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Hybrid NVIDIA Chipset Motherboards Launched

Posted by CowboyNeal on Fri Apr 06, 2007 02:18 AM
from the little-bit-of-this-little-bit-of-that dept.
Upgrades Hardware Technology
MojoKid writes "Filling the price gap between the high-end nForce 680i SLI and more affordable 650i SLI chipsets, without sacrificing any advanced features, motherboard manufacturer Asus has created a hybrid motherboard chipset in cooperation with NVIDIA, dubbed the "Dual X16 SLI". Designed for the Intel platform, the chipset combination employed on the P5N32-E SLI Plus motherboard offers true, dual PCI Express x16 electrical connections for graphics, dual Gig-E LAN support and a slew of other features found on high-end 680i boards. HotHardware pits the P5N32-E SLI Plus against an nForce 680i SLI to see if Asus' hybrid chipset approach truly offers all of the performance of the more expensive 680i SLI for a fraction of the cost."
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  • Slow news day (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Animats (122034) on Friday April 06 2007, @02:32AM (#18631763) Homepage

    Manufacturer announces slightly different model of thing at lower price. How did this get in? Slow news day?

    • I hope there a graphics bard built in it. There are many Nvidia motherboards but u have to put Graphics card as an addon. the chipset does not include Graphics, hope this one finally dose it.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Barny (103770)
        I believe you are looking for the nforce 410, 420, 430, 440 chipsets, all include integrated graphics (vista aero capable) and all have a spare pci-e 16x slot, that can run in addition to the on-board (handy for NAS boxes, can slot a pci-e raid card in there).

        If you were trying to be funny, well you missed your mark ^_^
        • 'in addition to' isn't entirely accurate. Unless they changed something, usually you have to choose between onboard video or card video. Pretty annoying when you want dual heads and have to just waste the onboard.

          My only experince is with agp though, so again, that might have changed.

      • Re:Slow news day (Score:4, Funny)

        by Silver Sloth (770927) on Friday April 06 2007, @03:14AM (#18631889)

        I hope there a graphics bard built in it.
        So, whatt do you want, pictures or sonnets?

          • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

            by jank1887 (815982)
            nah... I always thought having a bard in my party was a little to hokey. I mean, c'mon, he sings his magic? And only one song per level before you have to take him back to the tavern... really. Skara Brae don't need that sh**.

    • Re:Slow news day (Score:5, Informative)

      by julesh (229690) on Friday April 06 2007, @03:23AM (#18631911)
      Manufacturer announces slightly different model of thing at lower price. How did this get in? Slow news day?

      To be fair, this is a rather unexpected announcement. Usually new motherboards only come up when the chipset manufacturers release new chips. What Asus have done here is to use the existing chips in a way that they weren't originally designed for. And they've come up with a stunning offer: they're beating the price of the next cheapest motherboard on the market with the same feature set by nearly 50%. These things are available now for about £90+VAT; their closest competitor is £140+VAT. For a geek news site, I'd say that's a pretty important story.
      • Using the existing chips in a way that they weren't originally designed for? I don't know about that, considering that they are HyperTransport compatible and this design is simply exploiting the power and beauty of HTT.
        • The invidual chips of a chipset are designed to be used together: that's why it's called a chipset. Yes, the two chipsets in question took advantage of an existing interconnection standard, which is why they can be used together, but it's still outside of the design parameters, and is likely a use that nVidia never even considered.

    • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by Ngarrang (1023425)
      The day is just beginning for the Americans, surely something worthy of ranting about will be posted. Or, maybe the companies are taking weekend off for Easter and it will be boring news all weekend!

  • And the answer is? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by geekyMD (812672) on Friday April 06 2007, @02:44AM (#18631805)
    This is just an advertisement manifesting as news! Was there any info in the slashdot summary other than a new product has been released?

    Even a simple, yes/no/sort of would have been more helpful than nothing.
    TFA is interesting and all, but it should have a summary. Not a teaser!

