nVidia nForce2 Ultra 400Gb: Fast LAN, Firewall, SATA, RAID for Athlon XP
by Wesley Fink on May 13, 2004 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
Socket A Athlon has not received the attention that the newer Athlon 64 chips have gotten in recent months, but the motherboards still sell in very large numbers for nVidia. That is undoubtedly the reason why nVidia decided to bring their leading-edge nForce3-250Gb chipset features to the nForce2 chipset. The nForce2 Ultra 400Gb uses the same proven nForce2 Ultra 400 SPP (or Northbridge), but is combined with a brand new nForce2 MCP-Gb to add on-chip Gigabit LAN, on-chip Firewall, nVidia SATA/IDE RAID, and 8 USB ports.With this revised nForce2 Ultra 400Gb, shoppers for Socket A boards and Athlon XP processors have a choice of motherboard features that is just as up to date as the top Athlon 64 motherboards. This was also the message of the recently introduced VIA KT800 chipset.
No one would claim that Athlon XP performs as well as Athlon 64, but at a much cheaper price, you can normally reach 80% to 90% of the performance of an Athlon 64. For those on a tight budget or those who value "bang-for-the-buck" above all else, the Athlon XP is a great buy. Combined with the latest 400Gb, you can build a great system with top-of-the-line features with a Socket A CPU.
There is no doubt, in the long run, that Socket A will fade. AMD even plans to hasten this with the introduction of Socket 754 versions of Athlon XP. Socket 754 is slotted to fill the value segment for AMD down the road. However, nVidia has still shown their interest in Socket A with the new nF2 Ultra 400Gb, as has VIA with the KT880. The good news is that you can now get all the top features on a Socket A motherboard. The better news is that prices of these boards will likely be declining when Socket 939 is launched and Socket 754 is moved to value.
For a value shopper, Athlon XP is still a good choice, and nForce2 Ultra 400Gb provides a full feature list for the Socket A shopper. Socket A buyers will love this chipset unless they are looking for Sound Storm audio. Sound Storm remains in MCP-T, but it has been removed from both 400Gb and 400R MCP chips. The replacement audio supports Realtek 5.1 and 7.1 audio codecs with a new NVMixer for enhanced audio performance. We like NVMixer with Realtek as a reasonable on-board audio solution, but we are certain that there are some who will complain loudly that Sound Storm is headed for the exit.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
13 Comments
View All Comments
vkristof - Monday, May 24, 2004 - link
Does anybody know when any Ultra 400GB MBs will be available for purchase?plonk420 - Thursday, May 20, 2004 - link
i mainly want to see Xvid tests in addition to Divx, since Divx is HEAVILY weighted in Intel's favor. plus it's pretty decently superior to Divx ^_^ and there's no excuse, now that Xvid's gone one-point-ohGandalf90125 - Monday, May 17, 2004 - link
"Performance on shipping boards will be the same as any other nForce 2 Ultra 400 board - this is about added features."Consequently, it could be argued that the benchmarks are pointless.
Wesley Fink - Saturday, May 15, 2004 - link
#9 - We actually do more overclocking tests at AnandTech today than we have ever done in the past. Check our recent reviews of motherboards where we reach 347 FSB or memory where we test at DDR570.We always test OC on full retail reviews, but the chipset in the review is well known here. This is also a Reference Board - not designed to test overclocking since there are no ratios. We did test OC on the VIA K8T800 PRO Reference Board because the PCI/AGP lock was a new feature on that chipset. However the core chipset capabilities are well know here and there seemed little point to doing OC tests, when the capabilities of the nForce2 Ultra 400 are already well known. 400Gb is a features upgrade using a new MCP (or southbridge), not a new chipset.
noxipoo - Friday, May 14, 2004 - link
Does anandtech do overclocking tests anymore? where is anand these daysWesley Fink - Friday, May 14, 2004 - link
#6 - With chipset introductions and Reference Boards we expected you would be more interested in where they "fit" overall, which is why the Athlon 64 comparisons.You can't buy a Reference Board, and the nForce2 Ultra 400 SPP is the same chip used by nVidia for months. So, there is really nothing new in performance here.
Performance on shipping boards will be the same as any other nForce 2 Ultra 400 board - this is about added features.
GokieKS - Friday, May 14, 2004 - link
Even though the GbE is a great feature (thanks to 2 875P systems, I've already got a GbE network set up, and I can't imagine going back to 100Mbps), I'm more interested in the older nF2 boards with MCP-T, which hopefully will drop in price because of this, to be paired with something like an AXP-M 2400+. :)~KS
Jeff7181 - Thursday, May 13, 2004 - link
Not to be an ass, but what good is it to compare this to Athlon 64 boards? That tells me absolutely nothing about whether I should buy it to replace my A7N8X Deluxe or not. I see a few tests were done with an nForce2 motherboard... yay. There shouldn't be ANY socket 754, 940, or 939 boards in this review since they use entirely different processors.Hey... why didn't ya throw in some Intel 865 chipset mobo's in there for comparision too?
... I'm confused... all this tells me is that an Athlon-64 solution is most likely going to be better than sticking with socket A... and I didn't need to read this article to figure that out, I thought it was a well known fact.
Gromis - Thursday, May 13, 2004 - link
#3, but how often do people upgrade CPUs anyway? I'm a tech in a PC shop, and from what I see, not a whole lot. By the time you start thinking about upgrades, you find yourself in a market for a complete new PC anyway. Those who upgrade every 6-12 months are an extremely tiny minority. I myself used a PII/350 for nearly 5 years, swapped it for a Duron 1200 a year ago, planning next upgrade in another 8-9 months - most likely A64 by then.hifisoftware - Thursday, May 13, 2004 - link
Nice article, but when will we see motherboards with this chipset? It is going to take 3+ month for them to come out then it is a not very usefull chipset.