nForce 500: nForce4 on Steroids?

by Gary Key & Wesley Fink on 5/24/2006 8:00 AM EST
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  • ayqazi - Wednesday, July 5, 2006 - link

    I'm a little tired of hearing about so-called "chipset" hardware RAID. The writer of this article constantly made it seem that it was the chipset that was responsible for performing RAID operations on the disks, whereas nothing could be farther from the truth.

    Yes, the chipset may offload some of the work, but (in the case of RAID 5) the major calculations, like the XOR calculations, are done by the host processor.

    According to [L]http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html#faker...[/L] and [L]http://spamaps.org/raidtests.php[/L], Linux-based software raid is much faster than so-called fakeraid, since it has been optimised and developed more than the software drivers of the fakeraid chipsets.

    Anyway, just pointing out something that gets on my nerves a bit.
  • raildogg - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - link

    I think for most of us who have a nForce 4 ultras and SLIs, it doesn't make sense to upgrade to AM2 motherboards and processors. We'll need new memory too. No performance increase. Just upgrade to a X2 and that should be a good upgrade for those of us who don't have it yet.
  • Powered by AMD - Friday, May 26, 2006 - link

    When in the article says:
    "In fact, the less than stellar write performance of the nForce4 in RAID 5 continues in the "new" chipset"
    It does mean that the write performance is good or not?

    thanks!
  • Zoomer - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - link

    Means just as bad as before, in a nicer manner. :)
  • Gary Key - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - link

    quote:

    Means just as bad as before, in a nicer manner. :)


    Thank you for the perfect reply. ;-) NVIDIA is working on this for the next refresh, their reasoning at this time is they did not want to introduce potential data corruption issues by improving the performance with the current chipset and driver base. It continues to reinforce our belief that although the nF590 SLI is the most feature laden chipset out at this time, the core continues to be nForce4 Plus in our eyes. This is not bad at all, just what can you do with a less than stellar CPU release (still an extremely strong CPU lineup) from a marketing viewpoint. I think NVIDIA and ATI are going to be hamstrung on sales with the AM2 release but hopefully they can make it up when Conroe (Core 2 Duo) launches shortly. :) The bios revisions we have received this week have improved performance but nothing that would make a nf4SLI/4800+ owner want to upgrade yet.
  • SonicIce - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    AM2 can just die.
  • afrost - Thursday, May 25, 2006 - link

    i'm glad you took the time to type all that out.....
  • KHysiek - Thursday, May 25, 2006 - link

    Well, but it does say precisely right about the whole AM2 transition.
    This is the most pointless hardware upgrade I've seen forfew last years.
    The only significant advantage of AM2 is a bit more featured mainboard. And you pay more for less speed. I think AMD is on the way down and no K8L can save them, cause it will be quad core only. What typical user needs quad core for price AMD keeps (like their pricing for current X2 CPU's versus Intel's).
    Core 2 is huge leap forward and combined with Intel manufacturing power will make big push back for AMD in coming months.
  • Pirks - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    Gary, what's about that QoS network driver/protocol hanging around in my WinXP for years? I heard it does some quality of service stuff/packet prioritizing/etc soo... is FirstPacket just an interface for this Microsoft QoS thing? Or is nVidia didn't know about it and reinvented the wheel?
  • Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    quote:

    Gary, what's about that QoS network driver/protocol hanging around in my WinXP for years? I heard it does some quality of service stuff/packet prioritizing/etc soo... is FirstPacket just an interface for this Microsoft QoS thing? Or is nVidia didn't know about it and reinvented the wheel?


    I raised this question at the Editor's conference as it appeared to me they decided to take advantage of some hooks/protocols in XP. I have a meeting with the platform manager tomorrow and hopefully some discussions with the Network guru next week after his return from vacation. I am trying to get an answer before our roundup is published. I noticed some interesting inter-actions during our network testing, will say this, they (NVIDIA) really took the networking side seriously on this release although most of the features are designed for the server/workstation market, but we get them for free on the desktop. We expect further hardware/driver improvements in the next refresh. I am trying to compare the outbound FirstPacket numbers to a D-Link Gamer Lounge at this time along with how both prioritize packets on the outbound lanes. There are so many different tests and options in just the new networking features to run that is a bit overwhelming at this point and of course the new draft-N equipment showed up this week also. ;-)
  • artifex - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    quote:

    they (NVIDIA) really took the networking side seriously on this release although most of the features are designed for the server/workstation market


    If they want the TCP/IP acceleration to be a draw for that crowd, they'd better fix this thing with firewalls not being supported. I could not imagine running a corporate server like that. And it's a bit much for them to hold out Vista as a possible fix, as many of us would like to wait a while before dropping Vista into production environments. Like a couple years. :)
  • Jaylllo - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    Is it just me, or do ATI/NVIDIA/INTEL make up a boatload of stupid names for simple features?

