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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chucky2 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
Typo on Page 20: I don't think you hit F3, it's F6.Chuck
ajmiles - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
Wesley, would it be possible to get a reply to the comment #6 i wrote? ASUS worked closely with you to resolve the dual 6800 ultra issue, but they just stonewall me and everyone else regarding the overclocking at 1T issue.Perhaps if someone with some "muscle" in the hardware reviewing world were to push them for a response you could get one out of them?
Thanks, Adam Miles
teng029 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
#52 - i don't envy what you have to go through. i've had the misfortune of trying to get tech support from asus sometime ago and it was like pulling teeth.#29 - i agree. while i would love to have two 6800 ultras or GTs in SLI, the fact of the matter is i can't justify the cost. so instead i'm going with two 6600GTs. although this is apparently not a very popular choice, the fact remains that this configuration is still going to be substantially faster than my current setup using a 9700 pro and it costs about the same as my 9700 pro when i bought it.
teng029 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
giz02 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
I just noticed that the MSI board lacks additional PCIe boards, where the DFI board has an additional 1x and 4x slot. Anyones opinion on the importance of this?roostercrows - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
I just have to mention to my fellow anandtech members that I have an ASUS A8N-SLI board and I have been trying to get through to their "tech support" Friday and all Monday morning with absolutely no luck whatsoever! You can't even get through to anyone. So, when considering a motherboard keep this in mind. My experience with their "tech support" has been the worst you can imagine. Well...at least they weren't rude or incompetent.... they just aren't there.drewski - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
too bad the non-sli from MSI doesn't use the SB audiohttp://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/m...
giz02 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
Sorry page 5-11giz02 - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
Heinrich,Did you configure the settings as per page 5-12 in the manual to passthrough on the decoder?
THILE - Monday, February 28, 2005 - link
How did you make the Gigabyte run 4x dimms at 200mhz?I have this new motherboard GA-K8NXP-SLI and 4x of kingston hyperx pc3200 (KHX3200UlK2).
And running a new AMD athlon64 3500+ 90nm
I use SPD settings for the memmory. T2 is enabled.
Do I then force 200 mhz it just frezes.