NVIDIA nForce2 Previews
The date has arrived for hardware sites to release details of NVIDIA’s latest generation chipset, the nForce2. By all accounts nForce2 is a far superior attempt than its predecessor, with some great features…
- integrated Dolby Digital 5.1 audio
- dual networking controllers, including a 3Com Ethernet MAC for simultaneous wide-area network (WAN) and local-area network (LAN) environments
- integrated GeForce4 MX GPU
- up to three Firewire (IEEE1394a) ports, and six USB 2.0 ports
Check out Anand and Tom’s for more details.
To top it off, much praised SFF (small-form factor) PC maker Shuttle is also expected to make an announcement very soon about their own barebones system employing the nForce2. Finally small, quiet and powerful LAN boxes are a very real possibility for the average gamer. I’m excited!
Viahardware
posted by bruce · at 3:27 pm · filed under News
Sounds like a great chipset, esp. the memory bandwidth it offers. Only ‘problem’ seems to be it’s only for the Athlon, which is reaching end of life prior to ‘Hammer’. It would be nice to see what a P4 could do with that kind of bandwidth, given the RDRAM has been the only memory tech that could take full advantage of the processor so far. And, as Tom’s points out, it’s odd they didn’t stick Serial-ATA support on there.