nForce4 Ultra Roundup: Charting the Mainstream

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.

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.