    Very simple marketing tactics. I would have expected better from slashdot.
    (oh wait, nevermind, thats what I have come to expect from slashdot. silly me)

    • This is just an advertisement manifesting as news! Was there any info in the slashdot summary other than a new product has been released?

      Even a simple, yes/no/sort of would have been more helpful than nothing.
      TFA is interesting and all, but it should have a summary. Not a teaser!

      You'll find those in the Tagging beta, shortly!
    • Get over it, new motherboards (particularly budget line with lots of features) is geek news.

      As a worker at an OEM who has some input into buying decisions these sorts of things are handy to know, and also I am pretty sure you forgot the bit where this is only a geek blog ;)
    • >>This is just an advertisement manifesting as news!

      I get about 5 CMP magazines in the mail each week. To me, an advertisement is the page that says "advertisement" on it, and a news article is an advertisement that is written in the style of an article. That's all that's in these trade mags anyway, it's all advertising.

       
    • Oh give me a break. This is exactly the kind of story I'm interested in and it's exactly why I /. is my web home page. I'm in the process of specifying a new gaming system for myself and some friends as well, it couldn't be more on-topic for me at this time. It's news for nerds. It's not viral marketing, it's just a story that you're not interested in. I really think your "jaded, dissapointed reader" angle is pretty old and would expect to see this kind of a post on a forum for an MMO under the "Everyt

  • What is 'hybrid' about this? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jkrise (535370) on Friday April 06 2007, @02:49AM (#18631823) Journal
    And I thought... like, it's a cross between a chipset and a motherboard, genetically engineered by NVidia!

    Just some more inane marketing speak.
  • Yawn. Wake me up when the motherboard has optical connections to the video card.

  • Old! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The ASUS P5N32-E SLI Plus has been out for ages; and there have already been a number of reviews on it...

    • The ASUS P5N32-E SLI Plus has been out for ages; and there have already been a number of reviews on it...

      Right, but none of them have been posted to slashdot, so why do we care?
    • No, that's the ASUS P5N32-E SLI, featuring the full 680i chipset. The "Plus" version is quite new.

  • dual PCI Express x16 electrical connections for graphics

    Now that I call progress! Holy shit! Electrical?!?
    None of that old fashioned, noisy, pneumatic video signalling for ASUS!
      • They don't each have a full 16 lanes of signaling backing them up. There is probably 16 total lanes, so if both are in use they get 8 lanes per, despite being electrically 16x.

        Actually, they mean that they do have a full 16 lanes. Compare to the 650i, which is at a similar price point, which only supports 8 as you describe, but has a slot designed for 16.

      • They don't each have a full 16 lanes of signaling backing them up. There is probably 16 total lanes, so if both are in use they get 8 lanes per, despite being electrically 16x.

        It better have 40 total lanes if they're trying to get close to 680i performance. 680i has 40 lanes total, two x16 SLI and one x8 intended for a physics card, but which can be used for anything. If the Dual x16 SLI doesn't even have 32 or 40 total lanes, it's not really in the same league. Surely it does, right? Or is that another dis

      • Re:What they mean is (Score:4, Informative)

        by mattmacf (901678) <mattmacf.optonline@net> on Friday April 06 2007, @04:26AM (#18632089) Homepage
        Close, but not quite. I think you have your definitions backwards. Replace "electrical" with "physical" and "lanes of signaling" with "electrical lanes" and you've got it. The Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] explains it better that I would be able to.

