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nForce4 Ultra Roundup: Charting the Mainstream

 by Wesley Fink on July 5, 2005 10:28 PM EST
75 Comments | Add A Comment
75 Comments

Overclocking

Maximum overclock data was added to Performance graphs beginning with the nForce4 SLI roundup several months ago. The overclocking performance graphs should allow better comparison of the overclocking capabilities of tested boards. For more details on the specific overclocking abilities of a specific board, please refer to the Overclocking and Memory Stress Test section of individual board reviews. Since the nForce4 Ultra and nForce4 SLI are based on the same chipset, performance should be directly comparable. You may want to look back at the results in nForce4 SLI Roundup: Painful and Rewarding to see a broader range of overclocking performance.

Overclocking

Overclocking

When we benchmarked nF4-SLI boards several months ago, it was very early in the release cycle for nForce4 motherboards. We were surprised to see the large spread of overclocking results, but there was the explanation that the boards were new to market and we were testing immature technology. We are now several months down the road and the nForce4 Ultra chipset is everywhere in the market. Now, we have to wonder why there is such a huge spread in overclocking results with the nForce4 Ultra boards in this roundup. Names like Abit, which should be at the top of the OC game, barely reached 250 in our overclock tests. The enthusiast wannabes also generally performed extremely poorly.

It is almost like some board makers understand how to overclock nForce4 motherboards and others are still struggling. Two boards clearly stand out in overclocking in this roundup:the Epox 9NPA+ and the DFI LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D. These two turned in bus overclocks more than 50% higher than the third placed motherboard, and they were also the top two in stock ratio overclocking.

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  • Zebo - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link

    Does ECS build EPOX's boards? just curious because they look pretty cheap like ECS IMO..

  • Heidfirst - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link

    "[b]#19 and Others - I'm sure you must have noticed that some web sites have never posted a negative review of an Abit board. Also water cooling and asynchronous ram is hardly comparable to our air-cooled tests.

    The first thing I did was check other reviewers and users of the Abit board. The great majority are running into problems at about 250 FSB - although a few are getting better performance. Abit has had so many complaints about the OC performance of this board that I would fully expect a hardware revision on the horizon.[/b]"
    Well the Fatality AN8 SLi, AN8 SLi, AN8 Ultra, AN8 V2.0 & AN8-V are effectively the new revision as I pointed out. Why buy a Fatality AN8 when the AN8 Ultra has better Vcore, better sound & is cheaper?
    & people have had HTT395 & DDR660 out of them on air ...

  • Heidfirst - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link

  • Wesley Fink - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link

    #19 and Others - I'm sure you must have noticed that some web sites have never posted a negative review of an Abit board. Also water cooling and asynchronous ram is hardly comparable to our air-cooled tests.

    The first thing I did was check other reviewers and users of the Abit board. The great majority are running into problems at about 250 FSB - although a few are getting better performance. Abit has had so many complaints about the OC performance of this board that I would fully expect a hardware revision on the horizon.

    Abit set the expectation that the AN8 Fatal1ty was the best of the best with a price tag to match. It's an interesting board with many interesting features, but it's performance as it now stands is nowhere near the best.

  • TheGlassman - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link

    I think that a round up such as this would serve the readers better if three types of memory were used and various dividers used.
    My Chaintech VnF4 is running at 256x11 quite happilly, so I know it will run well over 245 with a divider with my memory, and I'm sure most of the other boards as well. And yes, many people run it over 300 HTT with lower multi cpu's.
    This is not to say that 1:1 testing is not important, but since this is a round up, the various needs and budgets of your readers should be taken into account.
    Seeing bios's used that are dated during the testing, with a known single memory may if repeated cause readers to think that Anandtech doesn't deserve it's well earned reputation as a fair and complete tester of all things important to PC ethusiasts.
    Using memories with 3 different types of chips and using relevant dividers to find maximum HTT's and cpu speeds with each, while being more work, I think will be worth while to your readers, especially in a round up where boards are compared directly to each other.
    This current round up implies that most nF4 boards are not capable of high HTT's, but the truth is you have only shown that most do not run one type of memory at very high speeds. You have not exposed the limits of the boards, nor do we know if the situation is the same with any of the other commonly used memories.

  • bldckstark - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link

    Xpose-
    Not too early. I don't have my board yet. I have been waiting on X2. Using your same logic that means that nobody has a board yet right? I mean, since I am the only person I know that is going to build a A64 system soon then I should assume that nobody has one.
    Geez

  • xpose - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link

    This Editor's Recommendation for best motherboard is at least 3 months too late. We already have had all of our boards.

    Also, to say that the VN4F Ultra is a bad overclocking board is completely wrong. I have a 3000+ CPU running at 2.67gz now. That is about 49% OC and damn good reguardless of the MB.

  • Son of a N00b - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link

    great article! you can clearly see the hours of hard work you put into it. Great Job, I enjoyed it and it was jam packed with info.

    one quuestion though where was the gugabyte board ultra board?? sure you may have reviewed it in the SLI roundup, but then did you not do the same with DFI? Plus you had great results with the reference gigabyte board, but not the revision 1 board...i'd like to see how ir fairs now...maybe i missed something why you reviewed the DFI board again becuase I am not familiar witha ll their variations and naming scheme, but to me it looked the same...why review that one and not the others? sure its great to rehash what a great board the DFi one is but....

    just wondering as I have always had great success with gigabyte boards...but i probably missed something even thought i read it back to front, sorry if i did as i know that you would never do something without a good reason behind it...

    anyway thanks, keep the awesome articles rolling...

  • smn198 - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link

    Hi Wesley, thanks for the clarification on the HTT. do you know if it would have any more of an impact when dual core is brought into the equation?

    Thanks again. Good article BTW!

  • BigandSlimey - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link

    #18 I really like that idea, would probably be a headache to make it and keep it updated though.
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