Nvidia’s nForce 590 SLI chipset for Intel CPUs

Now, more than a month and a half after its last aborted launch, the nForce 590 SLI for Intel processors is finally ready for prime time. The chipset has arrived in style, too, riding an Asus P5N32-SLI Premium motherboard that’s bursting at the seams with all the perks and extras you’d expect from a high-end mobo. What’s more, the P5N32-SLI Premium is already available on store shelves.

Pinch me. The 590 SLI is for real this time.

Of course, the real question isn’t whether you can finally pair a Core 2 Duo processor with an nForce 590 SLI chipset; it’s whether you’d want to do so. To find out, we subjected the P5N32-SLI Premium to a sweeping array of chipset and motherboard tests, with enlightening results.

A true nForce 500 for Intel
Those who have been keeping track of the latest Core 2-compatible chipsets will know that the nForce 590 SLI isn’t actually Nvidia’s first nForce 500 series core logic for Intel processors. Nvidia quietly released the nForce 570 SLI a while ago, and upon closer inspection, it’s clear why there wasn’t much fanfare. Despite its nForce 500-series branding, the nForce 570 SLI for Intel processors is little more than a rebadged nForce4 SLI XE chipset.

Fortunately, the nForce 590 SLI at least has some new features. Here’s how the chipset’s specs compare with others on the market.

The nForce 590 SLI’s SPP, or north bridge, doesn’t look all that different from the nForce 570 SLI. Both support front-side bus speeds up to 1066MHz and DDR2-667 memory, and both utilize a HyperTransport chipset interconnect. However, only the nForce 590 SLI (and the nForce4 SLI X16, of course) offers support for dual-x16 SLI configurations. The 570 SLI can only supply each of a pair of graphics cards in SLI with eight lanes of bandwidth.

Don’t be too concerned with the fact that the nForce 590 SLI’s memory controller tops out at DDR2-667. The chipset may lack native support for DDR2-800 and DDR2-1067 memory, but that won’t stop motherboard manufacturers from supporting faster memory types as they have with boards based on the 975X Express, nForce4 SLI X16, and nForce 570 SLI. We should also note that the nForce 590 SLI’s memory controller does support Enhanced Performance Profiles, or EPP for short. The open EPP standard was introduced back in May, and allows memory modules to provide motherboards with more detailed information about preferred speeds and timing options. Motherboard makers are still on the hook to actually implement EPP support in their BIOSes, though.

If Nvidia’s SPP specs for the nForce4 SLI X16, nForce 570 SLI, and 590 SLI look similar, it’s because they all use the same physical chip. Nvidia prefers to differentiate its chipsets at the south bridge, where the nForce 590 SLI MCP makes quite an impact.

The 590 SLI MCP adds 28 PCI Express lanes, bringing the chipset’s total up to 48. Even with a pair of graphics cards in SLI, that still leaves 16 lanes of bandwidth for expansion slots and onboard peripherals. Eight of those lanes are tied up in a PCIe x8 link that can’t be broken down further, though.

On the storage front, the nForce 590 SLI packs six 300MB/s Serial ATA RAID ports with support for RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and 5 arrays. ATA RAID is also supported, although its usefulness is hampered by the fact that the chipset only sports a single IDE channel. At least Nvidia hasn’t completely banished “parallel” ATA from the chipset. As cumbersome as IDE cables may be, the scarcity of affordable Serial ATA optical drives has made Intel’s decision to exclude IDE support from its ICH8 south bridge chips look a little premature. Motherboard makers have been forced to use third-party IDE controller chips, and we’ve encountered some compatibility problems between those chips and older boot CDs and versions of Ghost.

Interestingly, Nvidia still hasn’t implemented AHCI support in its Serial ATA controller. The nForce 590 SLI supports Native Command Queuing, but it doesn’t do so through AHCI like chipsets from Intel and even ATI&3151;not that we’re entirely complaining. Auxiliary drivers are required to install Windows to hard drives running in AHCI mode, but they’re not necessary for drives connected to the nForce 590 SLI.

