1. nForce4 Motherboard Chipset Jesse Printz Bryant Newby CIS 462 2/22/05

2. Outline ● Socket 939 ● What is a Chipset? ● nForce 4 Chipset ● nForce 4 Features Explination ● Compeditors ● Recommendation

3. What is Socket 939 ● CPU Specification ● Supports AMD Athlon 64 Processors ● 64-Bit

4. Why Socket 939? ● 90 nm design ● 64-Bit ● Future Expansion

5. What is a Chipset? ● Architecture ● Microchips that support the CPU, usually several controllers that govern how information travels between the processor and other components. ● Tom's Hardware Guide: – If the CPU is the brain of the PC, the chipset is the heart ● Standard Given to Motherboard Manufactures

6. Chipset Example

7. What is nForce4? ● Chipset Optimized for Graphics and Video ● Standard for Motherboard Manufactures ● nVidia's Fourth Installment of Graphics Chipsets

8. nForce4 Specifications ● One x16 PCI Express Slot ● Three x1 PCI Express Slots ● 4 Serial ATA Hard Drives ● RAID Across SATA & IDE ● ActiveArmor Firewall ● 10 USB 2.0 Ports

9. nForce4 Ultra Added Specifications ● nTune for Overclocking ● 3.0 Gb/s SATA Transfers ● 20 PCI Express Lanes

10. nTune ● On the fly – Clock Speed Changing ● Monitoring – Temperatures – Voltages ● Automated Troubleshooting ● One Place

11. nTune

12. nForce4 SLI Added Specifications ● Scalable Link Interface ● 2 PCI Express Video Cards Working Together – Distributed Load Balancing – Automatic Split ● Future Expansion

13. SLI Diagram

14. SLI Demonstration

15. nForce Ultra Modification to SLI

16. Native Command Queuing

17. Other 939 Competitors ● Uli ● SiS ● ATI Radeon XPRESS ● VIA K8T800 ● nForce3

18. Comparison of 939 Motherboards

19. Reccomendation ● nForce 4 SLI chipset – Advantages ● More Features ● From Anandtech: On Average 3% faster than ATI Radeon XPRESS ● Future Upgrades ● More Control – Disadvantages ● Cost

20. Sources ● Anandtech - www.anandtech.comwww.anandtech.com ● nVidia - www.nvidia.comwww.nvidia.com ● TheTechReport - www.thetechreport.comwww.thetechreport.com ● Tom's Hardware Guide - www.tomshardware.comwww.tomshardware.com ● ATI - http://www.ati.com/http://www.ati.com/ ● PriceWatch - www.pricewatch.comwww.pricewatch.com