MSI Releases NF4 boards

[Wookie]

http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20041029AC082.html


MSI launches nForce 4-based K8N motherboards Press release; Steve Shen,
DigiTimes.com [Friday 29 October 2004]


Micro-Star International (MSI) has launched two Nvidia nForce4-based
motherboards, the K8N Diamond and K8N Neo 4 Platinum, for the Advanced Micro
Devices (AMD) Athlon 64 processor platform, according to a company press
release.

The K8N Diamond features the Nvidia nForce4 SLI MCP (media and
communication processor), and the graphics interface can be set to a single
PCI Express x16 or dual PCI Express x8. According to MSI, the K8N Diamond
can accelerate 3D performance by over 180% when using two SLI-ready graphics
cards.

The K8N nForce4 boards also feature a SATA-2 interface that supports
hard-disk data transfer rates of up to 3Gb/sec, twice as fast as SATA-1, MSI
said.

MSI has also adopted Silicon Image's RAID controller for these nForce
4-based motherboards. It supports two additional SATA-2 ports on the K8N
Diamond and RAID 5 functionality for the K8N Neo 4 Platinum.

Both boards also support other MSI technologies and functions, such as
a CoreCell chip, DOT (dynamic overclocking technology) and Meta I/O,
according to the release.

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20041029AC082.html


MSI launches nForce 4-based K8N motherboards Press release; Steve Shen,
DigiTimes.com [Friday 29 October 2004]


Micro-Star International (MSI) has launched two Nvidia nForce4-based
motherboards, the K8N Diamond and K8N Neo 4 Platinum, for the Advanced Micro
Devices (AMD) Athlon 64 processor platform, according to a company press
release.

The K8N Diamond features the Nvidia nForce4 SLI MCP (media and
communication processor), and the graphics interface can be set to a single
PCI Express x16 or dual PCI Express x8. According to MSI, the K8N Diamond
can accelerate 3D performance by over 180% when using two SLI-ready graphics
cards.

The K8N nForce4 boards also feature a SATA-2 interface that supports
hard-disk data transfer rates of up to 3Gb/sec, twice as fast as SATA-1, MSI
said.

MSI has also adopted Silicon Image's RAID controller for these nForce
4-based motherboards. It supports two additional SATA-2 ports on the K8N
Diamond and RAID 5 functionality for the K8N Neo 4 Platinum.

Both boards also support other MSI technologies and functions, such as
a CoreCell chip, DOT (dynamic overclocking technology) and Meta I/O,
according to the release.

It's a good idea to wait a few months before getting an nForce-4 board.
There are bugs in the A0 and A1 steppings for the nForce-4 that limit it
to an 800MHz HT bus. The nForce3-250 runs at the full speed. There aren't
any real performance advantages for PCI-Express yet or for SATA-2. The
first SATA-2 drives aren't out yet. If you are buying a system this year
stick with the Nforce 3-250, I'd wait until the end of Q1 before buying an
Nforce-4 system.

 

[Cuzman]

" The K8N Diamond features the Nvidia nForce4 SLI MCP (media and
communication processor), and the graphics interface can be set to a single
PCI Express x16 or dual PCI Express x8. According to MSI, the K8N Diamond
can accelerate 3D performance by over 180% when using two SLI-ready graphics
cards. "


A better picture of the board can be seen here: http://snipurl.com/a6eo

 

[Wookie]

Which NF3 board would you buy (939 pin CPU)?

http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20041029AC082.html


MSI launches nForce 4-based K8N motherboards Press release; Steve Shen,
DigiTimes.com [Friday 29 October 2004]


Micro-Star International (MSI) has launched two Nvidia
nForce4-based
motherboards, the K8N Diamond and K8N Neo 4 Platinum, for the Advanced
Micro
Devices (AMD) Athlon 64 processor platform, according to a company press
release.

The K8N Diamond features the Nvidia nForce4 SLI MCP (media and
communication processor), and the graphics interface can be set to a
single
PCI Express x16 or dual PCI Express x8. According to MSI, the K8N Diamond
can accelerate 3D performance by over 180% when using two SLI-ready
graphics
cards.

The K8N nForce4 boards also feature a SATA-2 interface that
supports
hard-disk data transfer rates of up to 3Gb/sec, twice as fast as SATA-1,
MSI
said.

MSI has also adopted Silicon Image's RAID controller for these
nForce
4-based motherboards. It supports two additional SATA-2 ports on the K8N
Diamond and RAID 5 functionality for the K8N Neo 4 Platinum.

Both boards also support other MSI technologies and functions, such
as
a CoreCell chip, DOT (dynamic overclocking technology) and Meta I/O,
according to the release.

It's a good idea to wait a few months before getting an nForce-4 board.
There are bugs in the A0 and A1 steppings for the nForce-4 that limit it
to an 800MHz HT bus. The nForce3-250 runs at the full speed. There aren't
any real performance advantages for PCI-Express yet or for SATA-2. The
first SATA-2 drives aren't out yet. If you are buying a system this year
stick with the Nforce 3-250, I'd wait until the end of Q1 before buying an
Nforce-4 system.