Integrated networking has been a tenet of Nvidia chipsets for some time, and the nForce 590 SLI takes the next logical step by packing a pair of Gigabit Ethernet MACs. These GigE controllers each have their own TCP/IP offload engine, although hardware offloads aren’t compatible with software firewalls. Nvidia won’t be bundling its firewall software with the nForce 590 SLI’s driver, either, but the company does have a couple of new tricks up its sleeve.

Without FirstPacket
Source: NVIDIA

With FirstPacket
Source: NVIDIA

Nvidia’s DualNet and FirstPacket schemes debuted with the nForce 590 SLI for AMD, and now they’re making their way to the Intel platform. FirstPacket is the more intriguing of the two, offering quality-of-service control for outbound network traffic. A simple control panel allows users to set applications priorities, ensuring that networking packets associated with game executables are bumped to the front of the line ahead of apps like BitTorrent and FTP servers. However, the nForce 590 SLI must still accept every inbound packet it receives; the chipset has no control over how packets are prioritized by an online server, your ISP, or even your router. That narrows FirstPacket’s impact to uploads only, and let’s face it, most folks leech a lot more than they share.

To give leechers a little more to work with, the nForce 590 SLI is capable of running its dual Gigabit Ethernet controllers in, well, SLI. The chipset’s GigE MACs can be combined to act as a single networking controller in a scheme Nvidia calls DualNet. This double-wide connection presents itself as a single 2Gbps link, and also provides a measure of fault tolerance should one controller or physical network connection fail. Of course, it will take multiple clients to saturate a 2Gbps connection, and even Nvidia only guarantees a 40% performance boost over a single Gigabit link. That makes DualNet look more appropriate for the workstation and server crowds, although its ability to also team 10/100 connections could make it a useful feature for LAN parties, where file sharing with multiple clients is rampant.

Support for 10 USB ports and Intel’s “Azalia” High Definition Audio scheme round out the nForce 590 SLI’s feature set. Audio is mostly out of Nvidia’s hands, though. The chipset relies on Microsoft’s HDA bus driver and whatever codec chip and associated drivers mobo manufacturers choose to use with their boards.

Asus’s P5N32-SLI Premium motherboard
The nForce 590 SLI for Intel processors has arrived on Asus’s high-end P5N32-SLI Premium motherboard. Be careful about confusing this board with the P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe, though. The Deluxe is based on Nvidia’s older and apparently less premium nForce4 SLI X16 chipset, and given the differences between the chipsets, you don’t want to end up with that instead of the 590 SLI.

Like most high-end Asus boards, the P5N32-SLI Premium is loaded with just about everything an enthusiast could want. The board even looks halfway decent, with Asus showing admirable restraint in not resorting to a clashing rainbow of neon multicolored slots and ports.

We’re quite pleased with this mobo’s power plug placement, as well. Both power connectors are located along edges of the board where cable clutter won’t interfere with airflow around the CPU cooler or chassis exhaust. However, those looking to run upside-down cases like Antec’s P180, which place the power supply below the motherboard, will probably require an extension cable to reach the auxiliary 12V connector.

The P5N32-SLI Premium relies on a silent array of heatpipes and radiator fins to cool its chipset components and CPU voltage circuitry. None of the heatsinks are tall enough to get in the way, so the board should easily accommodate the monster CPU coolers that are all the rage these days. It’s fascinating how the same heatsink can appeal to both power-hungry overclockers and silence-seeking enthusiasts with little more than a fan swap.

An elaborate heatpipe network allows the P5N32-SLI Premium to get away with a low-profile south bridge cooler that won’t interfere with longer graphics cards. Unlike with some high-end mobos, you don’t have to worry about longer or double-wide graphics cards blocking access to any of the Serial ATA ports, either. All six ports are neatly arranged along the edge of the board where they’ll be right next to the internal hard drive bays of most enclosures.

