Asus P5WD2 Premium: DDR2-1066 and the Promise of 955x SLI
by Wesley Fink on May 11, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Test Setup
The new 955x fully supports dual core Pentium D processors as you would expect. So does the Asus version of the nForce4 Intel chipset. We confirmed that both boards worked as they should with an Intel 840 processor, and there were no problems with either board recognizing the two cores and four logical processors that are created with the Hyperthreading feature on this EE processor. However, dual core really makes a difference in multi-tasking, as was demonstrated in the dual core platform shootout. If you are interested in how the two chipsets perform in a multitasking set up, please take another look at that review.For this review, we were more interested in how the Asus boards compared in benchmarks of the games and applications that we have tested in other motherboard reviews. We also found memory operated at both DDR2-667 and DDR2-800 on both motherboards, so the standard single core hyperthreaded Pentium 4 that we have used in other Socket 775 reviews provided the headroom and multipliers needed for these benchmarks. The ES Pentium 4 560 runs at 3.6GHz and has the lower multipliers necessary to better test overclocking on both Asus Socket 775 motherboards.
| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor(s): | Intel Pentium 4 560 ES (3.6GHz, 800FSB, 1MB L2, HT) Intel 3.46EE (3.46GHz, 1066FSB, HT)-DDR2-1066 Testing Intel Pentium EE 840 (3.2GHz, 800FSB, Dual-Core, HT, 2x1MB L2)-Dual-Core Verification |
| RAM: | 2 x 512MB Corsair CM2X512A-5400UL 2 x 512MB OCZ PC2 5400 EB |
| Hard Drive(s): | Seagate 120GB 7200 RPM SATA (8MB Buffer) |
| Video AGP & IDE Bus Master Drivers: | Intel 7.0.0.1019 (4/18/2005) NVIDIA nForce Platform Driver 6.53 |
| Video Cards: | NVIDIA 6800 Ultra (PCI Express) |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA nForce 71.89 NVIDIA nForce 66.75 (Semi-SLI Verification) |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP1 |
| Motherboards: | Asus P5WD2 Premium (Intel 955x) Asus P5ND2-SLI Deluxe (NVIDIA nForce4 Intel) Asus P5AD2 Premium (Intel 925x) Intel 925x Reference Board |
Tests with the new Asus boards used either of two memories based on Micron DDR2 memory chips. OCZ PC2-5400 EB and Corsair CM2X512A-5400UL are both low latency memories designed to run at DDR2-667 or higher speeds. DDR2-667 tests were run at 4-2-2-4 timings and DDR2-800 benchmarks were run with 4-3-2-4 timings.
The PCI Express 6800 Ultra was used for all video testing. Two 6800 Ultra video cards were used to verify SLI and semi-SLI performance. Resolution in all benchmarks is 1024x768x32 unless noted otherwise.
Results are color-coded for DDR2-667 and DDR2-800 for the Asus 955x and nForce4 Intel motherboards. The P5DW2 is gold for 667 and dark gold for 800, while the P5ND2-SLI is light green for 667 and dark green for DDR2-800.
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fitten - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link
#5 Differences of 3% are usually in the noise of the type tests that most benchmark sites run. 3% is effectively 0% since that is beneath the precision of the tests.Calin - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link
Higher speed memory will only give you a real performance boost if you use one of the fastest processors. On a slower processor, all that extra memory bandwidth will not help at all (or very little)Carfax - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link
I wonder, is Intel ever going to introduce processors with a FSB greater than 1066 before they go to CSI? All this DDR2 bandwidth is going to waste..Darth Farter - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link
what is the msrp for these boards, cause that $255/$248 prices on newegg/ZZF are hard to ignore...Pjotr - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link
"i thought hypertransport was an amd thing, not an intel or nforce thing....."nVidia uses HyperTransport between NB and SB. They have since nForce1 on AMD and they also use it in X-Box, if you didn't know.
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link
#5 - We didn't measure the difference in nF4 Intel and nF4 AMD at 2T. It was a subjective comment. So I have tried to better explain what I found in the paragraph you quote:"On the nF4 Intel platform, the performance impact of a 2T Command Rate appears to be rather small, as the nF4 Intel performance remains very competetive with the 955x as far as it goes. However, at just over DDR2-900, the nF4 Intel appears to hit a wall . . ."
Zebo - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link
"it would have been better to include a fx-55 as competition "Not for INTC;)
Man that's a nice chipset they got though so missed from nV:)
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link
overclockingoodness -Both boards are rated at DDR2-667, but both easily ran DDR2-800 with the right memory, which is the next logical memory speed. We mainly wanted to see if DDR2-800 made any real performance difference, and the answer is no in Office and Multimedia, and yes in most gaming. For the future this also gives us a full set of benchmarks at DDR2-800 for comparison if we choose to use them.
We also found the Asus 955X did a marginal DDR2-1066 in early testing so it seemed reasonable to at least test and report benchmarks at the very stable DDR2-800 in addition to DDR2-667. We won't be doing this with all future boards, but the tests did provide some answers to our questions.
mrwxyz - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link
i thought hypertransport was an amd thing, not an intel or nforce thing.....Lonyo - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link
On page 5 you mention 2T having less of an impact than with AMD boards.Does that mean it has absolutely zero impact then?
There's a thread on the forums showing 2T for AMD haveing REAL WORLD impacts of maybe 3% slowdown, nothing more except in synthetic tests, so I suppose on the Intel board it makes maybe 1% difference.