  • afrost - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    So when do we get low power chipsets to go with our low power CPUs?

    Nvidia's mid to high end GPUs use less power than ATI GPUs....but it's the other way around for chipsets......????

    seems odd
  • Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    quote:

    So when do we get low power chipsets to go with our low power CPUs?


    Rumor has it, in the late fall. ;-)
  • FinFET - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    On this page http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?... the nForce 550's summary reads

    "Several of the higher and options have been dropped from the 550 chipset"

    I believe you meant
    "Several of the higher end options have been dropped from the 550 chipset"
  • Wesley Fink - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    Corrected.
  • peternelson - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link


    How can you say there is not improvement?

    The 590SLI gives increased number of PCIE lanes to total 46.

    These are available as 16, 16, 8, and six individual 1x connections.

    Assuming some slots on the motherboard:

    x16 slot: card x16 nvidia graphics card
    x16 slot: card x8 ARECA EIGHT SATA 300 HARDWARE RAID CONTROLLER
    x8 slot: card x8 MYRINET 10 GIGANET hardware accelerated LAN

    I'm not particularly interested in consumer level SATA and LAN but consider them a free bonus. What MATTERS is that there is enough BANDWIDTH to use some PROPER peripherals without bottlenecks.

  • Egglick - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    The only new "feature" I'm really interested in is the TCP/IP acceleration, which lowers CPU usage. The rest of it is a bunch of gimmicks and garbage as far as I'm concerned. I'd rather not use those "features" at all, as they're much more likely to cause problems than any sort of performance boost.

    When I think of that, coupled with their stupid SLI Memory program (another gimmick), my view of NVidia's chipsets is significantly lowered. When the time comes for me to upgrade, I'll be strongly considering ATI's chipset offerings instead.
  • bob661 - Thursday, May 25, 2006 - link

    Egglick,
    Your name should be Buttlick with that comment. So, let me get this straight (or gay depending on which way you swing), these extra features that Nvidia is giving us are apparently no good since you say so. The rest of us might as well just shut off our computers, grab a pr0n mag, and spank it like it's 1999. Jesus, who needs a brain with you around.
  • Pirks - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    Yeah, right... ATI are completely smoke'n'mirrors free guys... cool! :)
  • Olaf van der Spek - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    <quote>These devices can be configured in RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and 5 arrays. There is no support for RAID 10.</quote>

    That's probably because there's effectively no difference between 1+0 and 0+1 on a good controller.
  • Olaf van der Spek - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    quote:

    The FirstPacket technology is very useful for users who do a lot of uploading while playing on the Internet. The ability of the user to control the applications that receive packet-prioritization is a great benefit as the control panel is easy to use. We tested this feature thoroughly and it works exactly as advertised - IF the user has a need for that feature and uses it.

    Doesn't this require support from the modem/router too?

    The delay (usually) happens in the modem and not in the network card.
  • Zoomer - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - link

    No, because you make the bottleneck your network card, instead of the modem. :)

    There will be a slight loss of throughput. Read some QoS articles. lartc.org is also a good resource. I bet it's the same principle. ;)
  • Trisped - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    <quote>Multiple computers can to be connected simultaneously </quote>
    http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
    take out the "to"
  • Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    Thanks, it is corrected.....
  • Googer - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    When benchmarking core logic it's should be a high priority to measure I/O performance, since that is the primary job of any AMD Chipset.

    Where are the HDD, Network, Audio, and R.A.I.D. benchmarks?
  • Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    quote:

    Where are the HDD, Network, Audio, and R.A.I.D. benchmarks?


    I answered above but we will have full benchmarks in the actual motherboard articles. Our efforts in the first three days was to prove out the platform and features that were added or changed (still doing it, feels weird to be up almost 72 hours). In answer to your question-
    Foxconn Board
    Network-
    Throughput - 942 Gb/s
    CPU utilization - 14.37% (with TCP/IP offload engine on), near 30% off.

    HDD/RAID
    No real difference compared to nF4 as we stated. The numbers are within 1% of each other. The interesting numbers will be in our ATI SB600 comparison.

