" I would still prefer an Nforce based board if I were building a box for a friend or relative though. The stability and features are quite impressive for such a young chipset... "
Exactly, I just used a MSI nForce board to build a system for my mother-in-law (to be).
"What bandwidth does a geforce 3 have? By increasing the core to a geforce 3 or 4, it will require a greater share of bandwidth or become the bottle neck. "
Ok I can completely agree with that perhaps they don't yet have enough bandwidth for a better core, I was just hoping for more of an inovative step then simply increasing the top speed of the memory interface that's all. What's they've done seems like a complete no-brainer (technologically), however I suppose it's the step they need before putting in a better gfx core or any other kind of frills. I also don't see the need or use for DDR333 or DDR400 right now, I suppose the processors etc are coming up soon to take advantage of it but 266 seems to be holding it's own for the time being (perhaps I'm behind on my reading or something...but I haven't really even heard of any mass availability of DDR333 or DDR400).
"Also i think the gf 2mx is a good core for a intergrated system, it is cheap and entry level. "
I agree with this too for 99.9% of the people who are going to get a nForce based system a GF2MX based graphics solution is more then enough (for email, office and web browsing).
"Well, at least the unchanged onboard graphics gets a "free" 20% boost when given 20% faster DDR RAM. :shrug:"
As I mentioned above, perhaps I'm behind on my reading but I haven't even heard of any massively available DDR333 or DDR400 or any system that would
need to take advantage of those memory standards (yet).
"
<< moving to a GF3 or GF4 based core >> you'd be pushing 70 million transistors if you had an integrated one of those. simply ludicrous for a chipset. "
Perhaps that's alot but you know it's going to happen, it's just a matter of time. My point was more that simply uping the memory interface speed/standard doesn't seem like that big of a deal (technologically). I was hoping for something more impressive for their next version of the nForce. (See additional comments above).
"even serial ATA, if thats been finalised as its backwards compatible"
Yes and yes. Check the
HD Interface and Standards FAQ for more info.
"4 DDR RAM Slots"
1.5GB (3) isn't enough for an integrated system?
"Firewire 1394a"
How many people do you really think would buy an integrated system and then need/use firewire? (You can always add an audigy or firewire pci card if needed)
"AGP 8x"
Their current AGP slot uses 1.5V cards, AGP 8X uses 0.8V cards (which don't exist yet....at least from what I've read).
"AMD Internal Diode support"
This is up to the board manufacturers.
"10/100/1000Mbps integrated NIC"
Again why would anyone with a integrated system need a 1Gb NIC? Even with a xDSL or cable connection you don't (or barely) push 10Mbps.
"Onboard Hardware RAID chip for ATA or SCSI"
Well since this is only an "onboard chip" then it's up to the mother baord manufacturers not nVidia. And again who buys an integrated (average joe) system and needs scsi?
Thorin