Socket 939 Roundup: Battle at the Top
by Wesley Fink on July 30, 2004 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
ECS KV2 Extreme: Overclocking and Stress Testing
FSB Overclocking Results
| Front Side Bus Overclocking Testbed | ||
| Processor: | Athlon 64 FX53 Socket 939 2.4GHz |
|
| CPU Voltage: | 1.5V (default) | |
| Cooling: | Thermaltake Silent Boost K8 | |
| Power Supply: | Antec TruePower 430W | |
| Maximum OC: (Standard Ratios) |
207FSB x 12.5 2587MHz (+8%) |
|
| Maximum FSB: (Lower Ratio) |
220FSB x 11 at 1:1 Memory | |
Our FX53 topped out at about 2.59 GHz on the ECS KV2, which is slightly below the 2.6+ achieved on the top 939 boards. However, ECS has the significant advantage of half multipliers, which are very useful for tweaking the KV2 for the best performance with any Athlon 64 CPU. While we clearly found a working PCI/AGP lock with PCI Geiger, the ECS still topped out at 219-220 CPU frequency in BIOS - a figure you would expect on a good board without a lock.
We were able to reach higher in Windows with the ECS overclocking utility, which they call Fuzzy OC, reaching a high of 236 at a multiplier of 10. We have seen this type of behavior on other early VIA K8T800 PRO boards, and we suspect ECS will be able to significantly improve these results with a BIOS update or board revision. If ECS manages to deliver better overclocking performance, the KV2 Extreme will be a formidable competitor. For now, we can say it performs quite well at stock speeds, and offers great promise in the overclocking area. It just isn't quite there yet as an enthusiast board.
Memory Stress Test Results:
The memory stress test basically determines the ability of the ECS KV2 to operate at its officially supported memory frequency (400MHz DDR), at the best performing memory timings that our Mushkin PC3500 Level 2 or OCZ PC3500 Platinum Ltd Modules will support. Memory stress testing was conducted by running RAM at 400MHz with 2 DIMM slots operating in Dual-Channel mode. ECS uses the more standard DC configuration of slots 1 and 3 for the first Dual-Channel bank, and 2 and 4 for bank 2.| Stable DDR400 Timings - 2 DIMMs (2/4 DIMMs - 1 Dual-Channel Bank) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| Timing Mode: | N/A |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| Bank Interleave: | N/A |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 2T |
| RAS Precharge: | 10T* |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | 1T |
The premium design of the KV2 paid off in memory performance, as the ECS was completely stable with 2 DIMMs in Dual-Channel at the best performing settings of 2-2-2-10. We have found that the best performance on Socket 939 boards is with a Command Rate of 1T, and the KV2 was very stable with a 1T Command Rate setting.
Filling all four available memory slots is more strenuous on the memory subsystem than testing 2 DIMMs on a motherboard.
| Stable DDR400 Timings - 4 DIMMs (4/4 DIMMs - 2 Dual-Channel Banks) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| Timing Mode: | N/A |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| Bank Interleave: | N/A |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 2T |
| RAS Precharge: | 10T* |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | 2T |
The ECS was able to run with all 4 DIMM slots at the same aggressive 2-2-2-10 settings used for 2 DIMMs. However, as we have seen on other 939 boards running all 4 DIMMs, Command Rate must be reduced to 2T when filling both Dual Channels.
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thebluesgnr - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
"Our FX53 topped out at about 3.59 GHz on the ECS KV2, which is slightly below the 3.6+ achieved on the top 939 boards."Is this ECS a P4 board? :P
This was a great article. I agree with other readers, CnQ should definately have been tested, as well as audio and IDE subsystems.
btw Wesley, will there be reviews of KT880 socket A mobos in the future?
TrogdorJW - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Just a few comments. It's a little (*little* mind you) unfair to compare FX-53 to P4 560, given the price advantage of the P4. Then again, comparing it to the P4EE is a little unfair in the other direction. It might have been nice to include one or two other systems in the benchmarks, though, like a 3400+. Sure, we can cross-reference other articles, but if you have all the data already it would be a lot cleaner. I'm especially interested in seeing AutoGK benchmarks with the "lesser" Athlon 64 processors (3500+ and 3400+ would be good, or maybe even 3200+ - not everyone has $400+ to spend on a CPU!)Of course, while it might be less fair to Intel, I would like to get AutoGK numbers using Xvid as well. That's how I use it, as I feel the quality is a little better than DivX. Oh, and while you state that you used 2-pass encoding, what was the target resolution? 640x360, or 720x408, or something else? And did you specify a target size, or was it on unlimited quality? All those are important questions, I think.
One final request: I truly appreciate the memory stress testing benchmarks. However, I would like it taken a little further. All of the boards claim that they can support up to 4 GB of RAM. I would love to see some tests showing this configuration. After all, 64-bits is really about breaking that memory barrier. Even if the boards need to run 4x1GB at DDR266 or DDR333, it would be good to know. (Too bad there simply aren't many good 1 GB DIMMs available yet.)
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
#14 & #20 - Perhaps tests with the X800 XT on nF3 compared to the 6800 Ultra will at least shed a little light on where the efficiencies lie - in the nF3/nV Video combo or in the nF3 itself.#16 - We will make an effort to talk a bit more about Cool'n'Quiet in individual board reviews, but in a roundup like this it is difficult to explore that level of detail, and still hold the article length to anthing you might want to read. We try to do more with features in individual reviews.
#19 - We report the full range of vCore in our board charts for people like you who are interested in umdervolting. If you notice some boards begin vCore at default, while others make a wide undervolt range available as well as overvolt. We try to report this range as accurately as possible for this reason.
Pete - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Wesley, very interesting numbers. Halo is supposedly limited by some inefficient DX9 layers/commands, so I at first thought maybe nV had somehow optimized or bypassed some DX9 calls. The office and Content Creation benchmarks advantage is more puzzling, though. Could nV's performance edge be the result of some intelligent caching or either the HD or the CPU?Testing an X800 for reference is a good idea for Halo. Just be sure to retest the office and Content Creation suites, too, as the performance boost there is equally curious, IMO.
I found one typo, on the system specs page. It's Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, not Wolfenstein: Enemy Within. :)
JKing76 - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Sure there's Cool'n'Quiet, but how about adding manual undervolting capabilities to the review? A lot of mobos only allow upping the vcore, but undervolting is a great tool for creating a truely cool and quiet system without losing performance.XRaider - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Love that FX53 and the MSI K8N Neo2 together. Sure is purdy nice!! ;) But must...hold...out...until...price..drops...some..more.. ;o)Great article BTW!
XRaider - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Love that FX53 and the MSI K8N Neo2 together. Sure is purdy nice!! ;) But must...hold...out...until...price..drops...some..more.. ;o)Great article BTW!
jojo4u - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
I miss information about Cool'n'Quiet. It's a shame that anandtech.com only is insterested in overclocking and speed.esSJae - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
Nice, another article touting the non-existent MSI K8N Neo2.Sure, you can go to MSI's Taiwan site and download the manual and BIOS, but doesn't seem to be much point in that.
DAPUNISHER - Tuesday, July 20, 2004 - link
"We never expected the nVidia nForce3-250 Ultra to be a better performer in Winstone benchmarks than the VIA K8T800 PRO. However, both the nF3-250 boards are outperforming the VIA boards by a significant percentage. Since the nVidia 6800 Ultra video card was used for all benchmarking in the roundup, we plan to verify these results with an ATI X800 XT as soon as that board is available to the Motherboard Lab for testing"Is this to determine if it's a result of forceware opts that is responsible for the difference observed?