X-bit labs

NVIDIA nForce4 SLI (Intel Edition) Platform Review (page 3)

Category: Chipsets

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 04/13/2005 | 07:07 PM ]

Competitors from Intel

Having called this section “Competitors from Intel” we were not quite right. In fact, Intel doesn’t yet have any direct competitors to NVIDIA nForce4 SLI (Intel Edition). So far, none of the chipsets from this micro-processor giant even including the upcoming ones can boast fully-fledged SLI support. However, it doesn’t prevent Intel from offering its own high-performance chipset solutions targeted for the same market segment as NVIDIA nForce4 SLI (Intel Edition).

In particular, right now Intel is offering an i925XE Express chipset supporting LGA775 processors with 800MHz/1066MHz bus and DDR2-533 memory, which appears to be a competitor to our today’s hero from the market positioning point of view.

Although it would be totally wrong to regard a relatively old i925XE as a direct competitor to the new nForce4 SLI (Intel Edition). The thing is that when the mainboards on the new NVIDIA solution for Pentium 4 appear in the market, Intel will at the same time release its new high-performance solution aka i955X Express.

This chipset boasts much richer features list than the i925X, so the newcomer will turn into the primary competitor to the new nForce4 SLI (Intel Edition). Besides the support of 800MHz/1066MHz bus, i955X will also support DDR2-533 as well as faster DDR2-667 SDRAM, and will feature special technologies for faster work with the memory subsystem.

Another peculiarity of the new Intel core logic set will be the bigger number of PCI Express lanes. The North Bridge of i955X will support one PCI Express x16 interface, while the South Bridge will allow connecting another six PCI Express lanes. So, the mainboards based on the new Intel 955X may also be equipped with an additional PCI Express x4 bus, which can theoretically be used for SLI configurations. However, the final word regarding the SLI support in Intel 955X based mainboards belongs to NVIDIA, as they will have to allow or forbid these configurations in the drivers.

To give you a better idea of the advantages and disadvantages of both, NVIDIA nForce4 SLI (Intel Edition) and i955X, we composed the following table with all the major characteristics of the top chipsets for Pentium 4 platform:

According to this table, if the i925XE looks not so beautiful against the background of the new nForce4 SLI (Intel Edition), then the promising i955X can compete with NVIDIA’s solution more or less on equal terms. And even though i955X yields to NVIDIA nForce4 SLI (Intel Edition) in the maximum supported memory size, networking capabilities and the number of USB and Parallel ATA ports, it nevertheless boasts more PCI Express lanes and better sound quality.

That is why in this article we are going to compare the nForce4 SLI (Intel Edition) not only with the i925XE chipset, which is getting rather obsolete with the time, but also with the i955X, which is coming to replace the predecessor. This will allow us to get the best idea about the advantages and drawbacks of the NVIDIA’s new solutions compared with the competitors.