# NFORCE 4 (How is the support)

## fredgt

The mobo of my desktop pc just died on me and i decided not to fix it. I'm going to go for a 64bit system. 

Now is was wondering how the 64bit support for the nforce 4 chipset is as i am probably going to buy an Asus A8N-E mobo.

PCI-e ?

Audio ?

SATA2 ?

...

Any comments on the nforce4 chipset running a 64bit gentoo are welcome.

Also how are the 64bit drivers for NVIDIA Graphic cards?

THX

----------

## PrakashP

There will "never" be NCQ support for SATA. This Info comes from NVidia directly.

----------

## lemaymd

I just upgraded my system to an nForce4-based platform two weeks ago, and I'm loving it.

I based the system on the Abit AN8-SLI motherboard, which is reviewed here: http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-297-1.htm

The review will be helpful to you no matter which board you end up choosing, since all nForce4 boards resemble each other to some degree.

I'm actually a developer, not a gamer, but I bought an SLI board because Newegg was running a $20 rebate on it, so it was cheaper than the non-SLI version.  You may be better off now going with the Abit AN8-Ultra, unless you need SLI.

I usually go with the integrated graphics adapters on modern mobos, but this one didn't include one.  Thus, I ended up purchasing one of the cheapest PCI-X graphics adapters available, the Sapphire Radeon X300SE 256MB HyperMemory.  Only 128MB is on-board, but that is 4x as much as that included on the 128MB HyperMemory version, which is only a few bucks cheaper.  I have not gotten the 3D component of the proprietary ATI drivers to work with the card yet.  I'm waiting for support...

I installed 4 sticks of 512MB DDR400, and have 4.5GB/s memory bandwidth according to Sandra (I dual-boot into Server 2003 32-bit).  That seems a little low, but plenty for me.  Two sticks are Corsair ValueRAM and the other two are PQI Turbo.  Both have CAS times of 2.5 and cost less than $200 together.

I accidentally purchased SATA-150 drives, so I couldn't speak to the NCQ issue.  Of course, the nForce4 SATA RAID solution is basically a BIOS veneer that tells Windows how to configure a software RAID array.  I actually do use the BIOS RAID facility, and am running a dmraid-based RAID-0 configuration of two Hitachi 7K250's.  According to hdparm, the drives each have a 58MB/s transfer rate, and they run at 116MB/s together.  Apparently, the software RAID is pretty close to ideal.  They feel fast and are very rarely accessed with swap disabled and a Reiser4 filesystem.

The audio also sucks some processor power, as it is emulated audio.  I am currently running tvtime with my AverTV Go 007 FM Plus that I got from Newegg for $15 after rebate  :Smile: , and the CPU usage is only at 2.3%.  (I have the app minimized, so audio is the primary CPU user.  When I unminimize it, I run closer to 25% usage)  It sounds good though, and has a lot of outputs, including digital.  Of course, I bought the $7 Logitech speaker set, so I'm not an authority on audio either.  The riser card that shipped with my motherboard was bad, so the right speaker channel is intermittently available.  I emailed Abit, and they said they've already shipped me a new riser.

Of course, CPU usage is relative.  The figures above were gathered while my Athlon64 3000+ was running at 1GHz.  The processor has two modes, 1.8GHz and 1GHz.  It flips between the two very efficiently, and usually only pops up to 1.8GHz when I'm compiling something.  Afaik, the 3000+ is the cheapest processor available for socket 939, at $145.  My BogoMIPS rating is 3620.56 at 1.8GHz.

