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: 4-Drive SATA RAID and IDE RAID
Integrated RAID capabilities have become common with most of today's chipsets. Most competing chipsets provide the ability to use SATA RAID 0 (Striping) for Performance or RAID 1 (mirroring) for Data Protection. The nForce3-250 chipset takes these capabilities even further, however, with four drives instead of the two supported by other chipsets. These 4 drives can also be configured as RAID 0+1, which combines both striping and mirroring for speed and data protection.
RAID Level 0+1 Disk Striping and Mirroring
Cross-Controller RAID
The nVidia RAID solution is also unique in supporting both Serial ATA (SATA) and parallel ATA disk devices within a single RAID array. Users don't need to worry about whether hard drives are SATA or IDE - - the nVidia RAID controller treats both IDE and SATA drives the same and allows them to be combined in any way in the RAID controller. A single setup procedure applies to all drives, which makes it possible to use all the storage devices available. Users can also expand the number of drives easily without worrying about whether the drive is IDE or SATA.On-the-Fly Rebuilds and Spare Disk Allocation
Corporate RAID users are accustomed to RAID arrays with "hot spares" and on-the fly rebuilds, but those RAID 5 features have been expensive additions to a home PC. The nVidia RAID controller adds both these features to a home PC that is running any type of mirroring. If a disk fails, RAID 1 allows continuous operation by taking advantage of the mirrored data copy in the array. The nVidia RAID solution goes a step further and lets a user rebuild a new mirrored copy for the data while the system is up and running, without disrupting user and application access to the data set. Rebuilding on the fly eliminates down time and maximizes protection for critical storage resources.nVidia RAID 1 also lets users designate spare drives that can be configured as hot standbys, protecting arrays in the event of a disk failure. A shared spare can protect multiple arrays of drives, or a dedicated spare can serve as a hot standby for a particular drive array. The spare disk feature, which offers protection that goes beyond mirroring data, has traditionally been limited to high-end RAID systems. Truthfully, the RAID capabilities that nVidia has built into nForce3-250 will blow away almost any high-end home user. This isn't RAID 5 on a home PC, but the flexibility and data protection capabilities are truly impressive.
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Visual - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link
This chipset looks promising, I like it. And a great article about it :)I'm a bit curious about the raid - do you guys think it may be possible to implement a hot-swappable raid array with integrated raid controllers anytime soon?
Maybe you can make an article testing the performance boost from using a 4-drive raid 0 array with this baby?
Another thing that interests me - are there any mobos with IGP for Athlon64? I know it won't be a performer, I'm just curious if it even exists. Also is anything being heared about some new DX9 IGP anytime soon(hopefully with this chipset)? It'd also be cool if having an AGP card doesn't disable the IGP, like the ati-intel chipsets... Well I guess I'm dreaming now, but I'd like to see your comments or any info you have on nVidia's IGP plans. I guess you AT folks could ask nVidia about this :)
Thanks,
Visual
Reflex - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link
#59: Try measuring your bandwidth with a 4 drive RAID 0 array using fast drives on that setup and then put the same array in an Intel or AMD chipset system. nVidia's PCI implementation is not very good at all.MichaelD - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link
[q] 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.[/q]Uh, no. Not in my experience. On my 8RDA+, I've used:
Highpoint ATA133 Contoller Card
3Ware7000-2 Two-channel IDE RAID card
LSI Megaraid 1600 SCSI RAID card
I've had zero problems. Wha'chu talkin' bout, Willis?
Reflex - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link
#55: I did not say DDR2 was needed right now, its not and AMD is making the right decision. I was just pointing out that the latency penalty should not be a real issue since it moves more data. But time will tell.#54: I have not checked out the Catalina yet, however if it does not have a coax output, it will not find a home in my setup. SPDIF is a consumer level technology, championed by Sony, but it is not as high quality as coax simply due to the fact that the signal must be converted twice(to and from optical) which is never a good thing. Furthermore, the cables are frail and expensive. Professional level equipment never has SPDIF, it uses coax exclusively.
Wesley: Glad they are dropping SoundStorm. Waste of time and effort in my opinion.
BikeDude - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link
Thanks Wesley; a single chip implementation makes sense. Now show us the benchmarks! :)Wesley Fink - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link
#54 and others regarding Sound Storm -1 - nVidia is committed to the one-chip chipset for Athlon 64. They are firmly convinced that the one-chip eliminates the potential bottlenecks of a north-south bridge communications bus. Even with the the memory controller on the chip there is only so much real estate practically available on a single-chip chipset.
2 - Customer surveys by nVidia found that most buyers did not use Sound Storm, and that Sound Storm did not enter heavily into the decision to buy nForce. So the decision was made to choose the on-chip LAN, firewall, and much-expanded RAID capabilities which benefit greatly from being moved off the bus.
3 - There are new sound solutions in the works for nVidia. You may see them in a future chipset or on a sound card. Final decisions have not been made.
Pumpkinierre - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link
#53, I'll believe it when I see the tests. It sounds like RAMBUS- that was supposed to be better at latency but turned out the opposite at over twice the cost at the time. Read the last paragraph of Wesley's post(#50)- he's closer to the industry and there are others expressing similar concerns. All these are things that Intel with its resources should iron out and AMD come in when its sorted, If AMD get to a third of the market and in the black then it can show leadership in these areas. Meanwhile stick to what they are best at cpus.BikeDude - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link
#48: Turtle Beach Catalina which I suspect is a newer card (it's more expensive :) ) than SC, seem to tout optical SPDIF output as a feature (doesn't mention coax at all) and it's merely pass-through SPDIF at that (no hardware Dolby encoding -- thus I'll end up with the additional three audio cables again). Are you sure you have all your facts straight?If you're a professional musician -- I agree, the SS isn't for you, but I thought nForce was primarily a chipset targetted at gamers?
Reflex - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link
#52: Latency ends up about the same due to the fact that twice the operations per clock are happening in the same span as regular DDR. It does not, however, give you any real benefit, just higher scalability. The lack of DDR2 support also really has nothing to do with the chipset, its a CPU feature on Athlon64/FX architecture's, not a chipset one, so people bemoaning the lack of DDR2 need to look at AMD, not nVidia.Like I said before, the only feature needed from my point of view is PCI Express. I refuse to buy anymore PCI or AGP devices at this point knowing that in a year or two they will be useless. Unlike my CPU, I don't often change out my sound card, motherboard, SCSI card, or other such devices, so when it comes time to upgrade my system, PCI Express will be the order of the day for me.
Pumpkinierre - Thursday, March 25, 2004 - link
Good to see your real opinions, wesley #50. I too am worried about this slow latency DDR2 particularly with the a64 where I see system memory latency as being the bottleneck for improved gaming speed. AMD have got themselves a winner with a64/newcastle but still have mainboard issues as well as heavy debt. In these conditions, good poker dictates that you play conservatively. So I'm quite happy to see only DDR1 and PCI on the nF3-250 for the moment.