Unfortunately, longer graphics cards do interfere with the board’s DIMM slot retention tabs. Removing memory modules while a graphics card is installed is a trying task for those of us with short, stubby fingers, and this particular clearance issue is surprisingly common on modern motherboards.

I’m inclined to forgive the tight DIMM tab clearance because the P5N32-SLI Premium provides such a bountiful array of expansion slots. With six slots in total, there isn’t enough vertical room on a standard ATX board for more clearance.

One of the P5N32-SLI Premium’s expansion slots is reserved for a proprietary audio riser that we’ll detail in a moment, but the rest are standard fare. The blue and black PCI Express x16 slots each have access to a full 16 lanes of bandwidth, while the yellow slot stuck in the middle has only eight lanes of connectivity. Of course, PCIe x16 slots are also backward compatible with PCIe x8, x4, and x1 expansion cards. At the very least, you can use the P5N32-SLI Premium’s third graphics card slot for one of the many PCIe peripherals we’re all hoping will show up any day now. Until then, the board also has two standard PCI slots, one of which will still be free with a pair of double-wide graphics cards installed.

Asus gets a little fancy on the port cluster, serving up a pair of eSATA ports and antenna connector for the board’s integrated 802.11g Wi-Fi component. The onboard Wi-Fi uses a Realtek RTL8187L wireless chip, proving that if the crab doesn’t get you at the codec, it can still get you somewhere else.

The rest of the port cluster is less exciting, although we’re pleased to see both TOS-Link and Coaxial flavors of digital S/PDIF output. These outputs support Dolby DTS Connect, which allows users to pass multichannel audio along a single digital connection to a receiver or to DTS-compatible PC speakers like Logitech’s Z-5500s.

For those with more traditional PC speakers, the P5N32-SLI Premium’s analog audio ports can be found on an external riser card that also plays host to the board’s codec chip. This layout should help to isolate the codec from board-level noise and result in higher quality playback, but we’ve had mixed results from riser cards on other boards. We’ll take a closer look at the riser’s playback quality in a moment.

The P5N32-SLI Premium comes with a handful of extras, including a noise-canceling microphone, a Wi-Fi antenna, and an auxiliary blower for the passive chipset cooler to be used in water-cooled systems that lack ambient air flow. Those are great additions to the board, but the neatest extras are far less glamorous. Asus has started bundling a trio of little jumper blocks with its motherboards to take the hassle out of connecting individual pins. The front-panel connector block is particularly useful, since it allows you to easily consolidate a case’s front panel cabling into a single block that can then be plugged directly into the motherboard. That’s a lot easier than individually plugging each of the front panel connectors into the motherboard, especially when the board’s already sitting inside a case.

BIOS options and tweaking software
Intel’s Core 2 Duo lineup is rife with overclocking potential, making the P5N32-SLI Premium’s BIOS particularly important.

Unfortunately, the most current BIOS revision lacks Core 2 Duo multiplier control. That’s a little disappointing, although it’s something that Asus can certainly add with future BIOS revisions, as it has done with other Core 2-compatible motherboards.

Unless you’re going for extreme memory speeds, most Core 2 Duo overclocking exploits won’t require CPU multiplier control. They will require plenty of front-side and memory bus options, and the P5N32-SLI Premium delivers those in spades. Front-side bus speeds are available up to 525MHz in ultra-fine 0.25MHz increments, and the BIOS allows users to set a target memory speed between 200 and 800MHz (an effective 400 and 1600MHz, thanks to DDR’s clock-doubling properties). Once that target memory speed has been set, the BIOS draws from dozens of available dividers to come as close as possible to the target speed. I’m not a huge fan of the black box approach to applying memory bus dividers—I’d rather have explicit control over those dividers, even if I have to do the math myself—but it does seem like a better option for less savvy users.

