nForce4 SLI Roundup: Painful and Rewarding
by Wesley Fink on February 28, 2005 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Standard Performance Test Configuration
If you are interested in more information comparing the LGA 775 Prescott, Athlon 64, P4, and P4EE, please see our indepth comparisons in the recent reviews: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 |
| Power Supply: | OCZ 520 watt PowerStream |
| Hard Drive(s): | Seagate 120GB 7200 RPM SATA (8MB Buffer) |
| Video AGP & IDE Bus Master Drivers: | nVidia nForce 6.39 |
| Video Cards: | nVidia 6800 Ultra (PCIe) 2 x nVidia 6800 Ultra (PCIe) SLI |
| Video Drivers: | nVidia nForce 71.80 |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP1 Direct X 9.0c |
| Motherboards: | Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe DFI LANParty nF4 SLI-DR Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI MSI K8N Neo4/SLI Platinum |
Tests used OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2, which uses 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.
At the present time, SLI is only supported by nVidia chipsets and video cards. All single and dual GPU benchmarks were run with a matched pair of nVidia 6800 Ultra reference cards, identified as Rev. A04. Other companies have demonstrated "SLI-like" dual video solutions or they have announced their intention to manufacture SLI-like solutions in the future.
All game benchmarks, both single video and SLI, were run in 1600x1200 video mode with 4X Anti-Aliasing and 8X Anisotropic filtering enabled. The exceptions are Aquamark 3, 3DMark 03, and 3DMark 05, which use a standardized 1024x768 setup to generate comparable benchmark results. These three benchmarks used standard mode, which generates a standardized score for comparison.
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Gholam - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
I'm curious, where can I find benchmarks of SiI3114 with a 3 or 4 drive RAID5 setup? Read/write speed, access time, CPU utilization (especially important since it's essentially a software hack), general stability impressions, etc.I'm finally replacing my aging Duron 1200 soon, and looking at A8N-SLI Deluxe (no other NF4 board has a layout suitable for passive/quiet chipset cooling due to video card interference), and I plan to eventually build a ~700GB redundant storage array as home media server on it. However, I can't find benchmarks of SiI3114 RAID5 function anywhere.
Slaimus - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
About the audio CPU utilization tests. Is that with the nForce Audio or Realtek driver?Wesley Fink - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
#15,#18 and others - the 3DMark2003 SLI scores were an incorrect duplicate of 3DMark05. The 3DMark03 SLI scores have now been corrected and should make sense now. I apologize for the error.#4 - I saw none of the heat and instability issues with the DFI that were described at [H]. I discussed this with Editors from several other websites who also had no problems with this board. I would agree that the 5V jumper for very high memory voltages can get everything on the board real hot real fast, but this is a feature unique to the DFI and one that only the hardcore with more advanced cooling would attempt to use anyway.
#5,#20 - Any x16 PCIe slot can be used for x1 or x4 or any other flavor of PCIe. MSI does NOT have an extra x1 slot, but they tell us video slot 2 can be used for an x1 device. You still can't use SLI and another PCIe device at the same time on the MSI, but you can use single video with an additional PCIe device in video slot 2.
Wesley Fink - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
#4 - Abit has just shipped the Fatal1ty Ultra board to AnandTech. We haven't even received it yet. It will be included in a later Ultra roundup, bu the Ultra boards will have the same performance in single video as the similar SLI board from the same manufacturer. We met with Abit this weekend and they told us it would still be several weeks until their SLI would be available for review - and the SLI is NOT a Fatal!ty board.L3p3rM355i4h - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
318fsb 1:1? Jeezus Christ!ChineseDemocracyGNR - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
"but on the Asus board you also have to connect another 4-pin Molex for additional video card power. Asus says that this is required for "stable SLI operation", but the other 3 SLI designs do fine and are quite stable without the 5th power connector."The gold-winner DFI also has the same connector, though it wasn't mentioned in the review. And even though it wasn't necessary in your testings (with an OCZ 520W PSU), other people (like tbreak.com) could only find a stable SLI setup with the ASUS board, probably because of it.
I also don't think its location is important, the fact it's close to the PCI-E x16 slots is probably a smart engineering decision.
For future reviews it would be nice if you could show results with "Maximum FSB" where it actually means "Maximum FSB", that is, you remove memory overclocking from the table. It's great to see DDR600 and beyond, but I'm the kind of guy who spends $130 for quality 1GB of RAM, but still want a board that can take a 3000+ to 9*300.
It's not really a 1:1 ratio as you're always using a divider for memory speeds (from the CPU clock).
Looking forward to reviews of the mainstream PCI-E boards (K8T890, nF4 Ultra, etc).
ceefka - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
oops typoIt's a shame that there are non nF4 Ultra boards with HD Audio.
I meant
It's a shame that there are none nF4 Ultra boards with HD Audio.
ceefka - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
Jeez, Wesley, that must have been a hell of a job. Thanx.It's a shame that there are non nF4 Ultra boards with HD Audio.
#12 Right, I am contemplating the Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-9 (the Ultra, not the SLI) and wonder if the Yesico FL-420ATX will do. Have you searched http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/m... or http://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Prod... ? Look for manuals (Gigabyte) and compatability tables (MSI).
I wish though these manufacturers would clearly state if its ATX 1.3 or 2.0 etc + minimum V/A requirements. That would be much easier than scrolling through their website.
Just one silly question, because this has not been clear since the introduction of SLI-boards. Can you use a one of the 16xPCI-e slots on a SLI-board for something else than a second graphics card (in the future)? Maybe a (hefty) soundcard in the future?
neologan - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
btw, excellent review, one of the best i've read in a long time!blckgrffn - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
Yeah, what is with the 3dmark03 scores? The SLI seems really low..more like a repeat of the 05 scores....Glad to see more indepth mobo reviews! I for one was getting tired of looking at the BIOS as a way to differentiate!