        A connection between any two PCIe devices is known as a "link", and is built up from a collection of 1 or more lanes. All devices must minimally support single-lane (x1) link. Devices may optionally support wider links composed of 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, or 32 lanes. This allows for very good compatibility in two ways: A PCIe card will physically fit (and work correctly) in any slot that is at least as large as it is (e.g. an x1 sized card will work in any sized slot), and a slot of a large physical size (e.g. x16) can be wired electrically with fewer lanes (e.g. x1 or x8) as long as it provides the power and ground connections required by the larger physical slot size. In both cases, PCIe will negotiate the highest mutually supported number of lanes. It is not possible to place a physically larger PCIe card (e.g. a 16x sized card) into a smaller slot, even though the two would be signal-compatible if it were possible.
        • I can just see some idiot trying to wire some video card to fit in a PCI 1x slot. Sure it would work, but how fast would it be? I didn't even know this stuff existed. It makes it nice that they have a standard that it seems they will be able to expand on for a few years, but it adds a lot of extra stuff to know for those trying to price a new computer.
          • I can just see some idiot trying to wire some video card to fit in a PCI 1x slot

            No reason to hack it when you can buy them [matrox.com].

            Sure it would work, but how fast would it be?

            PCIe 1x is adequately fast for many purposes. PCIe 1x bandwidth is 250MB/s (that's bytes, not bits), which is roughly the same as AGP 1x, and twice as fast as PCI. Both of these technologies are adequate for providing standard 2D desktop graphics. I wouldn't want to try playing hi-def video over a PCIe 1x link (1920x1080p @ 32-bit, 30 fps
  • Since when did slashdot became so blatantly a mouthpiece for corporate advertising, such as this add-campaign for motherboards?

    Mind you, I mean *so blatantly*. They used to have a bit more discretion.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Emetophobe (878584)
      Nvidia will come out with decent open drivers when you can convince them that ATI will not steal their driver tricks/optimization. Likewise, you must convince ATI that Nvidia will not read ATI's open source drivers... Good luck with that!
    • Err -- this article's about a motherboard, not a graphics card.

      I've got used to people not reading the summary now, so presumably everyone's going to start not even reading the title...?
  • I've had nothing but bad things happen with every asus m/b I've tried. I'll stick with VIA and buy the nvidia card separately, thanks.
    • And anecdotally, every Asus board I've ever owned was great. The MSI board I got on the other hand is decent at best.

      I'll stick with VIA and buy the nvidia card separately, thanks.


      We're talking about motherboard chipsets here, not graphics cards, and you can't just go purchase an nvidia chipset seperately to tack on your VIA board...
      • Anecdotally x2. I only buy Asus motherboards because they are hands down the best boards I've ever used. I've never had a single problem with any of them going back to the days of the P3/400mhz.
  • If anyone likes, they may buy my old P5N-SLI (crap) before I replaced it with an AW9D-MAX. I had the P5N-SLI Faulty twice from newegg, and when I checked with the rep he had over 30 returns for just that month on the motherboard, despite the large amount of internet hype and diety praise to the motherboard. It was utter crap, and I would never buy their product again. AW9D-MAX worked great, only gripe is crossfire (hacked sli drivers), and the lack of expansion slots. but I'd gladly take that over my me
  • Are there really that many people using SLI to provide a market for another SLI mb design? Who are these people spending their retirement fund on graphics cards?
    • I think thats the point of this article. Being a midrange setup without losing many features, you aren't stuck with cheap and cool or break the bank. You end up with performs better and priced appropriately for my budget with the stuff I want.
  • How goods the gas consumption on them now?
  • Their refusal to support nForce2 and nForce3 in Vista means I won't be buying anything from them, and I urge you all to consider this fact when shopping: they don't have enough resources to support all their products, which can be seen from delay or lack of drivers, and issues with hardware.

    This is not trolling, it is a fact. Compare to intel, VIA, and others supporting way older hardware.
    • Hmmm...they are up to nvforce 6 motherboards and you are complaining about them not supporting something 4 revs old?

      Ummmm, ok. Its called progress, either keep up or get left behind.
      • Intel supports their 865/875P chipsets in Vista, that are even older. Keeping up? nForce3 and nForce10^6 support Athlon 64 CPUs.

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