On the voltage front, the P5N32-SLI Premium’s BIOS serves up control over CPU, memory, HyperTransport, and north and south bridge voltages. CPU voltages are available up to 1.55V in 0.05V increments, with an optional 0.2V kicker for those looking to really push the envelope. Memory voltages go all the way up to 2.55V, also in 0.05V increments.

As one might expect, the P5N32-SLI Premium’s BIOS has all the major memory timing options, including control over the DRAM command rate. Interestingly, we’ve only seen command rate control offered on Core 2 motherboards based on Nvidia chipsets.

Of course, the P5N32-SLI Premium also supports EPP. If you have compatible memory modules, there’s less of a need to fiddle with memory timings manually.

Asus does a reasonably good job with the P5N32-SLI Premium’s fan speed control options. Temperature-based fan speed control is available for the board’s CPU and system fan headers, although users aren’t given explicit control over temperature thresholds or fan voltages. The robust fan speed control of Abit’s uGuru-enabled motherboards has indeed spoiled us.

If poking around in the BIOS isn’t your thing, Asus also offers PC Probe II and AiBooster software for Windows.

These apps bring hardware monitoring and overclocking options to Windows, but they’re not nearly as elegant or robust as Nvidia’s nTune system utility. Well, make that “nearly as elegant or robust as what’s possible with Nvidia’s system utility.” The Nvidia app requires cooperation from motherboard makers in the form of BIOS hooks for various features, and a lot of those hooks are missing from the P5N32-SLI Premium.

Take nTune’s monitoring application, for example. The app is capable of tracking system temperatures and voltages, but neither is reported to it by the P5N32-SLI Premium’s BIOS.

Support for most of nTune’s tweaking options is also lacking. Asus could have done a much better job here, and although we understand that it has its own tweaking software to push, Nvidia’s is better. For one, nTune offers a much more extensive array of overclocking, tweaking, and hardware monitoring options. nTune also has a very slick custom rules application that allows users to associate system profiles with active applications and other system variables. AiBooster and PC Probe II may be better than the average mobo maker’s bundled software, but they’re nowhere near nTune.

Our testing methods
We have an all-Asus lineup for testing, and will be comparing the performance of the nForce 590 SLI-based P5N32-SLI Premium to that of boards based on Intel’s P965 and 975X Express chipsets, as well as Nvidia’s nForce 570 SLI and nForce4 SLI X16 core logic.

Surprisingly, we couldn’t get positional 3D audio to work with the Analog Devices drivers that ship with the P5N32-SLI Premium. The drivers available on Asus’s web site don’t provide 3D audio support, either. However, a set of AD1988B codec drivers on the driver CD for Asus’s M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard worked flawlessly on the P5N32-SLI Premium. The boards use the same codec, so that’s not entirely surprising. Asus and Nvidia are looking into the issue, but we’ve yet to hear back from them on it.

All tests were run at least twice, and their results were averaged, using the following test systems.

Thanks to Corsair for providing us with memory for our testing. 2GB of RAM seems to be the new standard for most folks, and Corsair hooked us up with some of its 1GB DIMMs for testing.

Also, all of our test systems were powered by OCZ GameXStream 700W power supply units. Thanks to OCZ for providing these units for our use in testing.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

• SiSoft Sandra Standard 2005 SR3
• WorldBench 5.0
• TCD Labs HD Tach v3.01
• Futuremark 3DMark06 Build 1.02
• Far Cry v1.3
• Splinter Cell Chaos Theory v1.05
• RightMark 3D Sound 2.2
• RightMark Audio Analyzer 5.5
• NTttcp
• Cinebench 2003
• Sphinx 3.3
• trq4demo1 demo
• F.E.A.R. 1.04
• Intel IOMeter v2004.07.30
• Intel iPEAK Storage Performance Toolkit 3.0

The test systems’ Windows desktop was set at 1280×1024 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests. Most of the 3D gaming tests used the Medium detail image quality settings, with the exception that the resolution was set to 640×480 in 32-bit color.

