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Motherboards: May the NForce Be With You

Befitting a name that sounds like something out of Star Wars, NVidia's NForce motherboard chip set--the graphics chip powerhouse's first--promises to supercharge Athlon XP systems. AMD collaborated with NVidia to develop the chip set, which further exploits AMD CPU designs. NForce works with Athlon XPs as well as with older Athlons and Durons. It deserves your attention for a number of reasons.

NForce integrates the graphics processor, ethernet controller, media and communications processor, and audio processor to eliminate the additional costs of expansion cards. But it's much smarter than previous integrated chip sets.

Under the Hood

NForce's graphics processor performs several tricks that speed up various applications, not just graphics-intensive ones. Its TwinBank memory architecture uses two 64-bit DDR controllers that let apps ask for more data simultaneously. To pump information to apps quickly, the new onboard DASP (Dynamic Adaptive Speculative Pre-Processor) tracks historical CPU accesses, predicts future requests, and stores the data in an on-die buffer.

We tested an NForce reference system from NVidia with an older Athlon-1200 processor. It scored 227 on PC WorldBench 2000--almost matching the 228 average score for six Athlon-1333 PCs we've tested, and six points higher than the average of four Athlon-1200 machines. It also did fairly well compared with higher-megahertz Pentium 4 PCs (for more details see the chart).

The design innovations combine with NVidia's still-formidable GeForce2 technology to deliver that performance. "It's really the first time somebody has put a nearly top-of-the-line graphics core into a chip set," says Peter Glaskowsky, senior analyst for MicroDesign Resources. And unlike most integrated graphics designs, this one lets you upgrade later, using any AGP 4X graphics card.

In tests with popular games, we found virtually no visible difference at many resolutions between a system running NVidia's integrated graphics and the same system with a GeForce3 card. The GeForce3 pulled ahead, however, when we went to 1280 by 1024 and above, at 32-bit color.

NForce's audio chip--the same one Microsoft's Xbox console uses--offloads additional work from the CPU. In a game, for example, that means the CPU has more power to focus on other calculations.

You shouldn't expect an NForce for Pentium 4 PCs anytime soon, Glaskowsky says. Though Intel could benefit from some of NVidia's breakthroughs, it wants to protect its own chip set sales, he says.

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