    Audio-
    Dependent on the codec utilized in each motherboard, the RealTek ALC883 used in most of them have the same numbers as the nF4 boards. The only difference is the new 1.37 driver set we used. It will be interesting in the comparison as Asus went back to ADI for HDA.
  • Pirks - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    quote:

    feels weird to be up almost 72 hours
    That's why AT is my favorite review site - 'cause you're really crazy bunch :-) Just don't ruin yourself completely, we need you!
  • Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    quote:

    Dependent on the codec utilized in each motherboard, the RealTek ALC883 used in most of them have the same numbers as the nF4 boards.
    The ending should read NF4 Intel or ATI/Uli AMD boards. Where is that edit function? Hit enter too soon. :)
  • Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    quote:

    When benchmarking core logic it's should be a high priority to measure I/O performance, since that is the primary job of any AMD Chipset.


    They will be in our roundup comparison and ATI AM2 articles.
  • Googer - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    http://www.hardwarezone.com/news/view.php?id=4614&...">http://www.hardwarezone.com/news/view.php?id=4614&...

    http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews...">http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews...
  • Googer - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    AM2 Now Shiping at Newegg.com

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Subm...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi...rchInDes...
  • Doormat - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    The media shield feature looks nice. Buy two drives for a RAID-0 array for the OS and whatnot. Then the RAID-5 array for all your important stuff (saved games, documents, pictures, etc). Having both arrays on one chipset is nice.
  • Pirks - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    quote:

    Then the RAID-5 array for all your important stuff (saved games, documents, pictures, etc)
    Why would you penalize your write speed with RAID5 when there is RAID1? Why not get RAID1 instead of RAID5 and enjoy 1) reliability (same as RAID5) 2) speed (same as single drive for writing, faster than single drive for reading) 3) low price (no need for more than two hard drives)
  • mino - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    AND lower available capacity for the money you pay. You see 4 300G drives in RAID5 bring you 900GB of (cheap and reliable) storage. Do that with 4 drives and RAID1(or 0+1 for that) means i.e. 2x400 + 2x500 which is SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive.

    Remember there are guys with 10 drives, any situation you could economically justify 3+ drives for storage RAID5 is the most cost effective way.
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, May 25, 2006 - link

    Too bad the integrated RAID 5 solutions from NVIDIA only work with 3 drives (and potentially one hot-swap). Maybe I'm mistaken, but I'm pretty sure you can't run 4, 5, or 6 drives in a single RAID 5 array using the NVIDIA controller. That's why you can do two RAID 5 arrays with 3 drives in each array. Problem is, doing RAID 5 without a lot of RAM for the RAID controller can really hurt (write) performance.
  • nordicpc - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    Something I noticed yesterday while looking through the AM2 reviews that incorporated both ATI and nVidia's chipsets was the huge disparency in power usage, some 40 watts in some cases.

    Charlie D. has brought this up over at the Inq aswell.

    Not only with nVidia's 5x0 series do you need a huge chunk of copper with 3 pipes to eliminate the fan, but also you'll be paying a bit extra on the power bill it seems, for what? Some extra networking options that most of us never use because they are so dodgy.

    Where's the power consumption page on here?
  • Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    quote:

    Where's the power consumption page on here?


    They are coming in a different article as we just started receiving our ATI AM2, nF550, and other boards. The pull in by AMD was a stretch for the board suppliers who had planned on rolling the AM2 series out during Computex and shipping at that time. NVIDIA was caught trying to qualify drivers for both the video and platform side in half the time. We just received final AM2 chips on Saturday morning. ;-)
  • NullSubroutine - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    meh
  • fitten - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    I concurr.
  • DigitalFreak - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    Does NTune 5 also work with NF4 boards?
  • Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    quote:

    Does NTune 5 also work with NF4 boards?


    Yes, but depending upon bios support several of the new features will not be active. We have an updated bios coming for a nF4 board so we can verify which features do and not do work with full nF4 bios support.
  • nullpointerus - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    Does nTune 5 support multiple profiles and automatic profile switching? If so, do these things actually work properly? Unfortunately, nTune 3 was a mess on my MSI board.
  • Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    quote:

    Does nTune 5 support multiple profiles and automatic profile switching? If so, do these things actually work properly? Unfortunately, nTune 3 was a mess on my MSI board.


    Yes to multiple profiles and working correctly, what is your definition of automatic profile switching? You can setup custom rules that will dictate how the system should operate under different conditions, a game profile for max performance or a DVD profile that will instruct the system to go in to "quiet mode" once a DVD is inserted if you are watching a movie as an example. We are still testing the rules setup, but so far, it works. We only received the kits last Friday so all major features were tested first but I am following up on the bells and whistles now. nTune 5 probably deserves a small but separate article on its features. We just received a new build last night so testing begins again today.

