nForce4 SLI Roundup: Painful and Rewarding

108 Comments

View All Comments

• eva2000 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link

  whoops no mention of psu was used in system config listing but didn't read till page 20 of the review it mentions OCZ 520W PS psu heh

• Slaimus - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link

  They used a OCZ 520W.

• neologan - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link

  I think the test results for 3dmark2003 single and SLI are the wrong way around?
  
  http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2358&am...

• F4810 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link

  Why did they show no benchmarks with the mobo's overclocked? It doesnt make sense to say these boards are better becuase you can clock the memory higher if the overall CPU clock is roughly the same. The reason they dont show you is that due to the onchip memory controller on the AMD chips, the high memory frequency doesnt make much of a difference at all in real world terms. As long as you can clock the CPU high that is all that really matters. Also they dont take into account cost as some boards cost 50% more that the others.

• dornick - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link

  I was considering jumping on the SLI bandwagon until I had some sense knocked into me.
  
  I'd like to see a comparison of the Ultra chipset MBs, including the Chaintech, Epox, etc... since that's where I think the nForce 4 market will go.

• eva2000 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link

  missing one vital piece of info, what PSU you used hehe

• Spacecomber - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link

  Thanks for doing the indepth analysis of this new chipset and how it is being implemented by some major motherboard manufacturers.
  
  There was one detail that I was hoping to see some reference to. I understand, from a friend, who has the MSI SLI motherboard, that the Creative Live sound chip only works if your power supply has a -5 volt connector on it. It looks to me like the OCZ power supply that you used has this, but many of the new power supplies, such as the Enermax v2.0 power supplies, no longer have a -5 volt connection. He was using a Enermax 535 watt Whisper II (SLI ready) when he ran into this issue. This kind of compatability problem slipping through QA seems like another indication that the everyone was in a big hurry to get these motherboards to market, maybe before they were thoroughly tested.
  
  Space

• Regs - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link

  I liked the subtle hints Wes.
  
  In your final words you stated, "If you want the best performance possible then the answer would likely be yes". Then how would this apply for users getting two 6600GTs?

• xsilver - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link

  great article
  minor gripe -- the overclocking "graphs" are useless -- what would be better is the resulting fps of overclocking to show people if its worth it to get that extra xxx fps

• arfan - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link

  now i am waiting ultra mobo benchmark. What about the price of all this mobo ? i fell disappointed with msi doesn't have PCI 1x. (Sorry my english language is very bad)