All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.

Memory performance

Like the other nForce chipsets here, which share the same memory controller, the nForce 590 SLI fares well in our memory bandwidth tests. In addition, the P5N32-SLI Premium has the lowest latency of the bunch. Fortunately, it doesn’t suffer from the unusually high access latencies that plague the Asus P5NSLI (the nForce 570 SLI board).

Memory controllers don’t always perform well when all four DIMM slots are populated, so we added a couple of additional memory modules to our test systems. On the nForce systems, we had to raise the DRAM command rate from 1T to 2T to get the boards to boot. Command rate control isn’t available on the 975X or P965 boards we have, but they had no problem booting with four DIMMs without any fiddling.

Interestingly, the P5N32-SLI Premium loses a little ground to the P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe with four DIMMs installed. The performance gap isn’t huge, though.

Memory performance – con’t
The following Cachemem latency graphs are a little indulgent, but they do a good job of highlighting access latency across various block and step sizes. The Core 2 Duo runs out of on-chip cache after a block size of 4096KB, so you’ll want to pay more attention to the memory access latencies that follow with larger block sizes.

I’ve arranged the following graphs in order of highest to lowest latency with a common Z-axis to aid comparison. These access latency results are from our two-DIMM system configurations.

Notice that the 590 SLI’s access latencies track closely with those of the nForce4 SLI X16, as expected.

Cinebench rendering

Cinebench scores are close across the board, with our system’s processor and graphics card defining performance more than the chipset or motherboard.

Sphinx speech recognition

Sphinx usually favors faster memory subsystems, but despite its superior performance in our synthetic bandwidth and latency tests, the nForce 590 SLI is relegated to fourth place. The Intel chipsets are the fastest here.

WorldBench

WorldBench overall performance
WorldBench uses scripting to step through a series of tasks in common Windows applications. It then produces an overall score. WorldBench also spits out individual results for its component application tests, allowing us to compare performance in each. We’ll look at the overall score, and then we’ll show individual application results alongside the results from some of our own application tests.

Only two points separate the fastest board from the slowest in WorldBench, and the 590 SLI is caught in the middle.

Multimedia editing and encoding

MusicMatch Jukebox

Windows Media Encoder

Adobe Premiere

VideoWave Movie Creator

WorldBench’s multimedia editing and encoding tests don’t give the boards much room to play, but the nForce 590 SLI is a little off the pace in Premiere. There, the Intel chipsets appear to have a distinct edge over their nForce competition.

3D rendering

3D Studio Max

What the nForce 590 SLI lacks in Premiere it makes up in 3D Studio MAX. The OpenGL test performs particularly well on the nForce chipsets.

Image processing

Adobe Photoshop

ACDSee PowerPack

Image processing isn’t terribly chipset-dependent, but the nForce 590 SLI is marginally slower in the ACDSee test.

Multitasking and office applications

Microsoft Office

Mozilla

Mozilla and Windows Media Encoder

Surprisingly, WorldBench’s office and multitasking tests provide a fair amount of variance. In the Office XP test, the nForce 590 SLI does very well to lead the field. However, it falls behind in the Mozilla and multitasking tests.

Other applications

Winzip

Nero

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Gaming

The nForce 590 SLI does well in our first round of gaming tests, although with the exception of Quake 4, the boards are clumped pretty closely together.

Multi-GPU gaming performance
Our first round of gaming tests was conducted with more modest in-game detail levels and display resolutions in order to remove the graphics subsystem as a performance-limiting factor, but we’ve cranked things up for a second round. These tests use high resolutions, high detail levels, and anisotropic filtering and antialiasing. We’ve tested each chipset with a single GeForce 7900 GTX. The nForce4 SLI X16, nForce 570 SLI, and nForce 590 SLI were also tested with a second 7900 GTX running in SLI. On the CrossFire front, the 975X Express was tested with a Radeon X1900 XTX in single-card and CrossFire configurations. Since the P965 chipset’s CrossFire support remains incomplete, it will have to make do with a single GeForce 7900 GTX.

