Gigabyte 7VT600 1394 (KT600): More Fun with KT600
by Evan Lieb on July 26, 2003 10:44 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Gigabyte 7VT600 1394: Stress Testing
We performed stress tests on the 7VT600 1394 in several different areas and configurations, including:
1. Chipset and motherboard stress testing, which was conducted by running the FSB at 205MHz; and,
2. Memory stress testing, which was conducted by running RAM at 400MHz with one DIMM slot filled and at 400MHz with all three DIMM slots filled at the lowest memory timings possible.
Front Side Bus Stress Test Results:
As standard practice, we ran a large load of stress tests and benchmarks to ensure the 7VT600 1394 was absolutely stable at each overclocked FSB speed. These stress tests included Prime95 torture tests, which were run in the background for a total of 24 hours.
In addition, we proceeded to run several other tasks, such as data compression, various DX8 games, and light apps like Word and Excel, and Prime95 in the background. Finally, we re-ran our entire benchmark suite, which includes Sysmark 2002, Quake3 Arena, Unreal Tournament 2003, SPECviewperf 7.0, Jedi Knight 2 and XMPEG. In the end, 205MHz FSB was the highest overclock we were able to achieve with the 7VT600 1394 without encountering any reliability issues.
Memory Stress Test Results:
This memory stress test is very basic, as it simply tests the ability of the 7VT600 1394 to operate at its officially supported memory frequency (400MHz DDR) and at the lowest supported memory timings that our Corsair TwinX LL modules support:
| Stable Dual DDR400 Timings (1/3 banks populated) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| Timing Mode: | Ultra |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| Bank Interleave: | 4-bank |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 2T |
| RAS Precharge: | 6T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | 1T |
It’s not surprising to see that the 7VT600 1394 achieved such low memory timings with just one memory module spec’ed at DDR400, running at 400MHz DDR. It is quite standard for any P4 or Athlon XP motherboard to achieve these aggressive performance settings. Thankfully, it looks like KT600 motherboards will have no trouble achieving low memory latencies, as illustrated in the next chart.
The following stress test is obviously a bit more strenuous on the memory subsystem than most memory stress tests. It tests the rare occasion that a desktop user will install three DIMMs running 400MHz DDR at the most aggressive memory timings available in the BIOS:
| Stable Dual DDR400 Timings (3/3 banks populated) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| Timing Mode: | Normal |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| Bank Interleave: | Disabled |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 3T |
| RAS Precharge: | 6T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | 1T |
It is not unusual to see these lax timings for such a strenuous memory subsystem test as this one. However, we have seen better, and so in this case, the 7VT600 1394 is not comparable to most other modern motherboards. Still, this seems to be the norm for KT600 motherboards. It’s worth reiterating that the real world performance difference between aggressive memory timings and relaxed memory timings, such as SPD, are very small. In other words, unless you’re hell-bent on squeezing every last bit of performance from your system, SPD timings will work just fine 99% of the time.
We tested all these memory timings using several stress tests and general applications to guarantee stability. We initiated the tests by running Prime95 torture tests; a grand total of 24 hours of Prime95 was successfully run at the timings listed in the above charts. We also ran Sciencemark (memory tests only) and Super Pi. All three stress tests did not phase the 7VT600 1394.
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Anonymous User - Saturday, August 2, 2003 - link
I don't get why people blame VIA for the SBlive issue when pretty much every other companies sound cards work flawlessly. Face it, VIA or Nforce you're gonna have issues with your SBlive. Right now on my "NFORCE2" the stupid control panel keeps crashing out on me and sometimes retarded sound has this annoying occational reverb crap which updating drivers seems to not fix. Man, if they didn't have the best gaming sound card i'd drop creative products in a heartbeat.Anonymous User - Tuesday, July 29, 2003 - link
This guy read my mind!, all VIA chipsets I ever had were plagged with errors, KT133, KT133A and KT266A, this one stills make noices with the SB live!, no mather the filter installed. Never again VIA!, nVidia did a better first try with the nforce1 than VIA with the 3tr KT chipset.Locutus4657 - Tuesday, July 29, 2003 - link
I'm not sure if I'll ever buy another VIA chipset again. Ever since I checked their developers white pages on my KT133 chipset and found out it has over 200 pages of Errata. My next system will be either an nForce 2 system of a Operton system.Anonymous User - Monday, July 28, 2003 - link
2 Things I wanted to say.Good rather unbiased review, except that I dont really a gree that the KT600 is a value board. if people were interesting in SERIOUS value they (if they knew what they were doing, sadly most people out for a cheap computer wont) would still go with a NForce2 motherboard because you get a Geforce 4mx built in! I mean computer shops will probably sell the KT600 with the cheapest video card you can get and the end consumer would of been WAY better off having a geforce4mx built in. I mean at least you can taste even the latest games with gfmx4...which is really important.
Secondly I can't express how disgusted I am in the MB makers that reck the Nforce2s reputation for good sound via the MCP-T sound storm technology by putting these crap realtek chips infront of them and ruining the sound quality of the nforce2 MBs, as far as I am concerned this should almost be illegal!
Anonymous User - Sunday, July 27, 2003 - link
Ok review, but would have been better with a few backplate shots and memory bandwidth benchmarks.ViRGE - Sunday, July 27, 2003 - link
It's worth noting that audio port switching isn't all it's cracked up to be. Nvidia for example, discourages the practice, which is why you won't find a SoundStorm board that uses it, even if most are using the 655 codec. This is all of course because it results in poorer sound quality(or so Nvidia claims), so in a sense, you're worse off with the 655 than you are with the 650, although with anything Realtek, you're doing worse than the reference(SigmaTel/VIA) solution.Anonymous User - Sunday, July 27, 2003 - link
Poor VIA, cmon DawgsDennis Travis - Sunday, July 27, 2003 - link
Very good review Evan as usuall. Thanks!!Anonymous User - Sunday, July 27, 2003 - link
Ya know, if via would fix their stupid drivers packaging problems, they would do much better, at least as far as i'm concerned. I don't care if one size fits all, I just want to run the package for the product and have it remove the old and install the new and get it right. I'll never waste my time fooling around with their stuff until I've heard that's been fixed.