Networking, audio and CPU support

NVIDIA ActiveArmor

Without the need to provide dedicated space for Soundstorm audio within the nForce4 chip, NVIDIA decided to use this real estate to increase its networking capabilities. If you recall the original nForce3 250Gb chipset, NVIDIA was quite proud of their dedicated Firewall support, but were quick to insist that it wasn’t a hardware-based solution. With nForce4, this has changed.

By adding dedicated hardware acceleration for the firewall, CPU utilization drops dramatically as packet inspection is now done on the nForce4 MCP rather than on the host CPU. We noted CPU utilization rates between 10-15% for nForce4 with ActiveArmor enabled versus 70-80% with the feature turned off (as you’d get on nForce3 250Gb).

Network access manager main menu

Customizing Firewall settings

Firewall wizard

NVIDIA has also freshened the look and feel of their network access manager software, making it easier to use with more helpful wizards. Of course, for the prosumers out there, you can still tweak settings to your heart’s content.

NVIDIA continues to provide Gigabit Ethernet networking support, with a dedicated 2Gbps bi-directional link (1.25Gbps actual each way to compensate for Ethernet overhead/1.0Gbps effective), maximizing the full potential of the controller.

Audio

As we mentioned previously, you won’t find NVIDIA’s SoundStorm feature found in their nForce2 Athlon XP chipsets in nForce4. Apparently motherboard manufacturers either had a hard time educating users on the benefits of SoundStorm, or their users just weren’t interested in the features SoundStorm provides, one of which was real-time Dolby Digital encoding, a feature no other consumer-level audio product provides. With margins on motherboards tight enough as it is, mobo manufacturers just couldn’t justify the added expense for SoundStorm.

Therefore NVIDIA acquiesced to motherboard manufacturers wishes and elected not to integrate SoundStorm into nForce4, instead relying on traditional AC’97 audio. We expect motherboard manufacturers will integrate existing 8-channel software-based (i.e. CPU resource draining) CODECs into their final nForce4 motherboards.

Processor support

Like nForce3, nForce4 will support all of AMD’s latest processors including Sempron, Opteron, Athlon 64, and Athlon 64 FX. nForce4 also supports 2P, dual processor configurations, so motherboards based on this chipset could also be potentially found in workstation/server configurations. The chipset supports both Socket 754 and Socket 939, and all nForce4 variants are pin-compatible with one another, providing motherboard manufacturers with a seamless infrastructure.