Our purpose here is not to compare the merits of SLI versus CrossFire, or even the GeForce 7900 GTX with the Radeon X1900 XTX. Instead, we’re looking at how performance scales when a second graphics card is installed.

Dual 16-lane SLI configurations look great on paper, but at these resolutions and detail levels, they’re really not faster than SLI implementations that only provide eight lanes of bandwidth to each card.

Serial ATA performance
The Serial ATA disk controller is one of the most important components of a modern core logic chipset, so we threw each platform a selection of I/O-intensive storage tests. We’ve also included results from a Foxconn P9657AA-8KS2H motherboard to illustrate the P965 Express’ performance with a vanilla ICH8 south bridge.

IOMeter
We’ll begin our storage tests off with IOMeter, which subjects our systems to increasing multi-user loads. Testing was restricted to IOMeter’s workstation and database test patterns, since those are more appropriate for desktop systems than the file or web server test patterns.

The nForce 590 SLI scales better than the nForce4 SLI X16, but not quite as well as either of the AHCI-enabled Intel chipsets.

For whatever reason, the nForce chipsets won’t run IOMeter with a load of 128 or 256 outstanding I/O requests. We’ve seen this behavior before from other chipset and RAID controllers—including older Intel designs—so it’s nothing to get too worked up about. Even 64 outstanding I/Os is hitting a desktop chipset pretty hard.

IOMeter response times for the nForce 590 SLI are right in the middle of the field.

With the exception of the ICH8R-equipped P965 Express, IOMeter CPU utilization doesn’t vary much from board to board. The 590 SLI’s CPU usage doesn’t even break half a percent.

iPEAK multitasking
We developed a series of disk-intensive multitasking tests to highlight the impact of command queuing on hard drive performance. You can get the low-down on these iPEAK-based tests here. The mean service time of each drive is reported in milliseconds, with lower values representing better performance.

Although it sneaks a victory with our iPEAK dual file copy workload, the nForce 590 SLI doesn’t fare as well with others. The nForce 590 SLI is consistently faster than the nForce4 SLI X16, but it’s disappointing to see it behind the nForce 570 SLI.

iPEAK multitasking – con’t

The 590 SLI fares a little better in our second round of iPEAK tests, and it clearly prefers multitasking loads that include Outlook PST file import and export operations rather than those that deal with compressed file creation and extraction.

SATA performance
We used HD Tach 3.01’s 8MB zone test to measure basic SATA throughput and latency.

The Serial ATA performance of these chipsets doesn’t differ much in HDTach, especially considering that the ICH8R’s exceptional write speeds are tied to an apparent bug in the Western Digital Caviar RE2 hard drive we used for testing. You can read more about that issue here. Keep in mind that HD Tach’s margin of error in the CPU utilization test is +/- 2%.

ATA performance
ATA performance was tested with a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ATA/133 hard drive using HD Tach 3.01’s 8MB zone setting.

The nForce 590 SLI’s ATA performance is about what you’d expect. Again, we see the P965 motherboard out ahead in the write speed test, but since it’s using an auxiliary JMicron controller to handle IDE support, the chipset isn’t doing the work here.

USB performance
Our USB transfer speed tests were conducted with a USB 2.0/Firewire external hard drive enclosure connected to a 7200RPM Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 hard drive. We tested with HD Tach 3.01’s 8MB zone setting.

While the nForce4 SLI X16 is the fastest board in our USB tests, the 590 SLI isn’t far behind. Note that the Intel chipsets have comparatively lower USB write speeds.

Firewire performance
Firewire isn’t a part of the nForce 590 SLI or any of the other chipsets we’re looking at, but we’ve thrown in some bonus Firewire performance tests for the motherboards that each of the chipsets ride. Because the chipsets aren’t doing any of the heavy lifting here, the graphs list motherboard rather than chipset names.

