Socket 754 Roundup, Part 3: Asus, Soltek & DFI
by Wesley Fink on September 14, 2004 12:03 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Words
With this round of second generation 754 boards, we are finally seeing a broader range of performance differences than what we have seen in past benchmark tests. All three of these recent boards are generally among the better performers compared to other 2nd generation 754 boards. The differences are still not huge, but they are there. The Soltek, in particular, seems to appear at or near the top in almost every benchmark. The same can be said for the Asus K8N-E, and the DFI remains one of the better overall performers in the comparison at stock speed.The message here is that if performance at stock speed is your primary criteria, then any of these three boards will do a good job for you, along with several choices from earlier testing. The Soltek, in particular, is fast at stock, and very reasonable to buy. However, when we look beyond stock performance, the picture does begin to change.
In the real world, features do matter also, and if we look more closely at the 3 boards, we do see quite a few differences. All three boards use the superior nF3-250Gb chipset that provides on-chip LAN capabilities and nVidia LAN and Firewall. All 3 also appear to use the proper PHY gigabit LAN to bypass the PCI bus on the nVidia chipset for top LAN speed. However, the Soltek and Asus do not fully implement the nVidia "any-drive" RAID, and go their own route for SATA channels beyond 2. As much as we admire Soltek's Promise controller with 2 added SATA and an additional IDE slot, we would trade it in an instant for SATA performance that would go beyond a 233 CPU setting. This is even truer for the Asus with 6 total SATA ports, none of which would work beyond 230 in our overclocking tests. In fairness, both the Soltek and Asus performed much better with IDE drives. The Asus is one of the better-performing nF3-250Gb boards that we have tested when coupled with an IDE drive. The Soltek quickly reaches the board limit of 250 with IDE, which is low, but without a higher range of CPU settings, we can only guess what the real capabilities of the K8AN2E really are.
Of the three boards tested here, the DFI is the only one that fully implements the features of the nVidia nForce3-250GB, and this shows in the ability of SATA ports 3 and 4 to perform just as well as IDE on the DFI board. While the Soltek and Asus are a bit faster, the DFI clearly wins on feature quality. The Asus has more SATA ports, but the SATA ports don't work at extended range as the DFI SATA does.
This brings us to our last criterion, overclocking performance. Here, there is just no contest at all. The DFI LANParty UT nF3 250Gb is the best overclocking Athlon 64 board that we have ever tested. In addition, the range of overclocking options is commendable, providing the kind of adjustments that will bring a smile to any overclocker's face. The Asus K8N-E is also a surprisingly decent overclocker with 2 DIMMs, but the extremely limited memory voltage range is a serious problem for the Asus. Most of the fastest DDR400 that we have for testing cannot even be set at specification in the Asus, since manufacturers are specifying voltages around 2.8V for the latest Samsung TCCD memory. Asus also provides much more limited ranges for their overclocking options, which many enthusiasts will find wanting. There is also the poor SATA performance in overclocking that will be a concern if you will use SATA drives in overclocking. The Soltek has the potential to be a decent overclocking board, but it is currently hampered by a limited range of CPU adjustments to just 250 and limited onboard SATA overclocking capabilities.
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Based on features, overclocking performance, flexibility and value, the DFI LANParty UT nF3-250Gb certainly deserves our Gold Editors Choice. While the DFI does not displace past selections of Socket 754 motherboards, there is no doubt that the DFI is the 754 motherboard that will most please the computer enthusiast. DFI may be a relatively new name to the performance arena for some, but make no mistake about the fact that this DFI nF3 250Gb is the best overclocking Athlon 64 motherboard we have tested. It achieves this distinction with ease, effortlessly taking our reference memory to DDR616. It continues to please with decent performance at stock speeds and the full implementation of nVidia nForce3-250Gb features. |
If you do not plan to overclock your motherboard, then any of these three boards will provide excellent performance. For these users, we would lean toward the Soltek for a non-overclocked system simply because it is so fast at stock speed and it also is an excellent value at less than $100. For those who also need Firewire capabilities, the Soltek does not provide them, but the Asus and DFI both provide on-board Firewire.
There is no doubt that Socket 939 is a bit faster at stock. The dual-channel AMD solution is some 2% to 5% faster at the same speed than the single-channel 754 solutions. However, that modest performance gain comes at a steep price, since there are not really any value 939 chips at present. Until prices on 939 drop, you can get a very capable Athlon 64 system with one of these more inexpensive 754 boards combined with a value 754 AMD Athlon 64. Combine that chip with the DFI LANParty nF3-250Gb and you might even reach new performance heights in an Athlon 64 system.
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thebluesgnr - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link
#28,have you tested any SiS board from ASRock? They claim their K8S8X locks AGP/PCI. I've seen good OC results with that board - including this one:
http://members.home.nl/ethanol/mem.JPG
Also, OCWorkBench has a review of the ASRock K8-Upgrade-760GX. They overclocked the FSB to 252MHz on this mATX board, so I can only assume it locks the AGP/PCI buses.
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link
#24 - justlyThere is actually another complaint about Sis. None of the Sis A64 cipsets I have tested, including the 939 Reference Board, have a working PCI/AGP lock. We sincerely hope this is fixed on the upcoming 939 chipset.
We liked the Sis chipset very much, but major manufacturers just wouldn't support it. If you recall we awarded the Refernece Board our Editors Choice - as did other web sites - then we all waited for the boards that never came.
