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August
2004 |
Downloadable
Version (.pdf format) |
Volume 3, Issue
8 |
| In
This Edition:
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Welcome to another edition of the
ASI Technical Newsletter featuring articles on new and current
computer technologies and products. If you are an ASI customer please
feel free to call Technical Support if you have any questions.
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| Nforce3
250 series overview and comparison
After coming off the
somewhat lack-luster performance and feature set of
the nForce3 150 series of nVidia chipsets, the nForce3
250 chipset is turning out to be somewhat of a
standout performer for nVidia. While all along nVidia had claimed that the nForce3 150 chipset was an
interim chipset, it was still criticized by many as
being a sub-par performer. Running at a HyperTransport
speed of just 600MHz, the 150 chipset did not even
match up to AMD's HyperTransport specification of
800MHz.
Both VIA and SiS had
both released full speed solutions, so there was not
really any compelling reason to purchase a limited
featured and slightly slower speed chipset. With the
nForce3 250, nVidia is looking to make themselves the
only serious choice for gamers and power users. Let's
take a look at some of the specifications and features
that they hope will make that happen.
|
|
| Chipset |
nForce3
250 |
nForce3
250Gb |
nForce3
250Gb Ultra |
nForce3
250Gb Ultra Pro |
| CPU |
Athlon
64 |
Athlon
64, Athlon 64 FX |
Athlon,
Athlon 64 |
Athlon
Athlon 64, Opteron |
| Socket |
754 |
754 |
754 |
949,
754 |
| System
Bus |
800MB/s
HyperTransport |
800MB/s
HyperTransport |
1000MB/s
HyperTransport |
1000MB/s
HyperTransport |
| 10/100
MAC |
yes |
yes |
yes |
yes |
| Gigabit
Ethernet |
no |
yes |
yes |
yes |
| On-Chip
Firewall |
no |
Yes |
yes |
yes |
| RAID
0, 1, 0+1, JBOD |
yes |
yes |
yes |
yes |
| USB
2.0 |
8
ports |
8
ports |
8
ports |
8
ports |
| HDD
Support |
ATA-133
x4
SATA x4 |
ATA-133
x4
SATA x4 |
ATA-133
x4
SATA x4 |
ATA-133
x4
SATA x4 |
| PCI
bus |
V2.2
/ 6 Slots |
V2.2
/ 6 Slots |
V2.2
/ 6 Slots |
V2.2
/ 6 Slots |
| AGP
Support |
8X/4X |
8X/4X |
8X/4X |
8X/4X |
| Audio |
7.1
surround sound (AC'97) |
7.1
surround sound (AC'97) |
7.1
surround sound (AC'97) |
7.1
surround sound (AC'97) |
| Power
Management |
ACPI
2.0 |
ACPI
2.0 |
ACPI
2.0 |
ACPI
2.0 |
| Target
Market |
Performance |
Enthusiast |
Enthusiast |
Professional |
| Competition |
VIA
K8T800
Intel 875 |
VIA
K8T800
Intel 875 |
- |
- |
As you can see, nVidia has
actually brought four flavors of the nForce3 250 chipset to the
market. From the lower end nForce3 250 to the stellar
performance of the nForce3 250Gb Ultra Pro, nVidia has
included a great feature set all the way across the platform.
One of the more impressive
features of the chipset has to do with the on-chip Gigabit
LAN. nVidia has moved the Gigabit LAN off of the traditional
PCI bus and onto it's own chip, therefore eliminating the bus
altogether. This allows the Gigabit LAN to perform at the full
internal speed of the chip itself. Previously, fast Ethernet
was never truly hampered by the speed of the bus since it was
maxing out at 100MB/s anyways, just below the speed of the bus
that it was using. With Gigabit Ethernet, this is not the
case. At 1000MB/s, the PCI bus can easily and quickly become a
bottle-neck for today's increasingly bustling data transfer
needs. nVidia's solution effectively prevents this from
happening.
 |
 |
| Standard
LAN |
nForce3
250Gb LAN |
nVidia
has included 4 excellent
pieces of configuration software in their nForce3 250 driver
suite. nVidia System Utility, NVMixer, nVidia RAID, and nVidia
Firewall give you plenty of control over all aspects of the
included hardware on your motherboard.
| The
nVidia System Utility allows
the user, on a per-session basis, to control most
aspects of timing on their systems. You can control
bus and memory timing as well as accessing the memory
and AGP bus for over-clocking experiments. The term
"per-session" refers to the fact that after
each reboot the system returns back to it's default
status, therefore preventing any permanent damage or
performance issues due to over-zealous over-clocking.
