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
nForce3-250Gb: Stress Testing
We performed stress tests on the nForce3-250Gb Reference Board in these areas and configurations:- Chipset and motherboard stress testing was conducted by running the FSB at 249MHz at a multiplier of 9.5.
- Memory stress testing was conducted by running RAM at 400MHz with a DIMM slot filled and at 400MHz with 2 DIMM slots filled at the lowest memory timings possible.
Front Side Bus Stress Test Results:
As normally done in our testing of production motherboards, we ran a full range of stress tests and benchmarks on the nForce3-250Gb Reference Board to test stability at an overclocked speed. This included Prime95 torture tests, and the addition of other tasks - data compression, various DX8 and DX9 games, and apps like Word and Excel - while 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. At default voltage, 249MHz was the highest overclock that we were able to achieve with the nForce3-250Gb and the HyperTransport setting reduced to 4X or 800 (Actual 996 at 249FSB) while running these tests.Unlike our experiences with some of the overclocks run on other A64 boards, the nForce3-250Gb was completely stable when overclocked. We did have stability problems at the highest 250 setting, which remains a puzzle, but 249 was completely stable. It would be impossible to run at 249FSB with SATA drives and our picky ATI 9800 PRO without a working PCI/AGP lock.
Memory Stress Test Results:
This memory stress test simply tests the ability of the nForce3-250Gb Reference Board to operate at its officially supported memory frequency (400MHz DDR) at the lowest supported memory timings that our OCZ PC3500 Platinum Ltd memory will support:| Stable DDR400 Timings - 1 DIMM (1/2 DIMM populated) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| Timing Mode: | N/A |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| Bank Interleave: | N/A |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 2T |
| RAS Precharge: | 5T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | N/A |
We had no problem running one DIMM of our standard OCZ PC3500 Platinum Ltd at the highest memory timings in the nForce3-250Gb Reference Board. We were also able to run the memory test suite with complete stability at 2-2-2-5 timings.
Filling all available memory banks is more strenuous on the memory subsystem than testing 1 DIMM, but 2 DS DIMMs worked just fine on the nForce3-250Gb. With 2 DIMMs, we could run the same aggressive timings used for one DIMM, which is excellent performance for an Athlon 64 motherboard.
| Stable DDR400 Timings - 2 DIMMs (2/2 DIMMs populated) | |
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| Timing Mode: | N/A |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| Bank Interleave: | N/A |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 2T |
| RAS Precharge: | 5T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | N/A |
We tested the memory timings with both banks filled using several stress tests and general applications to guarantee stability. Prime95 torture tests were run successfully 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 any stability problems for the nForce3-250Gb Reference Board at these memory timings.
We suspect production nForce3-250Gb motherboards will have 3 or 4 DIMM slots, but as we have reported in the past, we have had some difficulties with every Athlon 64 motherboard so far when we tried to use more than 2 DIMMs. We will test memory slots again when production motherboards appear on the market in a few weeks.
Certainly, we will see 4 DIMMs, or two dual-channel pairs, on the nForce3-250Gb Ultra version for Socket 939.
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Odeen - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
Quote:"the best audio Intel offered (on-board) at the time was the crappy Realtek Codec"
Wrong.
Intel offered a software audio solution. I.E. the chipset basically offloaded audio calculations to the CPU. Thus, the 3d audio rendering was crappy, true.
However, Realtek is not the only manufacturer of codec chips, just the cheapest. Boards from Intel and Asus have very nice ADI Soundmax chips with pretty good audio output quality.
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. I'd personally love to see Soundstorm coupled with a higher-end analog stage, such as a Sigmatel codec chip on an outboard card (ACR form factor, for instance).
And RAID-5 will be in-chipset when chipsets become as powerful as CPU's and average consumers will be taught to buy three or more drives. That is, never - RAID-5 is not for benchmarkers, and anyone with a "Type R" sticker, it's slower than RAID-0, but is obviouly far more secure, and wastes less disk than RAID1. It's a specialized feature for people who realize its value and want to spend the money to implement it.. it'd raise the chipset price by quite a bit, and is thus better off to left to an add-on card.
The other thing is, due to sensitive nature of RAID-5 (i.e. it's harder to implement than a software RAID-0 or RAID-1 that cheap PCI add-on cards and southbridges now offer) people who have the money to spend on RAID-5 will want a solution from people they trust, i.e. Adaptec or the likes.. They wouldn't accept trusting their precious data to a company that makes their son's gee-whiz video card :)
mkruer - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
I want to know when we are going to see RAID-5 in a chipset, for average consumers.Sahrin - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
<i>Customer surveys by nVidia found that most buyers did not use Sound Storm</i>I just can't believe that. I remember Soundstorm being a *huge* selling point for all kinds of people. When it came down to Intel v. AMD (especially when there were only "b" rev chips) Soundstorm was often the deciding factor; the best audio Intel offered (on-board) at the time was the crappy Realtek Codec. A lot of people made decisions to go with AXP-nForce 2 MCP-T boards over a comparable Intel package because of Soundstorm. (I know the Enthusiast market is still just a tiny sliver of sales, even for a chipset company like nVidia but I can't be convinced that this wasn't because Soundstorm is as good or better than products from Creative and/or M-Audio).
Cygni - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
^^ btw, there are only 3 boards offered with the 755 on newegg... ECS 755 A1 and A2, and the ASrock k8s8x.Cygni - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
Looks better than the 150... but SiS is really kickin a$$. I wish the market would embrace the 755 more so we could see a better range of solutions based on it.wicktron - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
any clue as to when production boards will hit the market?