Nvidia forced to disable chipset PCI prefetch
 

資料來源：
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?o...=10222&Itemid=1

Nvidia forced to disable chipset PCI prefetch
Written by Lars-Göran Nilsson
Friday, 31 October 2008 04:46

More trouble for Nvidia



It has come to our attention that Nvidia has ended up in more product trouble, although this time it's with regard to Nvidia's chipset division and it's not related to a manufacturing issue, but rather a lawsuit from OPTi Inc.

As the story goes, Nvidia has infringed a patent regarding to PCI prefetch that OPTi holds and although OPTi no longer makes PC chips, they now license intellectual property. The problem in this case is that Nvidia didn't come out on agreeable terms with OPTi and has to remove the PCI prefetch feature from its chipsets.

The problem with this is twofold. Firstly, it means that just about every single Nvidia chipset from the nForce 500-series and onwards is affected and as such, PCI prefetch has to be removed from all retail boards and every single BIOS upgrade that contains the PCI prefetch code has to be removed from the Web. This also means that all Nvidia partners have to release BIOS updates for every single Nvidia motherboard from the nForce 500-series and onward.

For consumers, this means that they'll get very poor PCI performance, so if you're using any PCI cards in your Nvidia-based motherboard, don't upgrade to the latest BIOS, as it will reduce the performance of the PCI bus. This isn't going to be popular with a lot of users out that that have already upgraded their BIOS, as this "feature" has already been implemented by some motherboard manufacturers going back a couple of months.

Furthermore, Nvidia will be asking for written confirmations from all its partners that older BIOS versions have been removed from their Websites and that no BIOS versions with PCI prefetch will ever see the light of day outside of the companies again. All boards currently on sale must also have the BIOS changed, although this only seems to apply to the U.S. market as of right now.

Talk about a mess and one has to wonder why Nvidia couldn't just pay up to OPTi and get it all over with, without causing all this hassle to its partners and reducing the performance of the PCI bus on its motherboards which will ultimately cause them to lose customers.


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用Nvidia晶片MB的人...還是乖乖用舊版BIOS吧
避免效能降低....

除非有BUG一定要解.....

這樣是意味著連8300, 9300 IGP之類的晶片組也要取消PCI prefetch的功能了嗎 :think:

應該是吧

nForce 500系列以後的都要取消....

早在AMD的K8王朝結束後,都嘛是Intel inside

INTEL的晶片組現在也平價化了,就不再考慮用其他的晶片組了..

NV還是專心的把顯示卡做好吧! :think:

只有影響 PCI 嗎?
還是包涵 PCI Express :jolin:

看頂樓的新聞, 晶片應該是沒有問題, 只是不小心踩到別人的專利而已...
所以會先從BIOS關掉, 等到擺平之後在開啟吧...
好像也只是美國地區強迫要處理, 其他地方不用???

有個疑問, 關了之後會發生啥事??? 效能會降多少???

技嘉連nForce4系列也推出BIOS幫USER"降級"

http://www.gigabyte.tw/Support/Moth...?ProductID=1860

上禮拜替舊版子ASUS M2N4-SLI買了新的CPU，發現原BIOS 1203進Vista到一半就自己重開機
必須更新到BIOS 1205才能正常使用，之後發現HD的讀寫聲音很頻繁... 一開始沒注意...
剛剛看了文章去ASUS官網~ :flash: 1205版的確關了PCI prefetch...
舊的1203版BIOS居然下架，真是暈倒...

看來沒有PCI prefect的確增加了HD的負擔 :(

最近正在考慮幫朋友裝M3N78-EM，看到這則新聞先趕緊來抓沒被閹掉的BIOS~ :laugh:

想知道這會影響哪方面的性能?

PCI 預先讀取?

硬碟性能會下降?