You do have the ability to create multiple profiles so
that you can save settings that you have found that
work for you and return to them easily upon fresh
reboots. The nVidia System Utility also allows you to
monitor hardware and system information about your
system on a continuous basis. |
 |
 |
nVidia
System Utility
|
| The
NVMixer
provides quick and easy access to all of the basic and
advanced features of the nForce3's onboard audio.
Volume, EQ, recording options, and easy set-up wizards
are all included for the user. The user can also
configure speaker setup, headphone interface, and
special effects such as spatial changes. |
|
NVMixer
Utility
|
| The
nVidia RAID applet
provides simple yet effective access to the nForce3's
RAID capabilities. The ability to build both serial
and parallel ATA RAID configurations within Windows is
available to the user through an easy to use interface
which also allows the monitoring of the array and the
added chance to use the Spare Disk Allocation in order
to allocate replacement drives in the event of drive
failure. |
 |
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|
nVidia
RAID Configuration Utility
|
| The
nVidia Firewall (available
only on the Gb chipset) is an amazing feature to find
on a desktop motherboard. The integrated firewall
allows the users machine to run in full stealth mode,
showing no open ports available to any system running
a sniffer program across the internet. This feature is
a huge bonus for anyone running a broadband connection
to the internet on an unprotected network. |
|
nVidia
Firewall Utility
|
With the hardware and software
improvements that nVidia has put together with their new
nForce3 250 series of chipsets, it looks like they may be
leaving their critics behind for a while . |
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| Serial
ATA Native Command Queuing (NCQ) |
You may have heard about NCQ or Native Command Queuing
and wondered what it is. This is a new storage technology
that is part of the SATA 2.0 specification but currently
being implemented on some SATA 1.5 drives and its use will
grow rapidly in the next couple of years. NCQ is a way to
overcome some of the problems imposed by reading and writing
data  from
an electro-mechanical device such as a hard drive. The
problem is data becomes randomized on the drive, slowing
performance. In short, NCQ streamlines
the data transfer portion of queued commands by allowing the
drive itself to reorder commands based on disk organization
and angular position.
Serial ATA Native
Command Queuing will significantly increase I/O performance
in entry-level server systems, compared with servers using
other Serial ATA or Parallel ATA solutions. It enables a
Serial ATA hard drive to take a set of incoming commands and
reorder them intelligently before accessing the data and
submitting it back to the host for action. NCQ, when paired
with capable hard disk drives, increases storage performance
on random workloads by allowing the drive to optimize the
order of commands. This provides increased performance for
today's multi-tasking environments and demanding
applications.
Serial ATA Native
Command Queuing allows a queue depth of up to 32 outstanding
commands. Serial ATA Native Command Queuing is similar in
some ways to SCSI command queuing, but SCSI allows 256 queue
levels. SCSI
command queuing also continues to provide unique intelligent
data handling features such as head of queue and out of
order queuing that enable a system to reorder commands
within the interface and reprioritize specific commands,
even after they've been
submitted - features that are critical to the mid-range and
high-end servers that enterprise applications depend on.
Native Command Queuing
will not be widely implemented until SATA 2.0 drives and
controllers hit the market, but it is already being
implement on some current SATA 150 drives such as one from
Seagate (model is 160GB 3.5" 7200rpm SATA/150 8-Mbyte =
ASI SKU 29607)
NCQ is also being used
in Intel's ICH6R chipset for onboard SATA RAID also called
Matrix RAID (see graphic to the right). Intel Matrix Storage
Technology can be found on select platforms based on the
Intel®915G and 915P Express chipsets and the Intel®925X
Express chipset.
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| Related
Technologies
- WD Caviar RE (RAID Edition) |
 Western
Digital has a new series of WD Caviar RE (RAID Edition)
drives that offer special RAID specific features (on both
SATA and PATA IDE drives). While not the same as NCQ, this
is a hard drive specific technology called
"RAID-specific time-limited error recovery."
RAID-specific time-limited
error recovery feature that improves compatibility with RAID
adapters and prevents drive fallout caused by extended drive
error-recovery processes common to desktop drives. In
addition the Caviar RE drives feature 8MB cache and FDB
(Fluid Dynamic Bearings), and 1 million hours MTBF – meets
enterprise-class reliability standards. These really help
the drive survive in the high-demand, high duty-cycle world
of RAID.
RAID Edition
Drives
|
| ASI
SKU # |
Model |
Capacity |
Interface |
Specs |
| 29718 |
2500SD |
250GB |
SATA |
7200rpm
/ 8MB |
| 30075 |
2500SB |
250GB |
IDE
Ultra ATA100 |
7200rpm
/ 8MB |
| 29485 |
2500SB |
250GB |
IDE
Ultra ATA100 |
7200rpm
/ 8MB / 3-year |
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For more information see:
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| Intel
Xeon 800FSB Processors with EM64T
Technology
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Intel
is soon launching an entirely new high-performance
server platform line based on the next-generation
Xeon processors. These processors feature 800MHz
front-side bus (800 FSB), 90 nanometer technology, 1
MB Level 2 advanced transfer cache, 16KB L1 cache,
and EM64T (Intel® Extended Memory 64 Technology).
