Intel Motherboards: Something Wicked This Way Comes...
by Gary Key on October 12, 2005 2:13 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Test Setup
The revised nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipset now fully supports the dual core Pentium D processors in both stock and overclocked conditions. There were no issues with this board recognizing the two cores and four logical processors that are created with the Hyperthreading feature on this EE processor during testing. However, dual core really makes a difference in certain multi-tasking scenarios, as was demonstrated in the dual core performance preview. If you are interested in how the various chipsets perform in a real world multitasking setup, please take another look at that review.
The board's memory was operated at 3-2-2-8-1T for the benchmarking suites (matching the Abit NI8 settings), but the variations in the benchmarks against 3-3-3-8-1T (test settings on previous boards) were very minimal, so those numbers will not be published. The difference in performance results between the Patriot Extreme Performance PEP21G5600+XBL used on previous tests and the Corsair CM2X512A-5400UL at the same settings was negligible, so we tested with the certified Corsair memory as requested by Gigabyte. We will standardize on DDR-2 667 settings going forward and any previous test results used in comparisons will be revised. We also found that certain benchmarks scored better without Hyper Threading enabled, but in fairness, we felt it was best to show consistent scores with this feature enabled as it is the main selling point of this processor model.
The revised nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipset now fully supports the dual core Pentium D processors in both stock and overclocked conditions. There were no issues with this board recognizing the two cores and four logical processors that are created with the Hyperthreading feature on this EE processor during testing. However, dual core really makes a difference in certain multi-tasking scenarios, as was demonstrated in the dual core performance preview. If you are interested in how the various chipsets perform in a real world multitasking setup, please take another look at that review.
The board's memory was operated at 3-2-2-8-1T for the benchmarking suites (matching the Abit NI8 settings), but the variations in the benchmarks against 3-3-3-8-1T (test settings on previous boards) were very minimal, so those numbers will not be published. The difference in performance results between the Patriot Extreme Performance PEP21G5600+XBL used on previous tests and the Corsair CM2X512A-5400UL at the same settings was negligible, so we tested with the certified Corsair memory as requested by Gigabyte. We will standardize on DDR-2 667 settings going forward and any previous test results used in comparisons will be revised. We also found that certain benchmarks scored better without Hyper Threading enabled, but in fairness, we felt it was best to show consistent scores with this feature enabled as it is the main selling point of this processor model.
| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor(s): | Intel Pentium EE 840 (3.2GHz, 800FSB, Dual-Core, HT enabled, 2x1MB L2) utilized for all tests Intel Pentium 820 (2.8GHz) for dual core verification |
| RAM: | 2 x 512MB Corsair CM2X512A-5400UL revision 1.3 Settings- DDR2-667 as noted or DDR2-533 at (CL3-3-3-8-1T) |
| Hard Drive(s): | 2 x Maxtor MaXLine III 7L300S0 300GB 7200 RPM SATA (16MB Buffer), 1 x Maxtor MaXLine III 7L300R0 300GB 7200 RPM IDE (16MB Buffer) |
| System Platform Drivers: | NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel Edition 7.13 |
| Video Cards: | 1 x XFX 7800GTX OC (PCI Express) for all tests 2 x MSI 7800GTX (PCI Express) for SLI Verification 2 x Gigabyte 6600 GT (PCI Express) for Multiple Monitor Verification |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA nForce 78.01 for all tests, 81.84 for special results tests |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
| Motherboards: | Gigabyte GA-8I955X Royal MSI P4N Diamond Abit NI8 SLI Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal |
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
44 Comments
View All Comments
SpaceRanger - Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - link
Yup.. Just compared the two, and they are IDENTICAL Pic's, just doctored to show THG and AT... VERY WEAK!!!!!THG:
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a342/Arathon/ten...">THG 10 Monitor Image
AT:
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a342/Arathon/ten...">AT 10 Monitor Image
johnsonx - Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - link
I doubt one photo or the other was actually doctored, but it is pretty amazing that NOTHING is moved between the two shots... not even the mouse has moved so much as a butt-hair.This does lend credence to the theory that Gigabyte prepared the 10-monitor shots themselves.
at80eighty - Thursday, October 13, 2005 - link
You got issues with butt hair ? :-)
BigLan - Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - link
It looks like this shot was taken at a gigabyte facility, probably in taiwan or china... the blue and red stickers on the monitors look to be chinese characters.vijay333 - Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - link
My guess would be that Gigabyte did this for each one of the sites that it had sent samples to, assuming that they would not be able to set this up themselves (monitors, cards etc). Still, this should have been mentioned in the review itself...Gary Key - Thursday, October 13, 2005 - link
Good Day,I did not want to use the Gigabyte lab shot since THG had already published their version of it. However, since we could not get the revision 2 3D1 cards in time for testing I thought there would be more comments about lack of proof on 10 monitors than issues with the lab shots. I should have noted that in the article.
I was able to get 8 monitors to work with the video setup I had available. However, I found utilizing four monitors was an ideal situation with the two 7800 GTXs. :-)
Bitter - Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - link
Seems a bit....odd, that THG has the exact same picture of the 10 display setup using the exact same displays with associated cables and hardware (and even boxes) in the exact same place...with the sole differance being the background color and logo. Yet THG had their review on 10/4. Yet both sites talk about setting up the system with 10 displays as if they had the gear in house...I smell something rotten here. When you look at the test setups they read almost in stereo. Did either one of these sites actually have the hardware "in the shop" to test any of this out on????johnsonx - Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - link
yeah, as soon as I saw that shot I quickly clicked on "Comments" to see if anyone else had already pointed it out... early bird gets the worm I guess.If I had to guess, I would venture that both THG and AT reviewed the hardware at a common location hosted by Gigabyte.
phaxmohdem - Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - link
Obviously this board is teh suxors since there is no uber AMD variant. What is this now THG?? Pfft.More seriously though, that is kinda cool in its own right. While I wouldn't mind having 4 monitors, 10 seems a bit overkill unless you are an uber l33t day trader or something. I mean wholy crap! Can you imagine the heat that bad boy will put out too? STRONG ass power supply + P4 Dual Core + 4 High End Graphics Cards??? + HDD's + RAM = Heat Stroke in the comfort of your office chair.
Chuckles - Wednesday, October 12, 2005 - link
So...4x$500 for graphics+~$250 for the board+$1000 for the CPU+$200 for RAM.
$3500 for a system. Geez.