I think Sis is an innovative chipset and we have reviewed all the Sis 754 boards we could find, including DFI and Foxconn. The people at Sis are also great to work with and we would personally love to see a significant win by Sis. Unfortunately, Sis is mainly seen in bargain boards. We agree it's a shame, but we also have to deal with reality in our testing.
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link
#24 and #26 - Justly -Thanks for the benefit of the doubt here. I always compare new drivers to earlier scores to see if there are substantive differences. Frankly if there are I normally stick with the old drivers for consistency.
That is the reason you have not seen us using Divx 5.2, for instance, in place of 5.1.1. When we tested 5.2 the performance differences from 5.1.1 were significant. Eventually we will replace 5.1.1 with the latest Divx when it fits the schedule to do retesting.
The performance differences I found cannot be explained with 4.8 vs. 4.5 ATI drivers. I suspect BIOS tweaks DO have something to do with it however, which, as you are suggesting, probably means the earlier boards with later BIOS' are probably also faster.
There is always the trade off between changing driver versions for testing and keeping drivers up-to-date. I can only say AnandTech is very cautious about driver versions - particularly in ongoing test/database areas like motherboards.
You will soon be seeing a new General Performance Benchmark at AnandTech, since Veritest and PC Magazine have discontinued support for Winstones (and they don't work well with SP2). We will be talking more about this in an upcoming review.
justly - Tuesday, September 14, 2004 - link
#25 – I understand the delay involved in retesting. I am not trying to say that retesting is required for comparison, but if the scores where just copied then it would be nice to see it pointed out on the test configuration or in the final words that more than one video driver was used.Actually a while back (around the time of “the real slim shady” article) I noticed identical systems being retested (using identical software/drivers) where the scores fluctuated more than the difference I suspect this article might have. So I am really giving Wesley a lot of credit (although it may not sound like it) for being able to set up systems months apart with such consistency.
Really the only complaint I have (other than leaving out SiS) is that if he did what I suspect, then it should have been mentioned in the article. Then again if what I suspect is true it might have been better to leave out the whole first paragraph on the final word page.
TrogdorJW - Tuesday, September 14, 2004 - link
#24 - I understand the desire to see comparable scores, but retesting on old hardware with new drivers would probably add a week or two of work. I certainly wouldn't want to do it! Then there are BIOS revisions that need to be updated as well. Yuck. :pI think it's relatively safe to say that performance with most of the other Nforce3-250 boards is going to be about the same as these, and the only remaining factor tends to be overclocking and features. I'm perfectly happy with my MSI K8N Neo Platinum. Were I buying a new S754 board today, it would still be a tough call between the DFI and the MSI board. I don't like the Asus look (or lack of certain features), and the same goes for the Soltek.
Really, I think I would still stick with my MSI board. It would probably end up coming down to what else was included with the motherboard - nice rounded IDE cables would be great, as would a rounded floppy cable (because I still use a floppy drive on occasion). Just one man's opinion, of course.
justly - Tuesday, September 14, 2004 - link
Wesley, first off I would like to say that I think your articles are some of the best on Anandtech. The thing is I still see a few things in your articles that “ever so slightly” annoy me.One is this quote “If overclocking is not particularly important to you, then one of the first generation boards based on the VIA chipset might also meet your needs at a lower price.” WELL WHAT ABOUT SiS. It seems that Anandtech has amnesia when it comes to SiS chipsets. Other than the very first SiS based socket 754 motherboard (the ECS 755-A) all Anandtech reviews seem to have only one main complaint about the SiS chipset, it overclocking abilities. So why don’t you mention it?
The other thing is that by looking through the Generation 2 Socket 754 Roundup it appears that the Generation 2 motherboard results where copied not retested. I think it would be fine to do (for comparison sake) if everything was the same but in the Generation 2 Socket 754 Roundup it shows a different video driver than what is listed for the Socket 754 Roundup, Part 3. So I have to ask is there absolutely no performance difference between the cat 4.5 and cat 4.8 drivers, or could the reason that the 3rd generation boards seem slightly faster have something to do with the video driver being used?
I realize that my concerns are very trivial and probably have no effect on the outcome of the article, but to be fair to the other chipset and motherboard manufactures I still think they are valid questions, trivial yes but still valid.
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, September 14, 2004 - link
#21 and #22 - The full implementation of nF3-250Gb is 4 SATA ports that can be combined in any way in RAID with the IDE ports. Asus implemented 2 nVidia SATA ports plus 4 Silicon Image SATA ports.The problem is ports 1 and 2 on nVidia are coupled with the PHY Gigabit LAN and generally will not overclock very well. Ports 3 and 4 generally perform as well as regular IDE on the nF3-250Gb chipset.
jediknight - Tuesday, September 14, 2004 - link
OK... I'm confused here. I thought Asus added an *extra* RAID controller in addition to the one provided in the stock 250gb implementation. Am I wrong here?Zebo - Tuesday, September 14, 2004 - link
"The decision by Asus to use Silicon Image SATA instead is really a drawback in overclocking."Instead of what?
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, September 14, 2004 - link
#18 -Quite a few users are reporting success using the Mobile Athlon 64 chips with the DFI LANParty UT. Many are stating the DFI recognizes the mobiles just fine and sets the correct settings for the mobile chips. In fact you will see this combination as an alternate in an upcoming OC Guide.
The biggest issue with the 754 mobiles on a desktop, once the board compatability is fine, is the HSF. Most won't make good contact with the mobile that does not use a heatshield. I am hearing decent things about the Thermalright XP-90 sink with mobiles on a K8.