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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tribbleva - Tuesday, December 20, 2005 - link
Every single one of these MBs has a fan on the NB... where are the passively cooled mobos? The last thing I want is one or TWO more tiny fans just on the mobo to worry about failing...Zebo - Friday, July 22, 2005 - link
"someof you take Anandtech's word as the word of GOD"It's as close as you can get without dying.:)
Zebo - Friday, July 22, 2005 - link
Viper - You should come inside the forums for specfic help..dg3274 - Saturday, July 16, 2005 - link
The article states that the Abit board has a problem with 1:1 overclocking. I disagree. I think the problem is that it does not provide enough ram voltage to run the RAM at high 1:1 FSB. 2.8 volts is not enough to run ANY ram much higher than 280 or so FSB.Viper4185 - Thursday, July 14, 2005 - link
No one wants to help me with my n00b questions :(Marcel - Tuesday, July 12, 2005 - link
#67 I must be a little a slow …In the test “Maximun CPU Clock ( Lower Multiplier )”
For Chaintec, Abit, etc you use the multiplier in “11”, and only for Epox and DFI you use the multiplier in “9”, then you show a diagram with nothing more than the fsb.
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/nf4%20ultra%20r...
The first question is WHY ?? there is no explanation for use different multiplier in the review. Not some guys, but ALL ones have better result in chaintec and abit with a lower multiplier.
TheGlassman - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
Thanks Wesley, I did find you had checked HTT, and as I stated in my last post I don't understand what the problem was. But the deeper I looked into the review, the better job you seemed to have done, so sorry if I impied you didn't try very hard.DFI has a dual core (beta) bios available, dated 6-23-05
Epox has a dual core (release) bios available, dated 6-29-05
These were not used in testing.
Wesley Fink - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
#59 and #60 - One of the first articles I did a couple of years ago about Athlon 64 was how to overclock by manipulating HTT frequencies. I ALWAYS test manual HTT dividers I know should work for certain 1:1 memory clocks as well as Auto HTT if it is an available option.#58 - I was very CLEAR in the review that I tested with the BIOS that would allow the X2 A64 to work. We did check each board with an X2. That is the ONLY reason we tested and used very recent Beta BIOS'. Also there are 2 other very recent Chaintech reviews at other websites who had test results almost equal to what I found on the Chaintech, so there are at least 2 other Chaintechs loose with less than stirring overclocking. In the end, as I stated in the review, the Chaintech is a decent board, but at about the same price as the Epox, with poorer overclocking results, it was hard to give it an Editor's Choice this time around. The results found in this roundup should remove anyone's concern that we get cherry boards from manufacturers. I am a good overclocker, and very experienced in air overclocking and memory overclocking. What I got from these boards on air is all they could do with the TCCD memory that is all but standard test memory for motherboards these days. The capabilities of the memory we used is also well known and I tweaked for TCCD if settings were available if the board was not doing well at stock memory settings and our normal test timings.
I am really pleased some of you experienced better performance than I did with the Chaintech and Abit boards, but I can only report what I actually found in my tests. I don't think you come to AnandTech for a survey of what other websites or Forums found, because I find overclockers are notorious at exagerrating what they can reach with overclocks. We try to provide a consisten test environment for overclocking that will give repeatable overclocking results. Results, of course, always vary board to board, but having said that, OC results are usually pretty consistent on better boards from sample to sample.
lefenzy - Saturday, July 9, 2005 - link
Sorry, wrong link. that one was for the SLI version.http://www.foxconnchannel.com/productsDownload_mot...
lefenzy - Saturday, July 9, 2005 - link
Foxconn has a BIOS release that allow for multiplier adjustment.http://www.foxconnchannel.com/productsDownload_mot...