The nForce4 SLI Intel Edition is loaded with features. NVIDIA launch partners manufacture over 50% of the world's motherboards and consist of ABIT, ASUS, GIGABYTE, MiTAC, and MSI.
nForce4 SLI Intel Edition Reference Board
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Retail motherboards are expected to be available at the end of April and will command a premium price, much like the initial SLI-based motherboards for the AMD64. However, prices are expected to drop as additional motherboards enter the market.
PERFORMANCE
Frontside Bus: Pentium 4 CPU Interface
2X address and 4X data
QDR (Quad Data Rate) support for 400 MT/s - 1066 MT/s (100MHz –266MHz FSB)
Theoretical maximum burst bandwidth of 8.5GB/sec
Standard bus speeds up to 266MHz supported
36-bit addressing for access to 64GB of memory space
Dynamic Bus Inversion
Front-side bus (FSB) pipeline depth of 12 in-order queue depth
Hyper-Threading Technology support
Dual Channel DDR2 128-Bit Memory Interface
Two independent 64-bit memory controllers
Can also operate in ganged mode (as one 128-bit controller)
Support for 400 MT/s (200MHz), 533 MT/sec (266MHz), and 667 MT/sec (333 MHz) for a theoretical
maximum bandwidth of 10.6 GB/sec
Up to eight internal banks per DDR2 chip
Up to two DIMMs per controller for a maximum of four DIMM support
Separate 64-bit data bus per controller
Separate address and control bus per DIMM
Up to 16 GB using four 4-GB DIMMs
Supports synchronous and pseudo-synchronous operation with FSB
Supports un-buffered non-ECC DIMMs
Low power suspend-to-RAM (S3) support
Active and pre-charge power down
Support for SPD (Serial Presence Detect) scheme for DIMM detection and configuration
Power Management
Internal clock generator
Support for Pentium 4 performance states
Support for HyperTransport link lower power disconnected state
PCI Express L0s and L1 active link power management support and L2/L3 low power state
support
Full ACPI 2.0 and PCI PM 1.1 support, including C2/C3, Power on Suspend
Suspend to RAM, Suspend to Disk, and Soft-Off CPU power state support
NETWORKING
Native Gigabit Ethernet technology
The fastest Gigabit Ethernet solution in the market
Supports 10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet
RGMII or MII interface
Advanced networking features
TCP segmentation offload
Jumbo frames
Checksum offloads
Interrupt moderation
Traffic prioritization
Remote wake-up
Network management for easy set up, configuration, and monitoring
SECURITY
NVIDIA ActiveArmor Secure Networking Engine
Dedicated hardware engine
Enhances network security
Reduces CPU overhead
Powers and accelerates ActiveArmor Firewall
ActiveArmor Firewall Technology
Industry's first true hardware-based firewall
Unmatched performance and protection
'instant-on' and tamper resistant
Advanced management features through user friendly interface
Remote access, configuration, monitoring
Command line interface (CLI)
Intelligent application management
STORAGE
NVIDIA MediaShield Storage
RAID 5 faster disk access with fault tolerance and optimized capacity
RAID 0 disk striping support for highest system and application performance
RAID 1 disk mirroring support for fault tolerance
RAID 0 +1 disk striping and mirroring support for highest performance with fault tolerance
NVIDIA Disk Alert System provides a visual indication so users know exactly which SATA hard
drive to replace during an array failure
Converting allows users to change the current state of an array to another using one single step
without reboot of the PC
Cross Controller RAID uniquely supports both SATA and PATA disk devices within a single array
Serial ATA
Support for SATAII 3Gb/sec and SATA 1.5Gb/sec disk controller standards
Supports full Tagged Command Queuing (TCQ) and Native Command Queuing (NCQ)
Dual controller architecture
Two separate and independent controller results in up to twice the bandwidth to disks
Four (4) integrated SATA 3Gb/sec ports.
Fast Ultra ATA-133 Disk Drive Controller
5V-tolerant primary and secondary channels, with support for up to four devices
Supports Ultra-DMA modes 6-0, DMA modes 2-0, and PIO modes 4-0
Industry-standard PCI bus master IDE register set
Separate independent IDE connections for 5V-tolerant primary and secondary interfaces
CONNECTIVITY
PCI Express Interface - SLI
PCI Express high-performance, scalable interconnect
designed to replace the AGP and PCI interconnects currently in use
A x16 PCI Express link has 4 times the total bandwidth of today's AGP 8X interface
x16 PCI Express link for high performance graphics cards featuring the latest Graphics
Processors with DirectX 9.0 and Shader Model 3.0 support
Additional x1 PCI Express links for other add-in cards
Five independent PCI Express controllers with 20 total lanes that can be configured as follows:
One x16 and four x1 PCI Express lanes
Two x8 and three x1 PCI Express lanes (SLI Mode)
x16 controller can support isochronous data channel
Supports PME messages for power management
2.5 GHz support for a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 2.5Gb/sec per lane per direction
USB 2.0
USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller Interface (EHCI) / USB 1.1 Open Host Controller Interface
(OHCI)
Support for up to 10 ports.
Supports transfer rates at high speed (480Mbps), full speed (12Mbps), and low speed (1.2Mbps)
Dynamically configures slower devices for best utilization of bandwidth
Allows USB concurrency
PCI Interface
Includes an arbiter that supports six external master PCI slots
Features of the PCI interface include:
PCI 2.3-compliant, 5 V tolerant
Supports six external PCI slots at 33MHz
Supports five bus master arbitration
PCI master and slave interfaces
Supports both master-initiated and slave-initiated terminations
Bidirectional write posting support for concurrency
Flexible routing of all four PCI interrupts
Supports read ahead: memory read line (MRL) and memory read multiple (MRM)
AUDIO
AC '97 2.3 compliant interface
Supports 2, 4, 6, or 8-channel audio
Dual AC-Link - supports up to two codecs
Dual SPDIF - supports two simultaneous digital outputs; handles stereo PCM or AC-3 output
16-bit or 20-bit stereo, 48kHz output and 16-bit input streams across AC-Link
24-bit, 96kHz stereo output on the secondary SPDIF output
Supports input, output, and general purpose input/output channels for host-based modems
Separate independent functions for audio and modem
