nForce4: PCI Express and SLI for Athlon 64
by Wesley Fink on October 19, 2004 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
DX9 Gaming Performance
We first saw the Far Cry anomaly in past testing of nVidia PCI Express graphics cards. nVidia PCI Express does not perform as well on Far Cry as their comparable AGP graphics cards. This is not the same pattern that we have seen in the ATI PCI Express cards, which perform similarly in Far Cry in either AGP or PCIe flavors.
Keeping in mind that all other Athlon 64 benchmarks were run with an FX53, it is interesting to see that the nVidia PCIe on nF4 top the Aquamark 3 results. It appears that this benchmark responds well to the PCIe interface.
Other DX9 benchmarks are essentially the same as seen on the nForce3 Ultra chipset with the same CPU and an AGP 6800 Ultra.
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AlphaFox - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
I take it no one here has used soundstorm with doom3: crackling and cutting out, having to reset the sound all the time. pain in the butt, how is it great??jm0ris0n - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
I still think that Anyone who would want SLI-PCIe WOULD NOT use onboard sound.Viper96720 - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
Ah i see I thought that was agp it is the 16x pci-e.LotoBak - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
55 -I take it your refering to this pic
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showimage.htm...
That long slot is NOT agp. It is PCIe 16x. The two above it are PCIe 4x I believe (could be wrong on the 4x)
jediknight - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
nVidia's decision to dump SoundStorm makes no sense. If it was a business decision because the OEMs and media (??) as an earlier posted pointed out.. how can they justify the extra expense of SLI? What OEM is going to use that high-end tech? (Hint: Not Alienware.. they've got their own stuff)The same people who want SLI want SoundStorm.. these enthusiasts are nVidia's core business (not by sales volume, by prestige, reputation, etc. in the marketplace) and not listening to your customers is a bad idea in my book..
jm0ris0n - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
I could care less about the soundstorm :-p*Drool@SLI goodness :-D*
Viper96720 - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
#45 the board has AGP in case you didn't notice the long brown slot next to the PCI. The 2 small ones right above the audio is the PCI-E.RebolMan - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
The reason soundstorm is nice is because it outpreforms "real" cards - thus leading to better enjoyment of said games by soaking up less CPU time!http://www.tweaktown.com/document.php?dType=review...
It produces a _better_ gaming experience in terms of sound, and still gets better frame-rates than a PC equipped with a SB Audigy Platinum Pro!
http://www.tweaktown.com/document.php?dType=review...
and...
http://www.tweaktown.com/document.php?dType=articl...
Why don't vendors pay as much attention to "APU" performance as they do to GPU performance?
RebolMan - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
BAH! Where's my SoundStorm!!!?!?!?Aquila76 - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
#44 - That dual SLI board (page 3) looks like an MSI (VIA chipset? has an Envy controller at top) board, not the nForce4 SLI reference board. The nVidia reference board design may be different.