With nvidia's use of the dual channel, crossbar memory controller in their upcoming chipset, I began to wonder about the Athlon 4’s hardware prefetch. Since the nforce is doing more or less what hardware prefetch does now, will the Athlon 4 be able to improve upon that? I really do not understand enough about CPU architecture to figure it out. But I do know enough to ponder these things.

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I am on loan here.

From what I understand that should take the "load" off the
cpu and allow it to do other hardware intensive tasks;
mulitasking if you will.

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Serious Soldier

I don't think it takes a load off. I know if more effectively uses memory. So I am still wondering if there will be increase in performance with a athlon 4 + nforce over a athlon(tbird) + nforce.

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I am on loan here.

I'll see what I can dig up (and learn more about prefetch), but I garuntee nothing...heh.

Thanks paul

I found a little bit on info on hardware pre-fetch on the net

http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/cs245/papers/Robert.html

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I am on loan here.

Wicked find. I need to start going through the *.edu sites more often again...it's been awhile since I've done that. Yarg...too busy to post...must...make....time......

Adul has a knack for that kind of thing. It'd be nice if he could hang around here more often.

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Hey. What kind of party is this? There's no booze and only one hooker. -- Bender (Futurama)

Well, the way i see it, thinking about that wide interface towards the graphics port and no extras... i doubt that the chipset will do much for the video perfromance, i know, i am going out on a limb here... but i do think that the need for a specialized CPU is more relevant.. The Athlon 4 is moving in that direction...

Patrick

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No question is to dumb if you are prepared for a technical answer...

One thing that I've heard is that the nForce has a higher average latency than most other chipsets (even VIA!:eek, and so the "prefetch" into the on-chipset cache (which is small), is just to hide the chipset latencies, not because of bus latencies.

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paul@pleaseohpleasedontspamme.slcentral.com
A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems -- P. Erdos

One issue though.....Price. It's more expensive to make, so you probably won't find a mobo around under $250....

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ActiveTuning - Partner & Director Of Sales & Marketing

I dunno, I've heard more in the ~150 pricerange....which is absolutely killer....

If that is the pricerange, I'd be tempted to get one! (in great part due to the better sound, as my soundcard is terrible).

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paul@pleaseohpleasedontspamme.slcentral.com
A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems -- P. Erdos

I think it may be $150 in packages of 1,000.....

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ActiveTuning - Partner & Director Of Sales & Marketing

Not what I heard...I heard $350. Don't ask me from where, 'cuz I don't remember. :P

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

They did, somehow, manage to squeeze it all into a 2-layer PCB, which is why it's supposed to be so cheap.

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paul@pleaseohpleasedontspamme.slcentral.com
A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems -- P. Erdos

That's pretty damn good, considering that the original Athlon boards were 6-layer...

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"And knowing is half the battle!"