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

Which NF3 board would you buy (939 pin CPU)?

I'm planning on building an MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum based system before the
end of the year. I'll probably use the Athlon 64 3500+ 939 unless there
is a huge price drop on the 3800+ in the next month. The sweet spot in the
line is the 3500+ which can be had for $283 for the 130nm version and $315
for the 90nm version. That's less than half as much as the 3800+. If you
are willing to spend the kind of money that they are asking for a 3800+ or
faster you would be much better off building a dual Opteron system. I'm
also planning on putting 2G of RAM in the box, although 1G is fine for
people with less intense computing requirements than me (I'm a chip
designer so I do a lot of Verilog simulation and FPGA place and routing).

I wouldn't consider a 754 pin system. The most important thing for system
performance is the total amount of RAM in the system. The 754 pin chips
can only support two DIMMs running at PC3200. The 939 pin CPUs support
four DIMMs which means that you can put twice as much RAM in the system.
The extra bandwidth of the 939s is a nice plus but in the current
generation it is offset by the smaller cache. However AMD is introducing
dual core processors next year. The dual memory buses on the 939 pin
package gives the system enough bandwidth to comfortable support two
cores. Historically I haven't done CPU upgrades because they normally
don't yield enough extra performance to warrent the hassle. However In
this one situation I think an upgrade from a single core to a dual core
system will be worth it. Because of heat considerations AMD is going to
limit the clock speeds of the dual core parts to two or three speed steps
below the fastest single core part of the time. However since the 3500+ is
already two speed steps down that means that in 2006 you will be able to
buy a dual core part that has at least the same clock speed as the 3500+
and maybe will be 10 or 20% higher.

 

[Wookie]

I have a 3600 .. which was not put into production, a present from a friend
who is in the business.
.. I'm not too sure which board to get .. I'm pretty sure that I want to
get the MSI NEO2 Plantinum as well. I'm pretty disappointed that the NF4
boards ddidn't come out with Soundstorm as they intially hinted they were.
Right now I have an ABIT NF7-S with an XP 2700 I overclock to over 3000
speeds.
I have been really happy with the NF7 and it can play anything I throw at
it .. but I know with the 939 chip I could go faster. The latest reviews
just don't indicate that the NF4 is much faster a board than the NF3 until
they get some issues fixed and some more mature drivers. I am also in a
quandry as to whether rebuild my system with the components from my current
system and put the NF7-S in the closet or just build a new system .. which
is more expensive.

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

I have a 3600 .. which was not put into production, a present from a friend
who is in the business.
.. I'm not too sure which board to get .. I'm pretty sure that I want to
get the MSI NEO2 Plantinum as well. I'm pretty disappointed that the NF4
boards ddidn't come out with Soundstorm as they intially hinted they were.
Right now I have an ABIT NF7-S with an XP 2700 I overclock to over 3000
speeds.
I have been really happy with the NF7 and it can play anything I throw at
it .. but I know with the 939 chip I could go faster. The latest reviews
just don't indicate that the NF4 is much faster a board than the NF3 until
they get some issues fixed and some more mature drivers. I am also in a
quandry as to whether rebuild my system with the components from my current
system and put the NF7-S in the closet or just build a new system .. which
is more expensive.

The XP2700 is a pretty good system, it seems a shame not to keep it. I
have 6 machines on my LAN, ranging from a 450MHz PII to an Athlon 64 3400+
laptop and a dual 2.66GHz Xeon server. The PII acts as a CVS and Bind
server, the Xeon and the Athlon 64 laptop (it's twice as fast as one of
the Xeon processors) do simulation. I use a 500MHz PIII as a workstation
and X server. When I build the 3500+ I'm going to use it as my workstation
instead and find some other roll for the PIII. I might retire the PII and
use the PIII as a CVS server. This is a long way of saying that it
possible to make good use of older machines, at least if you run Linux
which naturally handles a multi-machine environment.

 

[JS]

The 754 pin chips
can only support two DIMMs running at PC3200. The 939 pin CPUs support
four DIMMs which means that you can put twice as much RAM in the system.

Have you seen a spec sheet that says you can run four PC3200-512MByte
memory sticks at full speed on the socket 939 parts?

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

Have you seen a spec sheet that says you can run four PC3200-512MByte
memory sticks at full speed on the socket 939 parts?

The 939 has two separated memory buses so there are only two DIMMs on each
bus. The 754 has a single memory bus so the board manufacturers but 3
DIMMs on the memory bus bus. They spec the 754 boards to run 3 DIMMs at
333MHz or two at 400MHz. Because the 939s have only two the DIMMs on a bus
they can run 400MHz on each bus, just like the 754s with two DIMMs. The
939s should have a little better signal quality because there are only two
sockets on their buses, the 754 has three sockets on it's bus so the
signal traces are longer and have an extra stub.