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how is NF4 better than NF3? I'm trying to catch up.

G

GratefullySaved

Senior member
Hey all,

I'm about to order a new mobo and Athlon64 CPU, but before I do I need to understand whether I should put a little extra money into NF4...?

So..what exactly is the selling point of NF4 boards?

My plan so far is to upgrade from an XP2100+ to and Athlon 64 2800+. I'm intentionally restricting my budget to this upgrade as I'm saving for other big ticket items, but it's becoming clear for gaming and my digital imaging work that a new PC would be a good thing. 🙂

I already have 1 GB of RAM, a fast big hard drive, DVD burner, good power supply, all in an Antec case.

Thanks for explaining the basic differences, and all suggestions or input are more than welcome.

Thanks again,

GS
 
NF4 boards have PCI Express. And are maybe a little faster than NF3.

Maybe you should make *one* thread for your questions?...
 
It's a little faster than NF3.
It's ready for the future (PCI-e, SATA2, NCQ)
Considering that you intend to work with digital imaging faster is always better.

P.S. Better?
 
Gigabit Ethernet is in nForce 3.

Firewall is in nForce 3.

It's the same sh*t, rofl@digital imaging being better on nForce 4.

It's only a little future proof.

And, it is NOT faster than nForce 3 when you compare 939 to 754 AMD CPU of the SAME MODEL, I believe. 939 is SLOWER than 754 by a little.

As for PCI-e, SATA2, NCQ...

Screw them, unless you care about little stats.

And you have to pay the money to see huge performance increase.

 
The Nforce 4's are solid Mobos (with pci-e)but they are just a little to expensive right now for my taste. They were made for the enthusiast at mind. When they make a revision 2 of it, then it would likely be a better buy. Right now a Nforce 3 offers just about the same performance for a lot less strain on your bank account.
 
from the review linked above for the lazy::

It is not a surprise, then, given the massive updating that went into the nForce3-250 chipsets, to find the nForce4 more evolutionary than revolutionary. The new 4 name is certainly justified by the addition of PCI Express and SLI capabilities, but nForce4 is still underneath the excellent nForce3 Ultra chipset that we have come to trust. Except for PCIe and SLI, the new features generally refine those first seen in nForce3-250, and that is a good thing. The RAID controllers are now faster, more flexible, and even easier to manage than the last generation. The nTune Performance Configuration Utility does more, and does it better, than the previous utility, and 10 USB 2.0 ports must be better than 8. The performance also breaks no new ground, nor did we expect it to. The nForce3-250 was very fast and the nForce4 is just as fast, but not really any faster than the nF3 Ultra at this point.

The major new features, PCI Express and SLI, are the real sizzle here. It is difficult to argue with what appears to be a very successful move by nVidia to PCI Express, even if there is really no current performance advantage that we could find to a PCIe video card compared to the same card in AGP clothes. Certainly, the potential for better performance is there, and nForce4 certainly protects the end-user for a while longer from video card obsolescence.

However, nForce4 is exciting mostly because of the incredible performance potential of SLI, which combines two top nVidia video cards into a monster video performance engine. It's not for everybody - SLI is undeniably expensive - but the prospect of a 40% to 85% leap in the performance of the most demanding games that you can run today will be too much for some enthusiasts to resist. No, you don't absolutely need SLI, but it sure is cool! Consider nForce 4 an evolution and refinement of the progress that nVidia realized with the nForce3 Ultra, and that's a very good thing indeed.
 
in the end if you go s754 figure yuour mobo dead in one year.
there are probably not going to be any new generation vid cards released on agp which is why amd relented and out out pci-express reference boards. So nothing past the 6800 ultra or the x800xt p.e.
the fastest chipset is also the 3700+.

not very future proof.
i cant see s754 as good bang for your buck but dfi fanboys will ride out the platform til they see a 939 mobo from dfi.

 
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