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Summary

This is a basic preview of this product intended for readers who just want the quick look at the new product.  If you are interested in the full review, with all the technical data and benchmarks that you are used to seeing on PC Perspective, please click on this link to get to that article.

Today NVIDIA is releasing their first chipset for the Intel Pentium 4 processor platform, the NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel Edition.  Quite a mouthful.

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This new chipset from NVIDIA brings a couple of new features to the Intel market, the first of which is support for NVIDIA's SLI technology.  SLI allows you to connect two NVIDIA PCI Express GPUs to the same system to increase graphics performance.  It has been around for a while on the AMD side of the enthusiast crowd, as NVIDIA previously only produced AMD chipsets.  With NVIDIA's first jump into the Intel segment though, SLI is now available to any customer of either processor.

The other major change to this chipset is the upgraded memory controller, which has been enhanced to increase performance.  You can get more details on this new memory controller in our full, detailed review.  A full chipset feature list is available there as well.

Let's look at a couple of quick benchmarks on the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition.

As far as the chipset and main system performance is concerned, there are modest but small performance advantages over the Intel 925XE chipset with the new NVIDIA offering.  SLI performance in gaming is improved as well, but check out the full review for a complete look at performance and SLI.

Overall though, I think the NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipset is the best offering for users looking to head in the direction of the Intel processors, but the leap isn't so dramatic that our overall opinions on the AMD vs Intel debate have changed.  A job well done by the NVIDIA engineers to get the most out of the Intel platform.

For more detailed coverage, the expert review on PC Perspective will have a lot more information on the new features, performance and opinionated analysis. 

Our forums are a great place to find more information, user feedback and helpful assistance for any motherboards, processors or anything else. Take a look, I'm sure you'll find something to interest you.

Also, if you haven't tried our Product Specs database out yet, I suggest you do so, as it allows you to make some good, yet simple comparisons with the click of a mouse. 

Be sure to use our price checking engine to find the best prices on the Intel 3.73XE, and anything else you may want to buy!

Click here for the Detailed Review