nForce3-250 - Part 2: Taking Athlon 64 to the Next Level
by Wesley Fink on March 29, 2004 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Performance Test Configuration: Graphics Card Performance
nVidia claims that the best performance with nForce3-250Gb is achieved with an nVidia graphics card. To test that, we compared performance of the nForce3-250Gb Reference Board with the top ATI and nVidia graphics cards and a 3400+ Athlon 64. We also included benchmarks from the same 9800XT 256MB video card on a similarly configured SiS 755 board. All benchmarks were run on a single IDE drive to remove RAID as a factor in the performance comparison.| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor(s): | AMD Athlon64 3400+ (2.2GHz) |
| RAM: | 2 x 512MB Mushkin PC3500 Level II OR 2 x 512MB OCZ PC3500 Platinum Ltd |
| Hard Drive(s): | Seagate 120GB 7200RPM SATA (8Mb buffer) |
| Video AGP & IDE Bus Master Drivers: | SiS 1.17a AGP/IDE 2.04/RAID 1.03 VIA 4in1 Hyperion 4.51 NVIDIA nForce version 4.04 for nF3-250 |
| Video Card(s): | nVidia FX5950 Ultra 256MB (Gainward) ATI Radeon 9800 XT 256MB |
| Video Drivers: | nVidia Detonator 56.64 ATI Catalyst 4.3 |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP1 |
| Motherboards: | nVidia nForce3-250Gb Reference Board ECS 755-A2 (SiS 755) FIC K8T800 (VIA K8T800) |
Benchmarks used either Mushkin PC3500 Level II or OCZ PC3500 Platinum Ltd memory modules. Both DIMMs use Winbond BH5 chips and perform virtually the same in our tests.
All performance tests were run with either the 256MB ATI 9800 XT or the 256MB nVidia FX5950 Ultra video card. On both cards, AGP Aperture was set to 256MB with Fast Write enabled. Resolution in all benchmarks is 1024x768x32 unless otherwise noted.
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Brickster - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
Can one expect the following from nf3-250?-939 Mobo
-DualChannel
-PCI-X
Any other chipsets for this?
amalinov - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
"Certainly, we will see 4 DIMMs, or two matched pairs, on the dual-channel nForce3-250Gb Ultra version of this chipset."again totaly unconnected with reality.
in A64/Opteron the chipset has nothing to do with memory support. How much DIMMs are supported depends on CPU, mainboard and BIOS ONLY!
There will be NO DUAL CHANNEL nf3-250Gb-Ultra. Just like nf3-250Gb IS NOT SINGLE CHANNEL.
There will be DUAL CHANNEL S939 Athlon64 CPU.
Also, another topic not well understood at Anandtech, Tom's, etc.: A64/Opteron FSB speed, HyperTransport speed, etc. - they (the writers) are mixing up clock frequency in MHz, data frequency in DDR and MHz, bandwith in GB/s. They think FSB and HyperTransport is the same thing. They think that HyperTransport is 800MHz (or maybe 200MHz "quadrupelt") - maybe becouse of similarity with P4. They think that their nf3-250Gb has a "250MHz FSB". They don't explain to the users on what depends the memory clock in a A64 system. They think that "Dual CPU support" is a feature of the chipset.
Shame on you!
Diogenes2 - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
I remain puzzled about the continuing declaration by Anandtech about the lack of AGP locks on NF3-150 boards..I have no way to confirm it ( with O-Scope, etc. )at this time, but I am running 265 FSB on my Gigabyte GA-K8NPRO, and having no problems with my Saphire 9800 Pro.. This was not the case with the KT800 board I experimented with for a while, which would not tolerate an FSB above 225, as far as AGP was concerned..
I recommend that when the NF3-250 boards hit the shelves, buyers take advantage of price drops on NF3-150 offerings.. I don't see the modest performance gains of the NF3-250 as anything to get excited about..
amalinov - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
just 2 lines below, another error:"nVidia includes the hooks for AC '97 6.1 audio in nForce3-250"
6.1? Don't you mean 5+1 ("6-channel 5.1")????
OK. This can be a typo-mistake, but when you add all typos, totaly wrong infos, etc. - it is too much to bear!
amalinov - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
"Even with the memory controller on the chip, there is only so much real estate practically available on a single-chip chipset. "What???? This is not true! Where did you get such information?
SiS745, anyone? Single Chip: AGP+DDR memroy+PCI+UATA+AC97+...
also, current 0.13um, 0.15um is more advanced than SiS745.
Other single chip: ALi M1689, SiS630, SiS540
There IS enough real estate for a SoundStorm APU.
The problem can be pin-count, but is not.
Give us the area in mm2 and production technology in um of nforce3, nforce2 IGP, nforce2 MCP-T.... then can we speak.
Also give for comparation other chipsets - north&south&singlechip, other CPUs, other GPUs... give numbers for total transistors, total pins...
Generaly I think that the quality of articles in Anandtech and Tom's Hardware has declined VERY MUCH and is below acceptable now. Once these two were my favorite sites. Now I visit them only becouse they are big and so get the newest stuff and make MANY benchmarks. But if you need information about internals of a component and not its speed - they will most likely give you WRONG information. There are many other mistakes in mainboard and chipsets and other articles that start to annoy me...
tagej - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
I do not find it surprising at all that most customers don't care about the sound storm stuff. After all, the vast majority of PC users (outside of the geek market of course) have their PC hooked up to $9.99 basic speakers -- sound storm is not going to make a difference at all, and is simply not a selling point.The 250Gb certainly looks sweet at this point... I'll be watching closely to see how the first retail boards do.
aak97 - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
Just wanna know, did the nForce3-250Gb ref board comes with any WinXP 64bits drivers? I'm sure a lot of people (including myself) will be interested in some benchmarks on the Preview version of WinXP 64bits.Foxbat121 - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
#4,The "customer" in the survey probably refers to nVidia's largest OEM like HP, eMachine etc. These companies only care about save a few $$ and probably only chose nForce2 without SoundStorm.
#7,
The whole point of SoundStorm is to use Dolby Digital encoding and output everything throught digital sound output where analog codec chip does not get in to the play. If you use analog ouput, you will be better of with a sound card.
KHysiek - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
Now with Intel adding Azalia high lever audio to it's boards NVidia looks clearly dumb with it's chipset w/o Soundstorm.clemedia - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
"On the other hand, Soundstorm offers high quality 3d audio rendering, but it is _ALWAYS_ paired with that SAME crappy Realtek ALC650 chip, which offers lousy analog output quality"Apparently you COMPLETLY overlooked the fact that most (all, AFAIK) SoundStorm boards offered digital output which bypassed those codec's completly. Which just happens to be EXACTLY what I use, and was a major selling point, allowing me to send out my DD/DTS signal to my amp for DVD's as I use for regular computer use. VERY handy.
I would have no problem switching to something else if they offed a good DICE solution. (I think C-media makes a software DICE chip, but I would rather go with something better)