Thread: NVIDIA SLI takes on Intel systems

NVIDIASLI (Scalable Link Interface) is the guarantee that PCI-Express to come up to full speed and gaming performance is bolted to new heights unfortunately, this was only possible on AMD systems, since the corresponding NVIDIA chipset - the nForce 4 SLI - only for that particular platform had to offer.

As of today this is changing, because NVIDIA's nForce4 SLI Intel Edition officially what they already could admire at this year's CeBIT, which will make a splash, because we are sure after all, NVIDIA provides that the only way SLI on Intel systems use, Intel and NVIDIA signe done - since November last year patent cross-license-agreement - both companies are working together.

If two chips are available, it is logical that they share the various task sin a system, the APP, which has always stood for "System Platform Processor" shall, if the communication with the processor, main memory, and PCI Express. The MCP, this acronym stands for "Media and Communications Processor", takes care of thehard drives, PCI slots, USB, audio, LAN, of course.

At first glance there is nothing terribly spectacular to see of course,supports the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition, FSB of 1066 Mhz, the connection of the South to the North Bridge via a Hyper Transport link seems a bit thin at 800 MHz should be sufficient in practice, but



loose. After all, most of the bandwidth is probably needed in main memory and PCI Express and they are seen as one flanged to the Northbridge, 10 USB ports, one could see almost as exaggerated, but they must not even need to use - can usually be in the BIOS to disable it. 8-channel audio (7.1) is now a good tone and is also reflected in the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition.

The most important point in the block diagram is of course the SLI area, since the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition total of 20 PCI Express lanes, makes available to offer two options here, in addition to the three PCI Express x1 slots, which are to receive "normal" PCI-Express cards, you can find the picture on the other hand, what probably all look forward to: the ability to run two graphics cards together. Once instead of PCI-Express x16 PCI Express will then be used twice x8 ofcourse, each x8 slot does not have the full range, because that would require a total of 32 lanes.

NVIDIA choose the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition for DDR2, and for this reason, a Pentium 4 with 1066 MHz FSB comes at a peak bandwidth of 8.6GB / is,the bandwidth must look like the one on the memory side and offer the best still room for improvement. With NVIDIA Dual DDR2-667 achieved abandwidth of 10.6 GB / s But NVIDIA has come up with more ideas to improve the memory performance.