Our Firewire transfer speed tests were conducted with the same external enclosure and hard drive as our USB transfer speed tests. Since the P5NSLI lacks Firewire support, it has to sit out for this round of tests.

Poor Firewire performance isn’t something we were expecting from the P5N32-SLI Premium, but this is the first time we’ve dealt with the board’s VIA 6308P Firewire chip. The chip only supports 1394a, so the culprit isn’t Windows XP’s poor handling of 1394b devices. This may simply be a slower chip than the Texas Instruments Firewire controllers found on the other boards.

3D Audio performance

With codec drivers handling 3D audio calculations, the chipsets clump into two groups: those powered by Analog Devices codecs, and those backed up by the crab. Our nForce 590 SLI board is a member of the former, and its CPU utilization is lower than that of the Realtek-equipped boards.

Audio quality
With audio responsibilities largely handed off to codec chips and their associated drivers, chipsets don’t necessarily impact onboard audio quality. Since these tests have more to do with motherboard implementations than chipsets, we’re again busting out the motherboard names for the graphs.

We used an M-Audio Revolution 7.1 sound card for recording in RightMark’s audio quality tests. Analog output ports were used on all systems. To keep things simple, I’ve translated RightMark’s word-based quality scale to numbers. Higher scores reflect better audio quality, and the scale tops out at 6, which corresponds to an “Excellent” rating in RightMark.

Despite its fancy audio riser, the P5N32-SLI Premium’s analog audio output quality is nothing to write home about. Onboard audio is rarely impressive, and you’re better off with digital audio output or a decent sound card if you value fidelity.

Ethernet performance
We evaluated Ethernet performance using the NTttcp tool from Microsoft’s Windows DDK. The docs say this program “provides the customer with a multi-threaded, asynchronous performance benchmark for measuring achievable data transfer rate.”

We used the following command line options on the server machine:

ntttcps -m 4,0,192.168.1.25 -a

..and the same basic thing on each of our test systems acting as clients:

ntttcpr -m 4,0,192.168.1.25 -a

Our server was a Windows XP Pro system based on Asus’s P5WD2 Premium motherboard with a Pentium 4 3.4GHz Extreme Edition (800MHz front-side bus, Hyper-Threading enabled) and PCI Express-attached Gigabit Ethernet. A crossover CAT6 cable was used to connect the server to each system.

The boards were tested with jumbo frames disabled.

Nvidia revamped its Gigabit Ethernet offload engine for the nForce 590 SLI chipset, but according to our ntttcp results, the nForce4 SLI X16’s GigE controller has lower CPU utilization. Of course, it only has one GigE controller; the 590 SLI enjoys two, each of which has lower CPU utilization than what’s available from boards that feature Gigabit chips from Marvell and Realtek.

Interestingly, the CPU utilization of one of the nForce 590 SLI’s GigE controllers is consistently lower than that of the other. Nvidia says the controllers don’t share offload engine resources, but one seems to be more efficient than the other. We’ve observed similar behavior from the nForce 590 SLI for Socket AM2 processors, as well.

PCI Express performance
We used the same ntttcp test methods from our Ethernet tests to examine PCI Express throughput using a Marvell 88E8052-based PCI Express x1 Gigabit Ethernet card.

The nForce 590 SLI’s PCIe performance is in line with expectations. We still can’t explain the nForce4 SLI X16’s consistently low CPU utilization in this test, though.

PCI performance
To test PCI performance, we used the same ntttcp test methods and a PCI VIA Velocity GigE NIC.

PCI performance isn’t a problem for any of these chipsets, although the 590 SLI’s CPU utilization again fails to match that of the nForce4.

Power consumption
We measured system power consumption, sans monitor and speakers, at the wall outlet using a Watts Up power meter. Power consumption was measured at idle and under a load consisting of a multi-threaded Cinebench 2003 render running in parallel with the “rthdribl” high dynamic range lighting demo.

