FIRST LOOK - nForce4: Gigabyte K8NXP-9
by Wesley Fink on November 12, 2004 8:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Test Setup
The performance of the Gigabyte K8NXP-9 was compared to the nVidia nForce4 Reference board using an AMD FX55 and 2-2-2-10 DDR memory. Test results with the Intel 925XE Abit Fatal1ty AA8XE were included for Reference with the fastest 1066FSB CPU currently available. For reference, test results were also included for the Intel 925X with the 560 - the fastest current Intel 800FSB CPU. All benchmarks on all platforms were run with the PCI Express nVidia 6800 Ultra. Tests on the Gigabyte K8NXP-9 were all run with 5X (1000 HT) enabled.| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor(s): | AMD Athlon 64 FX55 (2.6GHz-1MB Cache) Socket 939 AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (2.4GHz-1MB Cache) Intel 3.46EE (1066FSB) Intel 560 (3.6GHz 800FSB) |
| RAM: | 2 x 512MB OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2 2 X 512MB Micron DDR2-533 |
| Hard Drive(s): | Seagate 120GB 7200 RPM IDE (8MB Buffer) |
| Chipset Drivers: | nVidia nForce 6.31 Beta (nForce4) |
| Video Card(s): | nVidia 6800 Ultra (PCI Express) |
| Video Drivers: | nVidia nForce 61.81 Beta |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP1 |
| Motherboards: | Gigabyte K8NXP-9 (nForce4) nVidia nForce4 Ultra Reference Board Abit Fatality AA8XE (Intel 925XE) Intel 925X Reference Board5 |
The configuration was kept as close as possible between the 4 motherboards, but we are forced to compare apples to oranges in some cases. DDR400 memory at 2-2-2-10 is being compared on the nForce4 boards to DDR2-533 at 3-3-3-10 on the Intel 925X/XE boards. However, as we saw in the DDR vs. DDR2 review, the performance of fast DDR400 and DDR533 is very close.
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arswihart - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
quote by Wesley Fink:"#6 - Full performance comparisons of nForce3 Ultra and nForce4 were run at nF4 launch at http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?... Performance of nF3 and nF4 is basically the same - the only real difference is PCIe instead of AGP."
but you are showing here that the production board from Gigabyte is a little different than the reference nf4 boards. I think it would be helpful to at least include one good nf3-250gb board in some future nf4 round-up or review, for comparison's sake, as i think its more practical at this point to compare nf3 to nf4, rather than reference nf4 to production nf4.
Thanks for the review though, and I'm also interested in the price of these nf4 boards. I've seen somewhere quoting these boards on average at like $180
Whizzmo - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
Possible Typo:Page 2, below the second mobo pic, the following:
Four ports are 3Gb/s ports provided by the nForce3 chip, and
should probably be:
Four ports are 3Gb/s ports provided by the nForce4 chip, and
Danke :)
johnsonx - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
oh, ok... 1.5Gbps and 3Gbps signalling rates, which translate down to 150MB/s and 300MB/s data rates, respectively. The SATA uses 8b/10b encoding, so 10 bits of signalling are need for each 8 bits of data.Anyway, nevermind.
johnsonx - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
ok, it's late, so I may be tired and crazy....but what's all this about 1.5Gb SATA and 3Gb SATA? I thought standard SATA is 150MB/s (SATA-150), while the new SATA 2.0 spec runs at 300MB/s. Even converting those speeds to Gigabits per second, you get 1.2Gbs and 2.4Gbps.
Jalf - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
Would be nice to see it compared to ATI's A64 board. That looked like a pretty good performer as wellstelleg151 - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
Any clues as to when we will be able to get our hands on one?RyanVM - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
Too bad the secondary SATA controller isn't on the PCIe bus.xtknight - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
wow, very interesting. looks like the gigabyte mobo is a winner. by the way, doom 3 belongs under OpenGL benchmarks.PorBleemo - Friday, November 12, 2004 - link
So much for that "Fatal1ty". :PProviaFan - Friday, November 12, 2004 - link
Page 2 "Four ports are 3Gb/s ports provided by the nForce3 chip"Oops?