    We did report a bug to NVIDIA as the motherboard settings screen will not refresh correctly after loading a new profile. We had to exit to the main control panel and then return to the performance section for a refresh. I personally have close to 30 profiles setup for our test suites at this time. It is just a matter
  • DigitalFreak - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    quote:

    At the top of the product offering, the nForce 590 SLI consists of two chips, the C51Xe SPP and the MCP55PXE. This solution offers dual X16 PCI-E lanes for multiple graphics card configurations. While other features have changed, the overall design is very similar to the nForce4 SLI X16. The total number of PCI-E lanes is now 46, with 18 lanes coming from the SPP. Of those 18, two are used to link to the MCP and the remaining 16 are for the PEG slot.{/Q]

    Uh... I thought that the SPP & MCP were connected via HT? If only 2 PCI-E lanes were used, that's only ~ 500MB of bandwidth between the two.
  • JarredWalton - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    Sorry - that was smy fault and I'll edit it. Written while not thinking I guess.
  • R3MF - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    "If TCP/IP acceleration is enabled via the new control panel, then third party firewall applications must be switched off in order to use the feature."

    this statement presumes that non third-party firewalls (i.e. nVidia firewall application) would work fine with the TCP-IP acceleration function.............?

    nVidia: here is a great function, but you can't use it without getting haXXoR3d

    ???
  • Wesleyrpg - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    hey anand,

    wheres this dodgy nforce4 networking article that you been promising for weeks?

  • Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    quote:

    wheres this dodgy nforce4 networking article that you been promising for weeks?

    The nf4 tests with driver sets back to the 5 series is complete, waiting on release versions of the new 9.x platform drivers to see what actual changes have been made since 6.85 on the nf4 x16 boards.
  • Wesleyrpg - Thursday, May 25, 2006 - link

    can people with the 'normal' nforce4 chipset use the 6.85 drivers or are we stuck with the bodgy 6.70 drivers.
  • nullpointerus - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    TCP/IP CPU utilization scales with increased transfer rates. Online gaming is hardly designed to stress a 1Gb Ethernet. So this TCP/IP acceleration is primarily intended for LAN gaming. You don't really need a firewall on your LAN (unless perhaps you are hosting a LAN party on that machine?). It's acceptable to use your router's firewall if you really know how to configure your LAN properly:

    Modem
    |
    Router
    |
    +--A (game server)
    +--B (game client)
    +--C (game client)
    +--D (game client)

    In this situation, TCP/IP acceleration might be useful. Of course, if you leave yourself open to your LAN and one of the other computers on your LAN is compromised, you could very well be compromised, too.

    I don't understand the comments about a third-party firewall. Perhaps only XP and Vista's firewalls will be supported initially?
  • Trisped - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    A true router can configure a firewall on all ports, both incoming and out going. In this way you can set what ports can be sent and what ports can be received through a router, in the LAN or out side as the case may be. Of course, software firewalls are usually a little more powerful in that they check who sends what. I think hardware firewalls can do this too, but they don't on any of the Linksys, Netgear, or AirLink routers I have used lately.

    It is also important to note that the typical home router is not a true router. It is a 2 port router (1 port for the WAN and 1 for the LAN) and the rest of the ports are connected via a switch or hub. Switches can also have firewall, but most home solutions don't seem to.
  • mino - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    The info WHO sends teh data is the most crucial. Enabling http(80) just for Opera and 993+25 for Thundebird is a huge difference to allow al kinds of malware/spyware go out on 80.

    And NO, no HW (or second machine be it linux router or cisco router) can detect (reliably) which application is sending the data.
  • Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    quote:

    I don't understand the comments about a third-party firewall. Perhaps only XP and Vista's firewalls will be supported initially?


    I will clarify this in the article. Windows XP firewall is not supported. Vista should be but that decision is not final at this time due to continuing changes from Microsoft.
  • Tanclearas - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    So does this mean Nvidia has abandoned AA in NF4? I know that is my impression, based upon my experience with them (http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...">http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...mp;threa..., but just wondering what the official word is.

    Honestly, the idea behind Nvidia's chipset-based firewall was a good one, especially for universities/colleges with literally thousands of computers on the inside of the corporate firewall. Protection at every level is worthwhile.

    As for the Vista firewall working with NF5, I definitely would not count on Nvidia making it happen.
  • Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    quote:

    So does this mean Nvidia has abandoned AA in NF4?


