nForce4 SLI Intel Edition Arrives

nForce4 SLI Intel Edition Arrives

For the last six months or so, AMD users have had exclusive access to the hottest new gaming technology on the market, NVIDIA’s Scaleable Link interface (SLI) technology. Intel users have been left out in the cold, wondering when, and if, they would ever see SLI or a comparable solution supported by their platform…..and finally, the wait is over. Today we’ll introduce you to NVIDIA’s C19 chipset, NForce 4 SLI for Intel based systems. If C19 is nearly as successful as Nforce 4, NVIDIA has taken a very large step toward the Intel enthusiast chipset market.

Those of you familiar with the NForce 4 will recognize all the major attributes with the C19. Besides SLI, it also features the best and brightest features from NVIDIA including Gigabit Ethernet, NVIDIA’s own Active Armor Technology, support for a variety of storage solutions including RAID 0, 0+1, as well as RAID 5, SATA II, NCQ, and a few other new features we’ll cover as we move through the review.

Lets take a look at the general features of the C19, then move right along with a closer look at NVIDIA’s lastest Intel chipset.

General Features:

• Pentium 4 CPU FSB Interface to interact with all current LGA775 Pentium 4 processors
• Hyper Threading support
• Dual channel 128-bit DDR2 memory controller
• Support for up to 667 MHz memory modules
• Up to 16GB of memory using four 4 GB DIMMs
• HyperTransport connection between North and South Bridge (SPP and MCP)
• Native Gigabit Ethernet with advanced networking features
• Support for RAID 5, RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 0+1
• Supports SATA II 3.5 Gb/s and SATA 1.5 Gb/s standards with TCQ and NCQ support
• Four integrated SATA II channels
• Two channels of ATA-133
• Five total PCI Express controllers with 20 total lanes
• x16 PCI Express link for graphics cards
• SLI support for two x8 PCIe links
• 10 USB 2.0 ports
• AC’97 Audio for up to 8-channels