Why doesn't the nForce2 have Gigabit Ethernet?

[BoberFett]

Originally posted by: mechBgon

Originally posted by: touchmyichi
dammit who the hell needs the gigabyte ethernet? At most we play on lan games offering 100 mbps. Our internet connections are only 10. If you are so rich to have gigabyte ethernet somehow, then you should certainly have enough money to buy a 40 dollar add in card.


People these days!

Hehe! Well, one of the reasons we would like to see it integrated, is so that it is NOT riding the PCI bus. For example, if I had a gigabit ethernet card plugged into a PCI slot, it's capable of consuming the entire bandwidth of the PCI bus all by itself, leaving none for my SCSI card that hosts my hard drive.

Now, if the gigabit ethernet card were embedded in the southbridge, it would be on the 800Mb/sec Hypertransport link that links the northbridge and southbridge, leaving the 133Mb/sec PCI bus free for my SCSI card to operate at full speed without having to wrestle against the ethernet card for bandwidth. That make sense?

At work, we're hoping to budget for some gigabit switches and server adapters for next fiscal year, because we do need more bandwidth on our LAN at times. I certainly wouldn't mind having a gigabit connection for my daily work, which is indeed limited by my LAN connection's speed at times.

Except that there's still going to be a bottleneck at some point. If you're pulling those files across the network and writing to disk, you're still going to bump intot the limit of the drives speed. If you're playing video across a network, you don't need gigabit. So freeing the PCI bus will have little effect.

 

[mechBgon]

With a 15000rpm Ultra160 SCSI drive, plus 768Mb of RAM to cache stuff in, I might see some benefits when I've got three systems setting up Office2000 Pro from my system. Or maybe it's all just my geekful thinking

 

[KF]

$ 412.53 The DGS-1008T is a high performance unmanaged layer-2 gigabit switch ...

The lowest price?

Pretty much says it all. There must be something more to the Gigabit thing than just a faster rate which runs up the price. nVidia already had trouble with their chipset being too expensive. It would have been suicide to integrate it onto the chip when there are separate chips around for it.

 

[SuperSix]

I have an Intel Gigabit ethernet controller in my machine for 3 reasons:

1. It sounds cool
2. I got the adapter for free..
3. I didn't have any other adapter to use at the time

 

[trikster2]

Skimmed the thread so if this has already been stated, pardon my redundancy:

Why all the gig negativity? So you don't need it? Go read another thread.

I too am disappointed that the NFORCE2 does not include at least a high end option for gig.

Gig adapters do not get much more than 30/40 percent of their true potential using the standard PCI bus.

Integrating Gig into the NFORCE2 chipset would have given AMD a performance advantage that can not be ignored.

There are no single CPU and very few dual CPU boards featuring 64 bit PCI or PCI-X available for AMD CPUs; AMD is way behind when it comes to performance outside the realm of fast cheap CPUs.

However from a business sense Nvidia is probably making the right choice:

AMD has almost ZERO penetration into the server market. If someone came to me suggesting an AMD based production server I would laugh and send him on his way. While afordable GIG is possible in the home and desktop probably 90% of gig is used on servers. If that same person proposing the AMD server said: But I can tripple your LAN performance over that offered by a comparable INTEL solution, I'd stop laughing and possible give it a go.......

Doesn't Intel's granitebay have gig integrated?

 

[BoberFett]

Who's negative toward gigabit ethernet? I'd love it. faster is always better.

But let's get real. From a cost/benefit standpoint, Nvidia stands to make NO money integrating it into the chipset. In fact, they'd most likely lose money on the deal. The time involved in designing it into the chipset and the extra cost of production would likely be far more than they'd make in additional sales.

Nvidia's a business. They're there to make money. Not satisfy the wants of a puny minority.

 

[trikster2]

Originally posted by: BoberFett
Who's negative toward gigabit ethernet? I'd love it. faster is always better.

But let's get real. From a cost/benefit standpoint, Nvidia stands to make NO money integrating it into the chipset. In fact, they'd most likely lose money on the deal. The time involved in designing it into the chipset and the extra cost of production would likely be far more than they'd make in additional sales.

Nvidia's a business. They're there to make money. Not satisfy the wants of a puny minority.

That's why I said:
> However from a business sense Nvidia is probably making the right choice:

However note the "probably".

Business is not just about selling to existing "puny" markets but about making markets.

Nvidia cold create a market for low cost high speed AMD based servers using a gig capable Nforce 2. They could do this while still keeping the low end down by not including it in the lower end versions of the boards. If serverworks can survive just selling MBs to the server market, I'm sure nvidia could nicely augment there chipset business if they offer the server market something no one else can: Fast stable AMD based servers with 2-Die-4 networking.

 

[yodayoda]

because no one has gigabit ethernet lines and it is a waste of technology on 99.9% of computers for the next 5 years.

 

[BoberFett]

Originally posted by: trikster2

Originally posted by: BoberFett
Who's negative toward gigabit ethernet? I'd love it. faster is always better.

But let's get real. From a cost/benefit standpoint, Nvidia stands to make NO money integrating it into the chipset. In fact, they'd most likely lose money on the deal. The time involved in designing it into the chipset and the extra cost of production would likely be far more than they'd make in additional sales.

Nvidia's a business. They're there to make money. Not satisfy the wants of a puny minority.

That's why I said:
> However from a business sense Nvidia is probably making the right choice:

However note the "probably".

