Shortcomings Revealed in nForce4 SLI Redux

EconolineCrush writes "Slashdot recently covered the launch of NVIDIA's nForce 4 SLI chipset for Intel processors, and although early reviews fawned over the chipset's performance, closer examination reveals several shortcomings that the initial wave of coverage failed to document. Problems with stability, drivers, and the chipset's oft-praised hardware-accelerated firewall and Gigabit Ethernet controller escaped the scrutiny of many reviews."

Shortcomings of the reviewer

[Dancin_Santa]

I respect his kung-foo, but his last line is off the wall.

These kinds of problems, which we readily acknowledge aren't total showstoppers, may pass muster for Athlon 64-based enthusiast systems. NVIDIA will probably find, however, that competing against Intel's chipsets requires a higher standard of competence.

As a serious gamer and one who has built several Athlon-based machines, I can't imagine for the life of me what he's talking about here. AMD's chips are the undisputed king of the hill when it comes to performance. His insinuation that as an AMD fanboy, I am unable to discern the lack of power of XYZ technology is a little irritating.

AMD is not the also-ran that it was back when Cyrix was kicking its ass. These days, AMD is the singlemost important chip maker on the planet, second only to Intel. Intel may have the edge when it comes to "cutting edge" technology, but AMD is like the Japanese, they take a good technology and make it better and faster and smaller.

So, again, WTF is he talking about? Is it just a dig at us real gamers out here who actually know a thing or two about gaming rigs?

isn't this always the case?

[bman08]

Early reviews are always like this. Except in rare cases when something is undeniably awful, being in on a 'sneak peak' makes a person feel like an insider... part of the team. I think that, previuosly mentioned perks of being a hardware reviewer aside; this feeling alone accounts for a lot of over positive reviews.

The same is true of anything. I saw a pre screening of Samuel Jackson in shaft and LOVED it. Why? I don't know now.

Re:Shortcomings of the reviewer

[pegr]

I believe he was referring to Intel's market, not AMD's (and supporting chipset maker's) competence. To put another way, relatively minor issues in Intel's market will be perceived as bigger, and potentially more critical, issues than similar issues in AMD's space. I don't agree quite, but that's what I get out of it.

A question...

[Silverlancer]

What the hell does the incompetence of an nVidia chipset have to do with the performance and reliability of an AMD processor? You can simply not us the nForce 4 boards--how does this give the reviewer the right to bash AMD? Or is he just an Intel fanboy?

Re:isn't this always the case?

[Tinfoil]

Except early reviews shouldn't be like this. Reviews should be detailed and get into everything. It doesn't look like the ethernet bug was terribly difficult to reproduce or only occured under a rare and exotic set of conditions.

Charlie Demerjian is right in his latest rant [theinquirer.net]. Too many reviewers are under the spell of PR dweebs.

Re:Shortcomings of the reviewer

[eric_brissette]

So, again, WTF is he talking about?

Well he's not talking about AMD at all, really. He's talking about the quality of nVidia's nF4 SLI chipset/drivers.

I wonder why

[ProfitElijah]

I wonder why they escaped the attentions of the early reviewers. Perhaps because the shortcomings weren't included on the press release the early reviewers regurgitated.

Re:Shortcomings of the reviewer

[beelsebob]

Actually - I have to disagree. I think IBM are by far a more important chip maker. They do completely different things to Intel, they come up with completely new ideas - AMD just try to make chips that compete well with Intel (which they do very well at the moment)... But IBM actually try to do something different. I mean, come on, why do you think the Power5 is devastating all the opposition in the server market?

Re:Another excellent review from the Tech Report

[sgant]

You're being sarcastic, right?

This is hardly front page Slashdot news here. Let's see, "motherboard chipmaker needs to fix some non-showstopping bugs with bios updates." yawn.

Everything mentioned in that article is minor. His summation is even minor:

We're pleased to see that NVIDIA has finally fixed the long-standing bug that caused its disk controller to hit a performance wall at 128 transactions per second, but the fix was a long time in coming. More notably, the ActiveArmor GigE implementation seems to have some strange problems still. We're encouraged by the fact that NVIDIA could demonstrate a fix for some of these problems with a new driver, but we're concerned about the current state of the Ethernet driver available to the public for AMD-based nForce4 boards that have been on the market for months now. These kinds of problems, which we readily acknowledge aren't total showstoppers, may pass muster for Athlon 64-based enthusiast systems. NVIDIA will probably find, however, that competing against Intel's chipsets requires a higher standard of competence.

OK...they fixed a bug and one of the Ethernet ports is "strange".

But that last statement seems to throw the entire review out of whack. So what he's basically saying is: "The minor Athlon fanbois may not mind this junk...but us Intel Professionals know it's crap and will stick with Intel".

Re:Shortcomings of the reviewer

[jtshaw]

He isn't talking about the processors....... he is talking about the CHIPSETS.

I've found the one short coming of AMD based solutions has always been the shoddy 3rd party chipsets and motherboards out there. I have a dual Opteron system on my desk and it has been wonderful. However, I have ran into many people running Via or nVidia chipsets on brand-x motherboards that have had awful hardware difficulties.

I'm inclided to blame the mainboard manufactures more so then the chipset manufactures because companies like Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte never seam to have trouble putting out solid mainboards based on nVidia and Via chipsets.... but the fact of the matter is there seam to be a lot of other manufactures that build absolutely terrible mainboards for AMD processors.

Just like the AMD version

[Jarnis]

'Paid reviewers skip the unflattering parts' - SHOCKING!!!!

The first review bunch of every hardware item is PAID ADVERTISING. Well, at least close to it. To get the product for such review requires signing of NDA and cooperation of the manufacturer. Trashing a product in such launch review ensures that you won't get the next shiny thing to review. Yes, some hardware reviewers are corrupt. Shocking.

The 'active armor' firewall has never worked right on the AMD64 NF4 either. Also on AMD64 NForce4 the gigabit ethernet has it's own problems - for example, many MMOs simply disconnect you (you go linkdead) if you have the Hardware Checksum Offload feature of the LAN chip in use.

And unsurprisingly when you compare ANY other chipset to the rock solid Intel chipsets, they look unstable. NF4 isn't the worst of the bunch, but it can't be helped. Last STABLE (rock stable) chipset on AMD platforms was AMD760. Yes, it was lacking features, but it WORKED. After that it's VIA this, nVidia that, SIS this - all suck more or less. Thankfully the suckiness has gone down over the years, and today I can say that KT800 VIA on AMD64 is usable. Still not perfect, but works. NForce 4 has bunch of quirks and unfinished drivers, but it's probably the best PCIe-based chipset so far.