Everything on the board seems to be supported, except ACPI.  This board supports a very deep standby mode.  In Windows, "Stand By" (not Hibernate) turns off everything on the machine, including my water cooling system that is directly connected to the power supply, and evey fan in the system, even the side fan in my window case.  Under Linux, it'll turn off, but not come back.  That's why I visited the forums tonight.  :Smile: 

To speak a little more specifically to my board: It has a really neat heatpipe-cooling solution for the chipset, so I don't have a single fan on my motherboard (since my processor is water-cooled).  The BIOS is outstanding, and allows you to tweak pretty much every system parameter.  Unfortunately, none of my components overclock well at all, I'm running everything stock.  Even when I get it to run "stably" while overclocked, I get kernel panics and repeatable, frequent internal GCC errors.  The BIOS has a nice status display on the motherboard that tells me when I've over-overclocked.  It also has a safe mode that will rescue you from over-overclocking your processor.

I hope that helps.  Below I've included a tally of my net expenses for every component included in my PC's case, minus shipping:  (everything came from Newegg unless otherwise noted)

Aluminum Window Case w/400W supply: $31.00

Kingwin AWC-1 water cooling kit: $86.99 + $2.99 Ceramique grease (Dealsonic.com)

120GB WD Caviar ATA/133 7200 drive: $80 (BestBuy)

2x 160GB Hitachi 7K250 SATA150 drives: $80.00 x2 = $160.00

1024MB Corsair ValueSelect dual-channel RAM kit: $89.75

1024MB PQI Turbo dual-channel RAM kit: $87.31 (after rebate)

Abit AN8-SLI full-ATX mobo: $115.00 (after rebate)

Sapphire Radeon X300SE HyperMemory 256MB PCI-X x16 card: $52.50

AMD Athlon64 "Venice" 3000+: $146.00

AverTV Go 007 FM Plus TV/FM tuner card: $15.00 (after rebate)

BenQ Dual-layer internal DVD+/-RW drive: $39.99

Floppy drive: $5.00 (used)

TOTAL: $911.53

Wow, I've never actually tallied that before.  Things add up!

----------

## RBJ1128

 *lemaymd wrote:*   

> I just upgraded my system to an nForce4-based platform two weeks ago, and I'm loving it.
> 
> I based the system on the Abit AN8-SLI motherboard, which is reviewed here: http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-297-1.htm
> 
> The review will be helpful to you no matter which board you end up choosing, since all nForce4 boards resemble each other to some degree.
> ...

 

I am planning on purchasing pretty much the same system as you, but install only Gentoo.  How was the installation on a 64-bit machine?  Did you run into any problems getting the SATA drives to work?  Was the configuration for RAID pretty simple?  If you don't mind, could you post links to your current kernel config?  Thanks.

----------

## r3pek

 *PrakashP wrote:*   

> There will "never" be NCQ support for SATA. This Info comes from NVidia directly.

 

For the nForce4 chipset. A nvidia guy told that the next chipset's (maybe C51) will have (better) support.

----------

## depontius

I'm another one on the fence about buying an nForce4 board, at the moment most likely the Asus A8N-E.

This board will have 2 primary missions -

1: The main computer for my wife and me, doing email, web, gnucash, and a bit of electronics CAD and light gaming.

2: A MythTV back-end.

I may also get into ripping some of my old vinyl to burn CDs. I'm a bit of a 3D junkie, so my idea of light gaming is somewhat around that. I'd love to see Myst Uru running under WINE.

I have several major concerns:

As elsewhere mentioned, the TCQ support for SATA. But then again, I've never had it before, so it's not as if I'm losing something, I'm just not gaining it. How much will this hurt me, particulary in light of using this as a MythTV back-end while someone is using the machine as an office-pc? To be honest, I also won't be using the SATA, at least not right away. A little while back I picked up a 160G PATA drive for $40, and that will be my starting point.

I've also seen problems with the APIC, USB2, SPDIF, and UDMA on PATA. But I've also seen reports of people having those working.

Is there any better condensed status?

I presume fixes will come along for all of these, except maybe the TCQ. (Wouldn't even surprise me to see someone reverse-engineer the TCQ at some point.)

Perhaps it would be better to see a feature/motherboard table, condensed, in addition to anecdotal reports.

----------

## PrakashP

NCQ should benefit random access, so in htpc use probably not so important.

----------