The
Intel® Xeon™ processor with 800 MHz system bus is
designed for high-performance dual-processor
workstation and server applications. Based on the
Intel® NetBurst™ microarchitecture and the
Hyper-Threading Technology, it is binary compatible
with previous Intel Architecture (IA-32) processors.
The Intel Xeon processor with 800 MHz system bus is
scalable to two processors in a multiprocessor
system providing exceptional performance for
applications running on advanced operating systems
such as Windows XP*, Windows Server* 2003, Linux*,
and UNIX*.
The
Xeon 800FSB processors will be matched with
motherboards using the E7520 (performance), E7525
(workstation) and 7320 (value) line of chipsets. The
XEON 800 will officially start at 3.6GHz but will
also be available in other speeds.
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| NEW
PROCESSOR FEATURES |
- 800
MHz system bus
- Symmetric
Multiprocessing (Dual processor capable)
- 90
nanometer process
- 16
KB Level 1 cache
- 1
MB Level 2 Advanced transfer cache
- Hyper-Threading
Technology
- Intel®
Extended Memory 64 Technology (enables system
support of up to 64GB physical memory)
- Demand
Based Switching with Enhanced Intel SpeedStep®
Technology
- Streaming
SIMD Extensions 3 (SSE3).
- Hyper
Pipelined technology
|
| A
CLOSER LOOK AT EM64T
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|
Intel®
Extended Memory 64 Technology
is one of a number of innovations being added to
Intel's IA-32 Server and Workstation platforms in
2004. It represents a natural addition to Intel's
IA-32 architecture, allowing platforms to access
larger amounts of memory. Processors with Intel®
EM64T will support 64-bit extended operating systems
from Microsoft, Red Hat and SuSE. Processors running
in legacy* mode remain fully compatible with today's
existing 32-bit applications and operating systems.
(Note:
EM64T is not compatible with Itanium processor
architecture or software.)
EM64T has 3 modes. The modes are NOT selectable but
determined by the processor itself based on the
proper support of installed components such as EM64
enabled BIOS, drivers, OS, and applications. The
modes are:
1
- Legacy Mode = 32-bit O/S and 32-bit applications:
No software changes are
required; however the user gets no benefit from
Intel® EM64T
2
- IA-32e = Compatibility Mode = 64-bit O/S and
32-bit applications: This usage requires
all 64-bit device drivers. In this mode, the O/S
will see the 64-bit extensions, but the 32-bit
application will not. Existing 32-bit applications
do not need to be recompiled, and may or may not
benefit from the 64-bit extensions. The application
will likely need to be recertified by the vendor to
run on the new 64-bit extended O/S
3
- IA -32 = 64-bit Mode = 64-bit O/S and 64-bit
applications: This usage requires 64-bit
device drivers. It also requires applications to be
modified for 64-bit operation and then recompiled
and validated
SuSE Linux, Redhat and Microsoft will all offer
64-bit support Operating Systems for the new XEONS
starting in second half of 2004.
Microsoft currently has BETA preview version
available for testing downloads. Here are the links
(compatibility is not guaranteed):
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/64bit/extended/trial/default.mspx
(Server 2003)
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/evaluation/upgrade.mspx
(Windows XP)
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Processor
Integration notes:
When purchasing XEON 800 processors you must be
aware of the type of chassis they will be integrated
into because for each speed of the processor there
will be three different SKU. These SKU will cover 1U
passive, 2U passive, and boxed (active) heatsinks
(Intel also calls these CEK - common enabling kits).
The
1U is for 1U chassis only, the 2U passive is for 2U
or Intel pedestal cases that include the cooling Air
Ducts (SC5300 series - all versions). If you use
SC5275e chassis or third-party chassis you must use
the active heatsinks.
For
more information on the new 800FSB XEON processor
products go to WWW.ASISERVER.COM
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| E7520
and 7320 Server Chipsets - Details and Specs |
To support the
next generation XEON 800FSB processors and new generation high-performance
server platforms Intel is launching two additional chipsets next to the
already released E7525 XEON workstation chipsets.
These new chipsets, the E7520 (aimed at the
mainstream volume server market) and the 7320 (aimed at value server board
market), will support an array of important new technologies on the
processor, memory and expansion sides for the motherboards allowing
companies to design innovative and highly scalable server motherboards and
for resellers to build reliable and feature-packed server platforms.
The Intel® E7520 and the Intel® E7320
chipsets enable reduced power consumption, improved platform reliability
and system manageability compared to previous generation server platforms.
