nForce4 Ultra Roundup: Charting the Mainstream
by Wesley Fink on July 5, 2005 10:28 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Standard Performance Test Configuration
If you are interested in more information comparing AMD (x2) and Intel (Pentium D) Dual-Core processors, LGA 775 Prescott, Athlon 64, P4, and P4EE, please see our in-depth comparisons in the recent reviews:AMD Athlon 64 FX-57: The Fastest Single Core
Athlon Dual Core: Overclocking the 4200+
Intel's Pentium 4 670: Just Another Speed Bump
AMD's Athlon 64 X2 4800+ & 4200+ Dual Core Performance Preview
AMD's Sempron 3300+: 90nm Budget Computing
Dual Core Intel Platform Shootout - NVIDIA nForce4 vs. Intel 955X
Intel Dual Core Performance Preview Part II: A Deeper Look
Intel Dual Core Performance Preview Part I: First Encounter
Intel Pentium 4 6xx and 3.73EE: Favoring Features Over Performance
Intel's Pentium 4 570J - Will 3.8GHz do the trick?
Pentium 4 3.46 Extreme Edition and 925XE: 1066MHz FSB Support is Here
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ & FX-55: A Thorough Investigation
Intel 925X: Exploring the Overclock Lock
Intel's 925X & LGA-775: Are Prescott 3.6 and PCI Express Graphics any Faster?
Intel 925X/915: Chipset Performance & DDR2
Socket 939 Chipsets: Motherboard Performance & PCI/AGP Locks
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ and FX-53: The First 939 CPUs
Intel's Pentium 4 E: Prescott Arrives with Luggage
| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor(s): | AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (2.4GHz) Socket 939 |
| RAM: | 2 x 512MB OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2 |
| Hard Drive(s): | Seagate 120GB 7200 RPM SATA (8MB Buffer) |
| Video AGP & IDE Bus Master Drivers: | NVIDIA nForce 6.56 |
| Video Cards: | NVIDIA 6800 Ultra (PCIe) NVIDIA 6800 Ultra (AGP) |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA nForce 71.89 |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP2 Direct X 9.0c |
| Motherboards: | Abit AN8 Fatal1ty Biostar NF4UL-A9 Chaintech VNF4-Ultra DFI LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D ECS KN1 Extreme Epox 9NPA+ Winfast NF4UK8AA (Foxconn) |
Tests used OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2, which incorporates Samsung TCCD chips. These same chips are available in memory modules from G. Skill, Corsair, Geil, Mushkin, PQI and others. Please refer to Athlon 64 Memory: Rewriting the Rules for more information on Athlon 64 memory performance.
All boards were tested with the NVIDIA 6800 Ultra PCI Express video card, which is a very good match to the nForce4 Ultra chipset. Since the Biostar NF4 UL-A9 also supported an AGP slot, we ran comparison benchmarks with an NVIDIA 6800 Ultra AGP video card. Our past tests have shown performance of the AGP-8x and PCIe 688 Ultra to be virtually identical. This allowed us to gage the performance hit of the Biostar AGP configuration, which is derived from PCI/PCIe and not a true AGP 8X slot.
All game benchmarks were run in 1280x1024 video mode without Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic filtering wherever possible. Some benchmarks, like Aquamark 3, use a standardized 1024x768 setup to generate comparable benchmark results. A few other benchmarks have AA or AF turned on by default, but since we are using the same benchmark setup for comparison, the usefulness of the benchmark for comparison is not compromised.
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lsman - Tuesday, July 5, 2005 - link
yet, "As you can see, none of the onboard audio solutions were quite as low in CPU utilization as the Creative SoundBlaster Live! Chip, which is used on the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum."so creative on board is a reference? because you do not test the MSI K8N Neo4 platium.
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, July 5, 2005 - link
#2 -As we said several times in the roundup, we reviewed the MSI and Asus in the SLI roundup. The SLI and Ultra chipsets are exactly the same chipset with SLI enabled on the SLI chipset. We did not see what new information we could bring you by reviewing the Ultra versions fo the same boards. As you can see in the benchmarks in this roundup the DFI perfoms in Ultra exactly as it did in SLI.
The MSI was an Editor's Choice in the SLI roundup and is a similar good choice as an Ultra board. There have been some issues with the Venice and San Diego overclocking and MSI has finally released a new BIOS to address these problems.
The Asus was not a particularly good overclocker in the SLI roundup, and not an Editors Choice, but it was a decent performer at stock speeds.
Djinni - Tuesday, July 5, 2005 - link
Very good work, but I too would of liked to see the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum in there since thats what I just bought yesterday :PMaxisOne - Tuesday, July 5, 2005 - link
Nice .. but partially useless considering the Asus A8N-E and MSI offerings are missing from the lineup which is what im looking to compare to the DFI Ultra DChrisSwede - Tuesday, July 5, 2005 - link