FIRST LOOK - nForce4: Gigabyte K8NXP-9
by Wesley Fink on November 12, 2004 8:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Test Setup
The performance of the Gigabyte K8NXP-9 was compared to the nVidia nForce4 Reference board using an AMD FX55 and 2-2-2-10 DDR memory. Test results with the Intel 925XE Abit Fatal1ty AA8XE were included for Reference with the fastest 1066FSB CPU currently available. For reference, test results were also included for the Intel 925X with the 560 - the fastest current Intel 800FSB CPU. All benchmarks on all platforms were run with the PCI Express nVidia 6800 Ultra. Tests on the Gigabyte K8NXP-9 were all run with 5X (1000 HT) enabled.| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor(s): | AMD Athlon 64 FX55 (2.6GHz-1MB Cache) Socket 939 AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (2.4GHz-1MB Cache) Intel 3.46EE (1066FSB) Intel 560 (3.6GHz 800FSB) |
| RAM: | 2 x 512MB OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2 2 X 512MB Micron DDR2-533 |
| Hard Drive(s): | Seagate 120GB 7200 RPM IDE (8MB Buffer) |
| Chipset Drivers: | nVidia nForce 6.31 Beta (nForce4) |
| Video Card(s): | nVidia 6800 Ultra (PCI Express) |
| Video Drivers: | nVidia nForce 61.81 Beta |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP1 |
| Motherboards: | Gigabyte K8NXP-9 (nForce4) nVidia nForce4 Ultra Reference Board Abit Fatality AA8XE (Intel 925XE) Intel 925X Reference Board5 |
The configuration was kept as close as possible between the 4 motherboards, but we are forced to compare apples to oranges in some cases. DDR400 memory at 2-2-2-10 is being compared on the nForce4 boards to DDR2-533 at 3-3-3-10 on the Intel 925X/XE boards. However, as we saw in the DDR vs. DDR2 review, the performance of fast DDR400 and DDR533 is very close.
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Alphafox78 - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link
Why isnt there a comparison between this and a similarily configured NF3 board? How can you tell if just swapping the MB and switching to PCIe is going to help if there is no comparison to NF3...?deathwalker - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link
Lonewolf15...buy counting the pins on the pictures provided..it looks like 24 pins.LoneWolf15 - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link
P.S. Wesley, does this board have 20pin ATX +12v P4 power supply connections, or does it use the newer 24pin setup?LoneWolf15 - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link
This is the first Gigabyte board I've ever been interested in, and I have to say, it looks like an awesome board, all features included, with an incredibly clean layout. Can't wait to see what pricing is, and I hope that MSI, ASUS, and Abit rise to the challenge --it looks like the bar has been raised.Electric Mayhem - Monday, November 15, 2004 - link
I remember reading an Nvidia tech spec on their site that the NF4 does support NCQ.jcromano - Sunday, November 14, 2004 - link
I'd like to second #31's question: Will the board support NCQ harddrives? Also, from what I've read on page 2 ("Basic Features"), it sounds like this board will be able to use either AGP or PCie 16x for its graphics card. Is that correct? In the pictures of the board, are the 1x slots the white and green ones near the bottom, and is the 16x slot the black slot just below them? (If so, the 16x slot appears shorter than the 1x slots. Does that make sense?)KaRRiLLioN - Sunday, November 14, 2004 - link
After the fiasco I had with my K8NSNXP NF3 Ultra board, I'm going to pass up Gigabyte on this offering. That issue made that $230 board a piece of junk. My MSI is performing much better.Xspringe2 - Sunday, November 14, 2004 - link
Are there any dual opteron nforce4 based motherboard reviews in the pipeline?Thanks!
noxipoo - Sunday, November 14, 2004 - link
does this board support NCQ hardrives?Decoder - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
With nForce 4 AMD has achieved the mobo + cpu superiority over Intel. SLI will be the cream on the top. No wonder Dell has expressed interest in using AMD for workstations , gaming rigs and servers.Kudos to AMD and nVidia.