Soltek NV400-L64: Purple, Practical, AND Performance!
by Wesley Fink on August 11, 2003 10:26 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Soltek NV400-L64: Stress Testing
We performed stress tests on the Soltek NV400-L64 in these areas and configurations:1. Chipset and motherboard stress testing, conducted by running the FSB at 215MHz.
2. Memory stress testing, conducted by running RAM at 400MHz with one DIMM slot filled and at 400MHz with both DIMM slots filled, at the lowest memory timings possible.
Front Side Bus Stress Test Results:
As standard practice, we ran a full range of stress tests and benchmarks to ensure that the Soltek NV400-L64 was absolutely stable at each overclocked FSB speed. These stress tests included Prime95 torture tests, which were run in the background for a total of 24 hours.In addition, we ran several other tasks: data compression, various DX8 and DX9 games, and apps, like Word and Excel. Moreover, Prime95 was running in the background. Finally, we ran our benchmark suite, which includes ZD Winstone suite, Unreal Tournament 2003, SPECViewperf 7.0, and Gun Metal Benchmark 2. While we were able to boot and run some tests at speeds as high as 223MHz FSB and at default voltage on the NV400-L64, 215MHz was the highest achievable overclock without encountering any reliability issues.
Memory Stress Test Results:
This memory stress test is very basic, as it simply tests the ability of the NV400-L64 to operate at its officially supported memory frequency (400MHz DDR) and at the lowest supported memory timings that our Corsair TwinX LL modules support:| Stable Dual DDR400 Timings (1/2 banks populated) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| Timing Mode: | N/A |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| Bank Interleave: | N/A |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 2T |
| RAS Precharge: | 4T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | N/A |
It’s not startling to see the Soltek NV400-L64 run at the lowest timings that we could establish on the board. We often see 2-4-2-2 timings working well with better nForce2 boards in dual-channel mode. So, we certainly predicted single-channel mode to run at these maximum speed timings. The nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset, like Corsair LL memory, seems designed to give the lowest possible memory timings, and the nForce2 400 single-channel is behaving in the same manner. As we have seen in previous reviews on memory performance, this does not always translate into the fastest memory performance. Nevertheless, lowest memory timings is one means of comparing motherboards. It is most useful when comparing boards based on the same chipset.
Filling both available memory banks is more strenuous on the memory subsystem than testing one bank in single-channel mode, as it tests two DIMMs running 400MHz DDR at the most aggressive memory timings available in the BIOS:
| Stable
DDR400 Timings (2/2 banks populated) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| Timing Mode: | N/A |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| Bank Interleave: | N/A |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 2T |
| RAS Precharge: | 4T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | N/A |
We were pleased that the Soltek handled the same aggressive memory timings with two Corsair DIMMs installed as with one DIMM installed. While there are only two DIMM slots available on the Soltek, both slots can be filled with the confidence that you can run at the most aggressive settings handled by the memory. Please keep in mind that the fastest timings do not always equate to the best performance when it comes to memory. It is also true that the real world performance difference between aggressive memory timings and more relaxed memory timings, such as SPD, can be very small. Unless your goal is to squeeze every last bit of performance from your system, SPD timings will work just fine 99% of the time.
We tested all these memory timings using several stress tests and general applications to guarantee stability. Prime95 torture tests were successfully run at the timings listed in the above charts. We also ran Sciencemark (memory tests only) and Super Pi. None of the three stress tests created stability problems for the Soltek NV400-L64 at these memory timings.
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Anonymous User - Saturday, August 16, 2003 - link
Wesley -I thought the PCI bus runs at a fixed frequency and is independent from the AGP bus. In the review, it was stated that the PCI bus is half of the AGP bus. Is it possible that this could be confirmed with a hardware monitor that is capable of measuring the PCI bus speed? If not, from what source was the PCI bus speed information taken from?
Thanx for review! :D
Anonymous User - Friday, August 15, 2003 - link
#23, you're clueless. AnandTech still has the best motherboard, CPU and now memory reviews on the net. HardOCP does some of the best video card reviews on the net, a bit better than AnandTech, but that's mostly because Anandtech doesn't release any individual video card reviews. If they did, Anandtech would dominate CPU, motherboard, video AND memory reviews.Read other web sites before you belittle Anandtech for quality reviews.
LMAO at #24. Though your point could have been made better without the swearing. :)
Anonymous User - Thursday, August 14, 2003 - link
Yeah Well ,This review is slightly amusing &Mildly Boring..
For all you new guys at AnandTech,
This place does not feel like "Home" anymore..
Oh yes ,its still my homepage ,after so many years.
The Place Might be Anand's - But it aint Anandtech no more...
THe reviews are lacking & incomplete - with too much cutting & pasting done all the time.
Many issues are just ignored ,
& it all feels so shallow.......
You Should Go Read "Old" Coppermine Area AnandTech Archives & get a grip on what this place used to be...
Please hear My (our?!) cry ..
Locutus4657 - Thursday, August 14, 2003 - link
#5:What the heck are you talking about? Via? Better Stability?? You've obviously never looked into their white papers before.... More than 200 pages for the KT133 errata section alone. I'm sorry, It's worth getting fewer features for an nForce board. At least it will work.
Anonymous User - Thursday, August 14, 2003 - link
Why is it that drivers get so little attention, but small differences in performance are blown up well beyond reasonable proportions? I'm talking about reviews all over the net now and not just Anandtech. It's just that the nForce drivers continuing mess doesn't get even a tenth of the attention that benchmarks in stupid programs like SiSoft Sandra get. (?!?)Wich bothers the users most, a few percentages here and there that doesn't show in practical use or driver issues that makes the regular user call his or her "techy" friend to come solve the issues.
Anonymous User - Thursday, August 14, 2003 - link
Actually, we are only on a limitted relationship with Crucial, Corsair, Kingston and Mushkin. They all send us lots of products, but its fairly easy to do considering how much (or how little) a stick of DDR costs.Evan Lieb - Tuesday, August 12, 2003 - link
In case anyone is wondering, all nForce2 Ultra 400 motherboards from Epox, ASUS, ABIT, etc. vary on an average of 0-1.5% (max). In fact, Gigabyte's nForce2 Ultra 400 motherboard (7NNXP) was ever so slightly faster than ASUS's A7N8X Deluxe rev. 2.0In other words, it serves no purpose to run benchmarks on 10 different nForce2 Ulra 400 motherboards if they all perform the same (unless it's a roundup of course).
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, August 12, 2003 - link
All our benchmarks are run at 1024x768 and at 32bit color if possible. We run the GunMetal 2 bench at default settings - which is audio enabled and 2X Anisotropic filtering. It has been common practice NOT to run Quake3 and other game benches with sound enabled due to the variation in scores caused by different sound chips. However with this new DX9 bench, we decided to run at default.Unfortunately, GunMetal 2 seems VERY video-card bound, and may not be a very useful benchmark for motherboard testing. It would appear a great choice, though, for testing video cards.
Anonymous User - Tuesday, August 12, 2003 - link
Wesley could you please state what settings the gunmetal benchs were run including the resolution, graphical settings ect.. I would like to compare my setup to your results. This info would be benificial if it was stated in the result graphic in the article. Thanks.Wesley Fink - Tuesday, August 12, 2003 - link
#14 - As we stated in #10 and #12, we recently completed retesting ALL recent reviews with our new ATI 9800 PRO video standard. When that was done, benchmarks for this review were updated and sent to our editor who does web-posting.Unfortunately, our web-editor posted the earlier tests. These have NOW been corrected and all reported benchmarks are with the 9800 PRO.
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