Soltek NV400-L64: Purple, Practical, AND Performance!
by Wesley Fink on August 11, 2003 10:26 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Performance Test Configuration
| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor(s): | AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (400MHz FSB) |
| RAM: | 2 x 256MB Corsair PC3200 TwinX LL (v1.1 or v1.2) Modules |
| Hard Drive(s): | WMaxtor 120GB 7200 RPM (8MB Buffer) Western Digital 120GB 7200 RPM Special Edition (8MB Buffer) |
| Bus Master Drivers: | NVIDIA nForce version 2.03 (January 30, 2003) VIA 4in1 Hyperion 4.47 (May 20, 2003) |
| Video Card(s): | ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB (AGP 8X) |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 3.6 |
| Operation System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP1 |
| Motherboards: | Soltek NV400-L64 (nForce2 400 SC) @ 200.5MHz FSB DFI NFII Ultra LanParty (nForce2 Ultra 400) @ 201.35 MHz FSB Gigabyte 7VT600 1394 (KT600) @ 202.78MHz FSB Gigabyte 7NNXP (nForce2 Ultra 400) @ 202.77MHz FSB Epox 8KRA2+ (KT600) @ 202.44MHz FSB |
All performance tests that ran on nForce2 400 (SC)/nForce2 Ultra 400 (DC) motherboards utilized two 256MB Corsair TwinX LL PC3200 (v1.1 or v1.2) modules set to SPD timings in DDR400 mode. Dual-channel mode was used on nForce2 Ultra 400 boards, and two DIMMs working as single-channel were used on the nForce2 400 Soltek NV400-L64 board.
All performance tests that ran on the KT600-based motherboards used two 256MB Corsair TwinX LL PC3200 (v1.1 or v1.2) Corsair modules in DDR400 mode. KT600 memory timings did vary slightly among the motherboards, with the Asus A7V600 requiring a Ras-to-Cas of 3 for stable operation and other KT600 boards requiring a Ras-to-Cas setting of 2. 4-bank interleave and the highest available timing option (Turbo or Ultra) was used.
Performance tests were run using the ATI 9800 PRO 128MB video card, with AGP Aperture set to 128MB with Fast Write enabled. The ATI 9800 PRO is the new Anandtech video card standard for reviews.
Additions to Performance Tests
Benchmark testing is dynamic, and we have added several new benchmarks to our standard Test Suite.1) ZD Labs Internet Content Creation 2003 – This benchmark has just been updated by ZD Labs and includes many new features in the Benchmark Suite, such as Media Encoding. It also uses the most up-to-date versions of Multimedia Creation software, which is rapidly changing as new software tools are released.
2) ZD Labs Business Winstone 2002 – ZD Labs Business Winstone has been around for many years and is a widely quoted Benchmark for measuring system performance. It basically provides a similar benchmarking suite to Sysmark 2002 Office Productivity.
3) Gun Metal DirectX Benchmark 2 – This demo/benchmark from Yeti Labs is one of the first DX9 game-based benchmarks available. Unlike some older benchmarks, such as Quake 3, that generate insane FPS ratings in the 300’s, we see performance numbers in the 30 to 40FPS range with current DX9 cards.
To give AnandTech readers a feel for how some of the newer benchmarks compare to the more familiar benchmarks used in past reviews, we have posted results for both of these new benchmarks and Sysmark 2002, as well as all the games that have been a part of our standard benchmark suite.
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35 Comments
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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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