    Once the new 9.x platform drivers are released with support for chipsets prior to nF5, then yes, Active Armor firewall will be dropped. The new driver set will also have further changes in them to reduce the possibility of data corruption on the nF4, whether the CPU utilization goes up or down, I do not know at this point. I do not have a "stable" set of new platform drivers for the nF4 yet, cannot verify this myself. I will be speaking with the program manager tomorrow. ;-)

    We did find out that NVIDIA expected Microsoft to accomplish a few tasks in the Windows Firewall program, it did not happen, so they are pulling support as Microsoft decided to go a different direction in Vista. I have beta 2 on the way so there will be some test runs with the new driver set to see what happens. I will have a full statement on this subject by the end of the week. Apparently, there were several promises made, not kept, or not communicated properly about 18 months ago between the two parties about the Firewall program, OS hooks, and its future.
  • mbf - Monday, June 12, 2006 - link

    Is the nVidia firewall truly gone? I've just downloaded (but not installed) the 9.34 driver pack from the nVidia FTP site. The pack still contains a NAM setup (v60.16).

    What exactly constitutes the ActiveArmour part of the firewall? The hardware firewall was introduced with the nForce3 250gb chipset and the AA functionality was added in nForce4. I've never figured out what precisely AA does, though.

    If it's true that nVidia has pulled the firewall from the feature set I'd say it's a truly bad choice. For me, the hardware firewall was one of *the* most important features on the nForce chipset. Well, not having to wonder losing this feature will make my switch back to an Intel chipset-based Core 2 rig much easier. It's a shame.
  • Stele - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    I was actually wondering if XP and Vista's firewalls would even be supported, since they're arguably 'third-party' from nVidia's viewpoint. While the argument for using hardware-based solutions in routers etc is cogent, imho there is a case for protecting individual PCs against compromise from within the network. For example, there may be laptops in the LAN that are used on several other (and potentially unsafe) networks as well. Besides that, software firewalls have the advantage of being able to potentially alert users to and stop malware from making unauthorised outbound connections from an infected PC (or unauthorised inbound connections from an infected LAN peer). I wonder if it's possible to get around the issue in future versions of firewall software - then at least it's not a lost cause, just that we would have to wait for newer versions of the software to be released.

    As for the actual usefulness of the TCP/IP offload engine, perhaps the folks at Anandtech can design a specific test that would stress such an engine's capability to the limit, to provide clear and objective assessment of its effect on performance. After all, Anandtech developed a good custom test suite for server benchmarks that targets specific application types, so I figure this would be well within their considerable programming skills as well ;)

    Meanwhile, I wonder how nVidia's SATA controllers have improved if at all over the generations, and it would be great to eventually see an ULi 1575/SB600/MCP comparison in the future.
  • nullpointerus - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    Correction:

    You don't really need a firewall on your LAN clients...
  • Gigahertz19 - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    quote:

    While the performance of the nForce5 board was very good and stability was excellent at all times, we kept looking for the "wow" factor. With such a tantalizing list of new nF5 features, surely something was going to show up and put the smack down on the nForce4, nothing did. NVIDIA has certainly thrown the kitchen sink at us with this release; but it's mostly just a new sink. The plumbing is still the same and so is everything else, and we were really hoping for a new kitchen.


    Expect the new kitchen when Conroe is launched :)
  • xsilver - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    is there going to be a 5xx nvidia chipset to support conroe?


    the lack of performance on AM2 makes this chipset highly unexciting

  • Gary Key - Thursday, May 25, 2006 - link

    quote:

    is there going to be a 5xx nvidia chipset to support conroe?


    Yes, it is shaping up to be a very good chipset performance wise with Conroe. ;-)

    The main issue with the nf5 chipset actually resides with the AM2 not really being any different than S939 except for the memory controller changes. As in the past, performance will improve once AMD does their memory controller tuning and the bios engineers have more time with the platform. Also, if you could get this board to run at 400fsb with 1:1 memory and 1T being stable, it would be a killer.
  • Lonyo - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    Is this the same Foxconn board that AMDZone found was poor compared to the Asus NF5 board?
    http://www.amdzone.com/modules.php?op=modload&...">http://www.amdzone.com/modules.php?op=m...q=viewar...
  • Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link

    quote:

    s this the same Foxconn board that AMDZone found was poor compared to the Asus NF5 board?
    Yes, however, the performance of the Asus board with the latest bios improved scores in certain benchmarks. However, without knowing the bios settings that AMDZone used, it is hard to determine if the new board revision from Asus or bios made a difference. We have already received bios updates for all the boards in our coming roundup.
    Some have made a slight performance difference, some corrected some early test issues we found. The Foxconn board is a very solid setup and still has improvement potential. We found it to be representative of the initial performance results with the nForce 500. As time goes by and the bios engineers have time to properly tune the boards, we are sure there will be some performance improvements but nothing drastically different from what we are seeing today.

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