Nvidia has caught flak for the relatively high power consumption of its chipsets, but the nForce 590 SLI is an improvement on that front, at least at idle. Despite the fact that the nForce 590 SLI packs more integrated peripherals than the nForce4 SLI X16, the P5N32-SLI Premium’s power consumption is more than 10W lower at idle than the nForce4 SLI X16-based board.

Our nForce 590 SLI board does consume more power under load than any of the others, though. Its idle power consumption is also 20W higher than that of the P965 Express-based mobo.

Overclocking
When the nForce 590 SLI for Intel chipset was initially delayed, rumors swirled that motherboard manufacturers were unhappy with the overclocking performance of the chipset’s north bridge component. According to Nvidia, the P5N32-SLI Premium’s north bridge chip is identical to the one on original nForce 590 SLI reference boards, giving us the opportunity to put those rumors to the test.

Since the P5N32-SLI Premium’s BIOS lacks Core 2 Duo multiplier control, we were forced to overclock the old fashioned way. We set a memory bus speed target of an effective 800MHz for our DDR2-800 memory, dropped the HyperTransport link multiplier for the chipset interconnect to remove it as a variable, and started pushing the front-side bus.

A little extra CPU voltage later, we settled on a stable front-side bus speed of 330MHz. That put our Core 2 Duo E6700 processor at 3.3GHz, which is as fast as we’ve had the chip on other motherboards. Attempts to push the system beyond 330MHz were met by either a failure to post or a hard lock during the Windows boot process.

Of course, just because our front-side bus overclocking efforts topped out at 330MHz doesn’t mean that the P5N32-SLI Premium—or nForce 590 SLI—isn’t capable of higher speeds. Control over the CPU multiplier could have allowed us to push the front-side bus even higher without taxing our E6700 processor. As is always the case with overclocking, your mileage may vary.

Conclusions
The nForce 590 SLI’s arrival for Intel processors has been a long time coming, and we’re glad it’s finally here. Nvidia at last has a real nForce 500 series chipset for the Core 2 Duo.

Like its counterpart for AM2 processors, the nForce 590 SLI for Intel gets most of its appeal from a solid dual-PCIe x16 SLI implementation, loads of PCI Express connectivity, ample Serial ATA RAID and Gigabit Ethernet options, and useful extras like FirstPacket, DualNet, and nTune. Performance is pretty good, too, although power consumption remains a thorn in Nvidia’s side. That’s the price you pay for such a feature-rich chipset, I guess.

Some may question whether there’s really a need to integrate extra features into a core logic chipset. After all, it’s possible to tap auxiliary peripheral chips to build a motherboard that can go toe-to-toe with the 590 SLI and consumes less power in the process. However, unless you pick the right peripheral chips—something that motherboard makers don’t always do, especially when they’re trying to cut costs—you don’t always get equivalent performance. By consolidating all these extras, the nForce 590 SLI ensures more consistent peripheral performance across a wider range of motherboard implementations, taking some of the guesswork out of picking a board.

If you were to pick a board, the Asus P5N32-SLI Premium would be a pretty good choice. The Premium has all the bases covered, including passive chipset cooling, Firewire, eSATA, digital audio outputs, integrated Wi-Fi, and an intriguing third PCIe x16 slot. Asus has done a good job with the board’s BIOS, as well, and we hope Core 2 Duo multiplier control and additional nTune hooks are added soon.

I’m not so sure you should rush out and buy a P5N32-SLI Premium just yet, though. For one, the board’s $250 street price is a little tough to swallow. More importantly, Nvidia recently revealed that it will launch a new nForce 680i chipset for Intel processors next month. Details on the 680i are scarce, and it’s unclear whether this is really a new chipset or just another rebranding exercise, but we’ll soon know one way or the other. If you’ve already waited this long for the nForce 590 SLI, another month won’t kill you.