Nforce 3 250GB v Ultra

[Rustybob]

I just received the day before Easter a Gigabyte K8NSC-939. It is just released by Gigabyte with a Nforce 3 250 GB chipset.
I had ordered the G8NS-939 with the Nforce 3 Ultra chipset which is what the invoice says it should be. They sent the wrong board.
I have had to use the board supplied with the 250GB. Now dont miss understand me it is a very good board. But I am left wondering what I have missed out on. The boards physicaly are the same only the chipset is different.

All the research I have done has left me unclear on the difference between the Ultra and the 250GB. Initially I thought it was just speed on the HT. But the K8NSC is running fine at x5 HT. It clocks the Athlon 64 3000+ Winchester I bought at x4 with a chip speed of 240 smooth as silk. I have yet to push it further.

Essentially it seems to be everything I needed but I still have that nagging feeling that maybe my original choice of the Ultra based Motherboard offered more.

The question is what would the Ultra based K8NSC give me I dont have now? and is it worth going thru the hassle of asking for a change?

 

[Rugger]

nForce3 250GB is s754 with AGP.

nForce3 Ultra is s939 with AGP.

Would have been nice if they would have messed up and sent you the <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-136-147&depa=1" target="_new">DFI Lanparty nF3 UT 250Gb</A>. Here's an <A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2337&p=2" target="_new">Anandtech DFI nF4 review</A>. THE OC beast of the s754...

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<font color=red>You're a boil on the arse of progress - don't make me squeeze you!</font color=red>

 

[Rustybob]

Well I have done alot more reading and think I now have the answers. There is some poetic license to fill in the gaps.

When Nvidia first produced Nforce 3 250 chipsets like all new chipsets the yeild could not be guaranteed to be 100%. So the best chipsets were called Ultras and the vulnerable HT unit was guaranteed to run at x5. The chips that fell outside this benchmark were the 250s and were marketed to have a HT of x4.
A newer version of that chipset is the 250Gb which now includes an on chip Gigabit LAN. It is in only one flavour which is the 250Gb. ie no Ultra Obviously it will run at x5 HT

Interestingly without the need of PCI Express a Hyper Transport of 2000 is an overkill. It is of course very necessary in the Nforce 4 chipset that tacks more resouces off the HT.

Interestingly Gigabyte have put the 250Gb chipset into the same board as the K8NS-939 (which was equiped with the Nforce 250 Ultra)and called it a K8NSC-939. This does not therefore utilise the Gigabit on chip function but keeps the seperate LAN support via a Marvel 8001 chip which swings off the PCI bus. No doubt this was a cheaper alternative than redesigning the board. We will probably see a revision 2 of this board sometime in the future.

It has been rumoured that Nvidia have discontinued the Ultra chipset. I suspect in reality they have discontinued the vanilla 250 as a whole by replaceing it with the 250Gb.