Business is not just about selling to existing "puny" markets but about making markets.

Nvidia cold create a market for low cost high speed AMD based servers using a gig capable Nforce 2. They could do this while still keeping the low end down by not including it in the lower end versions of the boards. If serverworks can survive just selling MBs to the server market, I'm sure nvidia could nicely augment there chipset business if they offer the server market something no one else can: Fast stable AMD based servers with 2-Die-4 networking.

Wrong. I don't know many businesses that would use AMD based servers. Not until Dell, IBM, et al start producing AMD based servers.

 

[CZroe]

Well hey, Apple makes 1u servers TODAY. How many businesses do you know that run Apple rackmounted servers? Not many, but they did it anyway.

 

[BoberFett]

Originally posted by: CZroe
Well hey, Apple makes 1u servers TODAY. How many businesses do you know that run Apple rackmounted servers? Not many, but they did it anyway.

Apple isn't known for their wise business decisions.

 

[CZroe]

Originally posted by: BoberFett

Originally posted by: CZroe
Well hey, Apple makes 1u servers TODAY. How many businesses do you know that run Apple rackmounted servers? Not many, but they did it anyway.

Apple isn't known for their wise business decisions.

Yeah, just came to mind so I thought I'd point it out

 

[trikster2]

Originally posted by: CZroe

Originally posted by: BoberFett

Originally posted by: CZroe
Well hey, Apple makes 1u servers TODAY. How many businesses do you know that run Apple rackmounted servers? Not many, but they did it anyway.

Apple isn't known for their wise business decisions.

Yeah, just came to mind so I thought I'd point it out

I guess neither is ABIT:


ABIT AMD MB with integrated Gigabyte LAN adapter

 

[trikster2]

CZROE

Looks like NVIDIA Heard your plea:

At the entry level, the Nforce 2G, another 333MHz chipset, will attack the KM266 marketplace, while in the commercial marketplace, the Nforce2-G in combo with Gigabit Ethernet, doesn't have a Via competitor ? yet."

Gotta do something to compete with springdale......

http://www.neoseeker.com/news/story/2412/

Targeting five markets with new AMD chipsets

The Inquirer writes that Nvidia is looking forward to increasing the pressure on competitor Via in the AMD chipset market. They hope to cover up to five markets with their upcoming nForce 2 products, the target areas being enthusiast, mainstream, mainstream graphics, entry level graphics and business motherboards:

"In the enthusiast sector, the Nforce 2 ST, which is 400MHz front side bus ready, and has S-ATA, RAID, ATA-133, AGP8X, Ethernet, USB 2.0, supports DDR 400 and Fireware, will target Via's KT400A and the 8237 combo.

As far as the mainstream market goes, the Nforce 2-S, which also includes support for 400MHz system buses, will aim to topple the Via KT400/400A, and the KT 333 plus its 8237 chip.

In the mainstream graphics marketplace, the Nforce2 GT chipset supports the 333MHz front side bus and has LAN, ATA-133, USB 2.0, TV Out and Fireware. It will take on the KM400 graphics chipset from Via.

At the entry level, the Nforce 2G, another 333MHz chipset, will attack the KM266 marketplace, while in the commercial marketplace, the Nforce2-G in combo with Gigabit Ethernet, doesn't have a Via competitor ? yet."

Source: The Inquirer
Section: CPU

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: trikster2
CZROE

Looks like NVIDIA Heard your plea:

At the entry level, the Nforce 2G, another 333MHz chipset, will attack the KM266 marketplace, while in the commercial marketplace, the Nforce2-G in combo with Gigabit Ethernet, doesn't have a Via competitor ? yet."

Gotta do something to compete with springdale......

http://www.neoseeker.com/news/story/2412/

Targeting five markets with new AMD chipsets

The Inquirer writes that Nvidia is looking forward to increasing the pressure on competitor Via in the AMD chipset market. They hope to cover up to five markets with their upcoming nForce 2 products, the target areas being enthusiast, mainstream, mainstream graphics, entry level graphics and business motherboards:

"In the enthusiast sector, the Nforce 2 ST, which is 400MHz front side bus ready, and has S-ATA, RAID, ATA-133, AGP8X, Ethernet, USB 2.0, supports DDR 400 and Fireware, will target Via's KT400A and the 8237 combo.

As far as the mainstream market goes, the Nforce 2-S, which also includes support for 400MHz system buses, will aim to topple the Via KT400/400A, and the KT 333 plus its 8237 chip.

In the mainstream graphics marketplace, the Nforce2 GT chipset supports the 333MHz front side bus and has LAN, ATA-133, USB 2.0, TV Out and Fireware. It will take on the KM400 graphics chipset from Via.

At the entry level, the Nforce 2G, another 333MHz chipset, will attack the KM266 marketplace, while in the commercial marketplace, the Nforce2-G in combo with Gigabit Ethernet, doesn't have a Via competitor ? yet."

Source: The Inquirer
Section: CPU

This sounds like just the ticket for business systems. Hopefully Asus will release a worthy successor to the reliable A7N266-VM for us... A7N333-VM/GE perhaps?

 

[CZroe]

Hell yeah! BTW, there are MANY enthusiast boards with Gigabit ADDED. It couldn't possibly be cheaper to add it to a motherboard than to integrate it (Thought integrations costs would be on the chipset manufacturer), plus you have the problem with a consumer board's I/O being limited to 133MBps PCI bus. It's about time!