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  • xsilver - Saturday, September 10, 2005 - link

    hmm... interesting news
    oh wait -- its intel --- yawn :P

    there wont be any real competition until conroe shows up
    where intel will release another chipset that supports it

    intel mobo's havent been good for upgradability since the BX chipset -- and that wasnt even officially supporting 133fsb
  • danidentity - Sunday, September 11, 2005 - link

    Did you even read the article?

    2nd to last paragraph:

    "What we find particularly important is that 975X and Broadwater will both support the new Conroe processors."
  • IntelUser2000 - Sunday, September 11, 2005 - link

    quote:

    "What we find particularly important is that 975X and Broadwater will both support the new Conroe processors."


    Well I HOPE its true, since Yonah is rumored to be S480 or something, and probably Conroe is based on it. And Anandtech hasn't been correct recently on roadmaps.
  • IntelUser2000 - Sunday, September 11, 2005 - link

    I can't believe they are going for this "We have 2x8 configuration while our competitor has 16x1, 1x1 PCI-e config, since that gives performance benefits"

    Now when since going to AGP2x give performance increase. The last time I have seen, you hardly get better performance going beyond AGP2x. PCI to AGP did make a vast difference, as my personal test using Geforce2 MX gave 50% increase at fastest setting in Quake 3. I wanted to replace to AGP, and it was more than worth it. However, beyond 2x does NOTHING. We have all seen proof of that with PCI-e in Anandtech's article about it. I bet there is NO advantage by going 2 16x from 1 16x, 1 1x.
  • mlittl3 - Sunday, September 11, 2005 - link

    This article reads a little like a theinquirer.net article. Interesting.

    Anyway, in response to inteluser2000, you are right about no performance gains going from AGP 2x/4x to higher bus speeds, however, you are completely incorrect about saying there is NO advantage going to 2 16x slots. This is what we call SLI if we use Nvidia's jargon. There is a definite performance improvement going to two video card slots which allow two video cards to run simultaneously.

    Now whether or not those two slots should be 1x, 2x, etc. is another questions indeed but I don't think having two AGP slots was feasible from a cost perspective as its generally easier to wire devices with serial connections rather than parallel. PCI-e now allows this.

    So I think we can all agree that from a multiple GPU standpoint, you need PCI-e (given the current technology) over AGP. Now how fast that PCI-e slot must be (1x, 2x, etc.), I leave up to the reviewers.
  • KristopherKubicki - Monday, September 12, 2005 - link

    quote:

    This article reads a little like a theinquirer.net article. Interesting.


    TheWho?

    Kristopher
  • Tarx - Monday, September 12, 2005 - link

    One advantage of the PCI-E 2 x16 is the ability to run more powerful graphic cards (not yet available) in SLI mode without using a direct bridge between the cards.
  • JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    On the flipped side, the current setup where one X16 connection comes from the NB and the seconds comes from the SB is... well, odd to say the least. Last I looked, no NB-to-SB connection was anywhere near X16 bandwidth. So they've got X16 going over what amounts to an X2 or X4 connection, as far as I can tell. Did I miss something, or is that the actual current configuration for two X16 lanes from NVIDIA? If Intel does two X16 lanes that are directly linked at full X16 speed, that would actually have potential use.
  • danidentity - Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - link

    The nForce 4 doesn't have a NB and SB. It's a single chip.

    The new nForce 4 SLI X16 chipset has 16 lanes going to each slot.
  • IntelUser2000 - Wednesday, September 14, 2005 - link

    quote:

    The nForce 4 doesn't have a NB and SB. It's a single chip.


    Nforce 4 Intel Edition does. I heard the 2 PCI-E x16 version for both AMD AND Intel has NB and SB(or two chips for that matter).
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, September 15, 2005 - link

    *ding ding ding!*

    IntelUser2000 has it right, as far as I know. The 2 by X16 SLI coming from NVIDIA uses a southbridge again, as does the Intel nF4 chipset. Most SB to NB connections are in the 500 to 1000 MB/s range. Two X16 slots when one of the slots is only X16 to the SB, then funneled through what equates to an X4 connection at best? Yay!

    Two X8 slots with both getting a full 2GB/s bidirectional would likely be better than the X16 coming from a SB. Funny thing is that NVIDIA even said something to the effect of X16 SLI not really making a difference yet, but it might in the future. I'm very skeptical, to say the least.
  • IntelUser2000 - Thursday, September 15, 2005 - link

    According to Nvidia, Hypertransport used on their chipset has 8GB/sec bandwidth, perfect for PCI-E 16x. However, if it is ever fully utilized, it will be bottlenecked by the I/O devices.
  • stephenbrooks - Sunday, September 11, 2005 - link

    --[This article reads a little like a theinquirer.net article. Interesting.]--

    Yes (!!) I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed. It's not a copy of one, just the comments from "Ed." are brilliant.
  • IntelUser2000 - Sunday, September 11, 2005 - link

    quote:

    This article reads a little like a theinquirer.net article. Interesting.

    Anyway, in response to inteluser2000, you are right about no performance gains going from AGP 2x/4x to higher bus speeds, however, you are completely incorrect about saying there is NO advantage going to 2 16x slots. This is what we call SLI if we use Nvidia's jargon. There is a definite performance improvement going to two video card slots which allow two video cards to run simultaneously.

    Now whether or not those two slots should be 1x, 2x, etc. is another questions indeed but I don't think having two AGP slots was feasible from a cost perspective as its generally easier to wire devices with serial connections rather than parallel. PCI-e now allows this.

    So I think we can all agree that from a multiple GPU standpoint, you need PCI-e (given the current technology) over AGP. Now how fast that PCI-e slot must be (1x, 2x, etc.), I leave up to the reviewers.


    I think you are misunderstanding me here. I didn't say going to 2 16x slots give no performance benefit. I said there is no performance benefit by going from 1 16x and 1 1x slot to 2 16x configuration.
  • danidentity - Sunday, September 11, 2005 - link

    It's been known Conroe is LGA775 for a while.
  • IntelUser2000 - Sunday, September 11, 2005 - link

    quote:

    It's been known Conroe is LGA775 for a while.


    Links??
  • danidentity - Sunday, September 11, 2005 - link

    Intel formally announced (and displayed) Conroe was 775 at the Fall IDF.

    "The desktop part, code-named Conroe, will come in an LGA775 package, and will have two versions that differ in terms of cache size."
    http://techreport.com/etc/2005q3/idf/index.x?pg=1">http://techreport.com/etc/2005q3/idf/index.x?pg=1

    And for pictures:
    http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i...">http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i...
  • mrwxyz - Saturday, September 10, 2005 - link

    Just because the intel chipset would have 2 pci-e lanes for video cards, does it mean sli and crossfire will work on them? I thought you needed the nvidia chipset to make sli work, not just another pci-e lane...and the same with crossfire.

    So if you dont need the chipsets, just the lanes, then does that mean u can have crossfire on a sli motherboard?
  • KristopherKubicki - Saturday, September 10, 2005 - link

    Well, ATI and NVIDIA both said they are onboard for this. There were a few press releases.

    Kristopher
  • mrwxyz - Saturday, September 10, 2005 - link

    The article cuts off (for me atleast) at "ATI and NVIDIA have both annoucned support for"....the sentence is never finished....

    I was pretty surprised at first that ati and nvidia would let intel have this, but I guess since intel pretty much owns the chipset market it makes sense.
  • Furen - Saturday, September 10, 2005 - link

    Intel overdoes it a bit with all those chipsets. At least they're backwards compatible.

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