nForce 500 technology

NVIDIA has integrated quite a few new features into their nForce5 family of chipsets. Before we get into the specifics though, let’s look at the features list:

NVIDIAs nForce5 lineup
	nForce 590 SLI	nForce 570 SLI	nForce 570 Ultra	nForce 550
Segment	Enthusiast SLI	Performance SLI	Performance non-SLI	Mainstream
Intended CPU	Athlon 64 FX, Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64	Athlon 64 FX, Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64	Athlon 64 FX, Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64	Athlon 64, Sempron
NVIDIA SLI Technology	Yes 2x16	Yes 1x16/2x8 in SLI	No	No
NVIDIA LinkBoost Technology	Yes	No	No	No
Max Overclocking	Yes	No	No	No
FirstPacket Technology	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
DualNet Technology	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Native Gigabit Ethernet connections	2	2	2	1
Teaming	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
TCP/IP Accleration	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
NVIDIA MediaShield	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
SATA/PATA Drives	6/2	6/2	6/2	6/2
SATA Speed	3GB/sec	3GB/sec	3GB/sec	3GB/sec
RAID	0, 1, 0+1, 5	0, 1, 0+1, 5	0, 1, 0+1	0, 1, 0+1
NVIDIA nTune	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
PCI Express Lanes, #Links Configuration	46 lanes, 9 links (16, 16, 8, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1)	28 lanes 6 links (16, 8, 1, 1, 1, 1)	20 lanes 5 links (16, 1, 1, 1, 1)	20 lanes 5 links (16, 1, 1, 1, 1)
USB Ports	10	10	10	10
PCI Slots	5	5	5	5
Audio	HD Audio (Azalia)	HD Audio (Azalia)	HD Audio (Azalia)	HD Audio (Azalia)

In the table above, you no doubt noticed lots of new buzzwords that have never been used by NVIDIA before. Words like LinkBoost, FirstPacket, and Teaming probably all sound pretty foreign to you, so we’ll go over all of the new technology NVIDIA is introducing with their nForce500 family first, before going over the specific features supported by each chipset in the nForce500 family.

LinkBoost

One new feature NVIDIA is touting in nForce 590 SLI is known as LinkBoost. Once LinkBoost is activated, the nForce 590 automatically increases the bandwidth of the PCI Express Graphics slots (PEG, the x16 slots) by 25% to 125MHz. In addition, the speed of NVIDIA’s HyperTransport connection between the SPP and the MCP is increased from 200MHz to 250MHz, providing up to GB/sec between the two chips.

Interestingly enough, NVIDIA doesn’t consider LinkBoost to be overclocking. This is because NVIDIA has tested and qualified the components to run at these speeds. There is one caveat though: the only GPU currently supported by LinkBoost is the GeForce 7900 GTX, with other GeForce cards the technology is automatically deactivated.

LinkBoost is a feature available only on the nForce 590. This is for two very good reasons. First of all, the nForce 590 is a dual chip configuration where each chip controls one x16 PCI Express slot, so this could theoretically create a bottleneck. LinkBoost is supposed to help alleviate this potential problem. (Of course, we should note that we haven’t run into any cases where NVIDIA’s decoupled PCI Express graphics lanes have created a bottleneck.) Secondly, LinkBoost is a premium feature, so it is only available on the premium class motherboards – the nForce 590.

Networking

When it comes to networking connectivity, NVIDIA’s new nForce chipsets certainly don’t disappoint. For starters you’ve got dual Gigabit Ethernet networking, a first for an NVIDIA chipset, previous nForce offerings only provided one GigE network connection, with the second being 10/100.

Each of the GigE controllers has its own TCP/IP offload engine. With TCP/IP Acceleration the chipset handles packet inspection and movement, offloading these duties from the CPU. Moving packets is a CPU and memory intensive process. TCP/IP Acceleration moves those processes to hardware, thus reducing CPU overhead. There is a drawback to this feature though. Software firewalls will be bypassed by this technology, rendering them useless. So unless you have a hardware firewall in your router, the CPU time saved is probably too little to risk the safety of your PC.







Another useful feature included in all versions of the nForce 500 except the nForce 550 is FirstPacket™ technology. FirstPacket prioritizes packets sent and received. Pictured above is a typical network. Normally, the gaming and other latency sensitive packets are treated the same as others, so these packets wait like any other packet from any other application. FirstPacket makes the network “intelligent” by prioritizing latency sensitive applications such as games and VoIP applications ahead of other programs. Here is FirstPacket in action:













DualNet® is another first by NVIDIA. All versions of the nForce 500 except the nForce 550 have DualNet available. The nForce 500 family is the first chipset to have dual gigabit connections on one physical chip. The two ports can be used separately, together, and in many other ways. One of these ways is called Teaming. Teaming makes two network connections appear as one, thus providing twice the bandwidth of a single connection. This is ideal for game servers that need to handle the demands of many connections, particularly during LAN parties.

Another method of utilizing DualNet is Failover. This method let’s you have a parallel connection. This way, in case one connection goes down, there will be another one to continue the work. This feature is critical for servers that upload important information. If a file is being uploaded/downloaded and someone trips over a wire, the other connection will continue the process seamlessly.

SLI Memory

The name of this feature is a little confusing, as fundamentally it implies that it requires SLI in order to work, but it doesn’t. What SLI Memory refers to is a new feature that NVIDIA is working with memory manufacturers to aid end users in getting the maximum amount of performance out of their memory modules.

Up to now all memory modules have relied on Serial Presence Detect (SPD) to initialize the system’s memory on bootup. SPD is fine for accomplishing this task, but it only specifies a few basic parameters such as memory timings, the rest is just basic information such as the memory manufacturer, serial number, etc.

With SLI Memory, NVIDIA adds a new Enhanced Performance Profile (EPP) specification that provides additional information that’s much more relevant to performance. Parameters such as signal drive strengths, voltage level, CAS/RAS latency, etc are all included. When an nForce 590 SLI motherboard is joined with an SLI-Ready memory module, the board automatically loads up the parameters (provided you’ve enabled the SLI Ready memory setting in BIOS), giving you an instant boost in performance.

For seasoned overclockers who have memory modules that go beyond 800MHz (say for instance, 1066MHz modules), NVIDIA’s SLI Memory technology can also be used to overclock the CPU. Inside the motherboard’s BIOS you’ll find SLI Memory options that would allow you to overclock your processor so your memory can run at 1066MHz. This feature basically opens up the world of overclocking to less experienced users. Keep in mind however that this may require the end user to increase the voltage of the processor.

The last technology introduced by nVidia is MediaShield™, a RAID optimization. RAID, short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks is a method to boost disk capacity and transfer speeds using multiple hard drives. RAID is easy to set up, right in Windows with MediaShield. MediaShield tells you which disk to replace if one fails and reports the health status of the disks. As with nForce 4, the nForce 500 series supports Native Command Queuing, which reorganizes disk requests to minimize passes and improving latencies.







MediaShield also eliminates the bottleneck of having an additional RAID controller. An additional RAID controller means hard drives communicate with the system through one lane of the PCI Express bus. Having all 6 SATA ports native eliminates the bottleneck, increasing performance. The PCI Express lane only has a max bandwidth of 1.5GB/sec, which may be fine for a single disk, but with multiple disks, there will be a bottleneck. MediaShield and nVidia’s MCP redesign eliminate any possible problems.