Socket 754 Roundup: Comparing Generation 2
by Wesley Fink on May 28, 2004 5:57 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Chaintech VNF3-250: Features and Layout
| Motherboard Specifications | |
| CPU Interface | Socket 754 Athlon 64 |
| Chipset | nVidia nForce3-250 |
| CPU Ratios | 6 to 22 in 1X increments |
| Bus Speeds | 200MHz to 400MHz (in 1MHz increments) |
| PCI/AGP Speeds | Auto, 66MHz to 85MHz (in 1MHz increments) |
| HyperTransport | 1x-5x (200MHz to 1GHz) |
| Core Voltage | 1.45V-1.70V in .025V increments to 1.55V and .05V increments 1.6V to 1.7V |
| DRAM Voltage | 2.5V to 2.9V in 0.1V increments |
| AGP Voltage | 1.5V to 2.2V in 0.1V increments |
| Chipset Voltage | 1.6V to 1.9V in 0.1V increments |
| Memory Slots | Three 184-pin DDR DIMM Slots Unbuffered Memory to 2GB Total |
| Expansion Slots | 1 AGP 8X Slot 5 PCI Slots 1 CMR (Chaintech Multimedia Riser) Slot |
| Onboard SATA/RAID | nVidia 2-Drive SATA by nF3-250 SATA can be combined in RAID 0, 1, JBOD |
| Onboard IDE | Two Standard nVidia ATA133/100/66 (4 drives) |
| Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394 | 8 USB 2.0 ports supported by nF3-250 No FireWire ports |
| Onboard LAN | 10/100 Ethernet Realtek RTO8100C PCI |
| Onboard Audio | CMedia CM19761A 6-Channel with SPDIF |
Chaintech motherboards are best known for their top-of-the-line Zenith series, which include coordinated cables, front break-out boxes, and every motherboard accessory that you could imagine. The other top Chaintech feature is a very complete selection of overclocking and control options for the Enthusiast. With that in mind, you may not be surprised to see the complete selection of Voltage and Frequency adjustments. However, you may be shocked when you realize that this kind of control is available on a motherboard designed to sell for less than $100.
The VNF3-250 is the first Zenith Value Edition motherboard. We are told that the Zenith Value Edition boards are designed to provide top-notch features for the Enthusiast and Overclocker, but without all the add-ons and frills that drive up the price. Based on that philosophy, Chaintech has certainly succeeded in reaching their target with the VNF3-250.
There are some compromises in order to reach the "under $100" price goal. Chaintech uses the nF3-250 chipset rather than the more expensive nF3-250Gb, and therefore has eliminated the on-chip Gigabit LAN and nVidia on-chip Firewall. Instead, 10/100 LAN is provided with a Realtek PCI chip. RAID is of the 2-drive SATA variety and is not the 8-drive "any-drive" IDE/RAID solution found on top-line nForce3-250Gb boards. Also, you will not find any Firewire ports on the VNF3-250, but these can be added with a PCI card if you need them. Everything else, however, is here on the Chaintech and the performance that we found with this board in our review of OCZ3700 was simply outstanding.
The VNF3-250 is a little smaller than full ATX, but nothing is cramped at all on the board. It is also worth pointing out that Chaintech, unlike most others building to a price point, still delivers a 3-phase power design. This attention to detail pays off in the great performance that we found with the Chaintech.
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Odeen - Monday, May 31, 2004 - link
There is a difference between SATA native to chipset, and SATA native to the OS.SATA native to chipset means the chipset runs the SATA internally, off the Hypertransport or V-Link bandwidth, which is at least a gigabyte/second.
Intel's implementation of SATA is cool because to the OS it emulates a standard IDE controller. (Thus it's "native" to the OS.) The downside of this approach is that every OS other than XP gets horribly confused seeing two primary and two secondary controllers. (i.e. your PATA1 is Primary, your PATA2 is Secondary, your SATA1 is.. again Primary) Without "compatibility" options in the BIOS, which limits you to four drives total (i.e. SATA channels become masters on IDE1 and IDE2, with PATA masters becoming slaves, and PATA slaves dropping off the map, or, as an alternative, PATA2 disappearing, and SATA1 and SATA2 becoming PATA1 Master and PATA1 Slave) Win2K and DOS-based utilities (such as bootable Antivirus or Partitioning program CD's and utilities like the drive test disks that you get with a hard drive,) fail on startup.
Running SATA as a SCSI-over-IDE, requiring drivers, is a more flexible approach, but requires the use of driver floppies. Still, there's something neat about having four drives all hooked up as masters (2 SATA / 2 PATA) and installing XP without driver floppies.
I'm not sure how it can be remotely possible with a 4 drive SATA controller, though.
sprockkets - Monday, May 31, 2004 - link
Does anybody know if the NF3 chipset has any functionality similar to Intel's SATA, like is SATA done natively without needing any special drivers or programs for the os to use or understand?rms - Monday, May 31, 2004 - link
I also would have preferred to see feature benchmarking instead of cpu/memory benchmarking.rms
Zak - Sunday, May 30, 2004 - link
2 RAM slots on the Abit mobo??? They call THAT an improvement??? Why can't there be at least 4? With 1GB chips' prices being still very high that would be a major selling point for many. I'd upgrade my mobo instantly if I could stick 4 512MB DDR400 chips and not have them run at 333...Zak
Odeen - Sunday, May 30, 2004 - link
I'm very surprised that none of the motherboards except for MSI actually implemented all the features of their chipsets. Both the NF3-250GB and the K8T800 Pro support 4 chipset-level SATA ports, but only MSI has all 4. If it wasn't for that Corecell silliness, I'd be taking a long, hard look at the MSI board.Crassus - Sunday, May 30, 2004 - link
Whats the point of showing benchmarks when all the boards perform within margin of error? When the memory controller is part of the CPU there's IMHO little point in benchmarking it.Why not go after the components that make a bigger difference, esp. HDD, Ethernet and stuff in terms of throughput, CPU utilisation and so?
JustAnAverageGuy - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
#11In RAM, generally speed increases are more noticible in real world performance than timings.
Obviously if you have 400 cas 3-3-3-8, versus 400 cas 2-2-2-11, 2-2-2-11 would win. Generally though, speed is more important than timings after a certain point.
bigtoe33 - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
#9I think you may have one of these supposed 3000 boards that have non-pro chipsets that Abit says are pro chipsets but really appear to be not..
I would take your issue to Abit.
qquizz - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
Concerning the overclock. I can overclock the crap out of my XP2100+, but I keep it at levels where it's stable using Prime95 and Memtest. I wonder if these overclocks can meet my standards?gplracer - Saturday, May 29, 2004 - link
All of the ram in this comparision was CAS3. I wonder how the CAS3 at 270mhz compares to CAS@ at 250mhz. I run my corsair at that speed now.