Drives may be configured as IDE RAID |
| Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394 | 8 USB 2.0 ports supported by nF3-250 No Firewire - Must use additional chip |
| Onboard LAN | 1Gigabit Ethernet on-chip by nF3-250GB |
| Onboard Audio | AC '97 2.1 6-Channel supported by nF3-250 |
| BIOS Revision | Reference Board 1/31/2004 |
Reference Boards are normally quite different from the production boards that will later appear with the Reference Board chipset. While certain component arrangements may be retained from a Reference Board, the board is designed for testing and qualification, and generally not for production. Normally, they are also designed to be tested on the bench, out of any case.
Many, including AnandTech, complained that nForce3-150 was simply out-of-date when it came to integrated features. nForce3-250 definitely does not suffer from that problem. The nF3-250 feature set is as up-to-date as the 150 is not. You could still build an extremely capable system with the nF3-150, but many of the features had to be provided with add-on chips, which increased production costs. nForce3-250 moves from deficient to feature-rich, and competes very well with the best solutions from VIA and SiS. Standard features include 4-drive SATA Raid, 8 USB 2.0/1.1 ports, ATA133 IDE/RAID, AC '97 2.1 6.1 channel audio, and on-chip firewall. The enthusiast version adds on-chip high-speed Gigabit LAN, similar in concept to Intel's CSA. This moves LAN to the chip itself and away from the PCI bus bottleneck.
Click to enlarge.
Fully decked out, nForce3-250 provides features available nowhere else, like on-chip 1Gb Ethernet, on-chip firewall, 4-drive SATA RAID, and both SATA and IDE RAID that can be combined.
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prisoner881 - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
#18, I know it's full duplex, but even then you will have a hard time getting full utlization under normal working conditions. Benchmarks are designed to run things at unrealistic rates. The point is, although I don't encourage it, you can certainly put Gigabit on the PCI bus and get very usable performance out of it. In most cases, the limiting factor is going to be CPU utilization anyway.JADS - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
External HDDs could make good use of a Firewire connection, especially now it is whizzing along at 800MBit/s.The multi CPU implementation sounds interesting, of course AMD will completely fail to capitalise on it by not making the FX dual processor capable. How many enthusiasts (AMD wise) could resist the chance of dual FX-53s, especially with the possibility of overclocking them? You have the distinction between the 2xx series and the FX due the removal of ECC/Registered memory in the FX 939 series, so they essentially serve two different markets.
sprockkets - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
Why would you need firewire with USB2? OK, ipod and camcorders.I have one question. Since you use a browser to configure the firewall, does this mean it is OS independant, i.e., I can use it in Linux without needing drivers to run it?
Soundstorm not present on here, oh well, almost all uATX boards had the MCP and not MCP-T so it didn't matter anyhow, and it doesn't work in Linux anyhow. VIA sound is troublesome in Linux too. I rather use my own sound card. Just hope there is a driver for the cool LAN adapter.
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
#10 -LAN is Duplex. Gigabit on PCI with overhead can do about 820mb/sec in industry standard tests. nVidia's on-chip LAN could output about 1840 mb/sec in the benchmarks we have seen. This is more than twice as fast IF you have a source that can actually output 1GB in both directions.
#11 -
PCI Express will be seen on Intel boards very soon. AMD boards will not move as rapidly to the Intel PCI Express standard.
#12 -
Firewire is not on-chip. Undoubtedly many mfgs will add firewire with an additional chip on-board nF3-250.
fla56 - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
''No one can possibly complain about the feature-set of nForce3-250''to add my vote to what's already been said, no firewire for my iPod and no SoundStorm/DolbyDigital for that lovely Yamaha amp I just bought mean i think someone needs to calm down a little about all that excitement (and learn a little about the difference between megabits and bytes by the sound of things)
i wonder if they'll release Soundstorm as a PCI eXpress card....
Reflex - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
#8: Actually, to date nVidia has had a *very* troublesome PCI implementation, anyone with a PCI RAID controller and a 4 disk RAID 0 array can tell you that. It is so bad, in fact, that prototype NF3-150 boards for Opteron used AMD PCI chips just to avoid using the nForce3 integrated PCI bus. I am not certain if these boards ever reached production status however.As for this chipset, it looks nice, but honestly I'll wait until there is a PCI Express solution out there, I was just forced due to power problems destroying my equipment to upgrade my motherboard prematurely, and I don't intend to buy another until the next wave of features is available...
DAPUNISHER - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
Keep your eyes open for my AN50R listing for sale at rock bottom pricing in the FS/FT forum when the 250 is on shelves :Dfla56 - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
prisoner881 - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
Looks like another error on the "Conclusion" page. Last sentence, second paragraph says "We expect that some enterprising companies, which specializes in catering to the computer enthusiast, will slip in some Socket 954 boards based on the Ultra chipset with a Gigahertz HyperTransport."Socket 954? Methinks that ought to be Socket 754.
arswihart - Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - link
What about firewire connectors, do you guys think they'll be added to production boards?