The Intel E7520 and the Intel E7320
chipsets also include revolutionary PCI Express serial I/O technology and
DDR2, the next generation memory technology to help increase I/O bandwidth
and reduce system latency for data-intensive applications. The XEON
processor with 800 MHz system bus allows these chipsets to support the
Intel® Xeon™ processor with Intel®
Extended Memory 64 Technology (Intel® EM64T), Hyper
Threading technology, Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® Technology and
Streaming SIMD Extensions 3 (SSE3) Instructions.
|
| E7520
and E7320 CHIPSET CHART |
| |
Intel®
E7520
Chipset |
Intel®
E7320
Chipset |
|
E7520
Chipset |
E7320
Chipset |
| |
Intel®
Xeon™ processor with 800 MHz System Bus, 1 MB L2 Cache |
Intel®
Xeon™ processor with 800 MHz System Bus, 1 MB L2 Cache |
| Number
Processors |
1
or 2 |
1
or 2 |
| System
Bus |
800
MHz |
800
MHz |
| Package |
1077
FC-BGA |
1077
FC-BGA |
| MEMORY |
E7520
Chipset |
E7320
Chipset |
| Memory
Modules |
Dual
Channel, (4 DIMMs per channel DDR2-400 and DDR 266) (3 DIMMs per
channel DDR 333) |
Dual
Channel, (4 DIMMs per channel DDR2-400 and DDR 266) (3 DIMMs per
channel DDR 333) |
| Memory
Type |
DDR2-400,
DDR 333 and DDR 266 |
DDR2-400,
DDR 333 and DDR 266 |
| Max
Memory |
16GB
DDR2-400, 16GB DDR 333 and 32GB DDR266 |
16GB
DDR2-400, 16GB DDR 333 and 32GB DDR266 |
| Number
of Rows/Devices |
DDR2-400
1 - 4 rows, 1 - 4 DIMMs DDR 333 1 - 4 rows, 1 - 3 DIMMs DDR 266 1-
8 rows, 1 - 4 DIMMs |
DDR2-400
1 - 4 rows, 1 - 4 DIMMs DDR 333 1 - 4 rows, 1 - 3 DIMMs DDR 266 1-
8 rows, 1 - 4 DIMMs |
| Mbit
Support |
DDR2-400
1-Gb or 512/256 Mbit DDR 333 1-Gb or 512/256/128 Mbit DDR 266 1-Gb
or 512/256/128 Mbit |
DDR2-400
1-Gb or 512/256 Mbit DDR 333 1-Gb or 512/256/128 Mbit DDR 266 1-Gb
or 512/256/128 Mbit |
| ECC/Parity |
Yes |
Yes |
| I/O
CONTROLLER HUB |
E7520
Chipset |
E7320
Chipset |
| Type
(two options) |
|
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| ICH
Package |
|
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| PCI
Support |
| Single
32-bit PCI segment |
 |
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Single
32-bit PCI segment, Single 64-bit 66MHz PCI-X segment |
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| Single
32-bit PCI segment |
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Single
32-bit PCI segment, Single 64-bit 66MHz PCI-X segment |
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| PCI
Masters |
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| IDE |
| Two
channel Ultra ATA |
|
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|
UDMA
ATA 100 |
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| Two
channel Ultra ATA |
|
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|
UDMA
ATA 100 |
|
| Serial
ATA |
| 2
ports ATA 150 |
|
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|
2
ports ATA 150 |
|
| 2
ports ATA 150 |
|
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|
2
ports ATA 150 |
|
| USB
Ports/Controllers |
| 8
USB 2.0 ports |
|
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|
4
USB 2.0 ports |
|
| 8
USB 2.0 ports |
|
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|
4
USB 2.0 ports |
|
| LAN
MAC |
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| AC'97
Digital Circuits |
| AC'97
2.3 compliant |
|
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|
AC'97
2.2 compliant |
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| AC'97
2.3 compliant |
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AC'97
2.2 compliant |
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| MANAGEABILITY |
E7520
Chipset |
E7320
Chipset |
| RASUM
(Reliability, Availability, Serviceability, Usability,
Manageability) |
Memory
Mirroring, Memory Sparing, Memory ECC, Intel® x4 Single Device
Data Correction (X4 SDDC)4, Hub Interface ECC, Hardware Memory
Scrubbing, DMA |
Memory
Sparing, Memory ECC, Intel® x4 Single Device Data Correction (X4
SDDC)4, Hub Interface ECC, Hardware Memory Scrubbing |
| I/O
Management |
SMBus
2.0 Support/ GPIO |
SMBus
2.0 Support/ GPIO |
| Hyper-Threading
Technology Support |
Yes |
Yes |
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