The Nforce 4 and the Nforce 5 -- officially known as the nForce4 and the nForce 500 series, respectively -- are motherboard chipsets from semiconductor and graphics processing unit manufacturer Nvidia. These components are designed for data transfer with processors on desktop personal computers, among other functions. The nForce4 made its debut in 2004, while the more advanced nForce 500 appeared in 2006.
Processor
The nForce 4 and the nForce 500 series motherboard chipsets are designed to work with certain processors from semiconductor companies Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices. Compatible Intel chips come from the Core 2 family of the company's premier central processing unit brand; the Pentium 4, the fourth iteration of the Pentium family, which Core relegated to mid-range status; and the Celeron D, which were the high-performance but low-energy efficient variant of Intel's low-budget brand. The compatible AMD processors consist of the single- and dual-core variants of the then-premier Athlon brand and the budget-oriented Sempron.
FSB Speed
Each Nvidia nForce chipset facilitates data transfer between the processor and the motherboard via the front-side bus interface. The rate of such a transfer is referred to as the front-side bus speed. The Intel technology-based nForce 4 chipsets have an FSB speed of 1,066MHz. This surpasses the AMD technology-based nForce 4 chipsets, as well as the nForce 500 series, which offer an FSB speed of 1GHz, or 1,000MHz.
Disk Drive Interfaces
The Nvidia nForce 4 series and the Nvidia nForce 500 series support two types of computer bus interfaces that desktop PCs use for connecting hard disk drives, which provide data storage; and optical drives, which play or record on optical discs such as CDs and DVDs. They are the Serial Advanced Technology Attachment and the Parallel ATA. The nForce 4 supports up to four ports of each interface. The nForce 500, released at a time when the Parallel ATA began to give way to the SATA, accommodates up to six SATA inputs. Some 500-series chipsets support only two PATAs instead of four. SATA peak data transfer speed for both chipsets is 3 gigabits per second.
Graphics
Both Nvidia nForce 4 and Nvidia nForce 500 chipsets are compatible with Peripheral Component Interconnect expansion slots with 2 Gbit/s. The nForce 500, however, also accommodates PCIe ports with up to 128 Gbit/s. Some nForce chipsets have an SLI designation for Nvidia's SLI Technology, used for scalable graphics performance by combining two or more video cards for a single output. The top-of-the-line chipset of the nForce 4 and 500 families is the nForce 590 SLI, which is the only one that supports the top-level PCIe x16 slot.
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