NFORCE review

[leonov]

http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=1535

 

[FatBurger]

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=1535" target="_new">Click!</A>

Interesting review, but it proves my point that nForce isn't really that great.

<font color=green>In memory of all the Americans that died 9/11/01
Rest in peace</font color=green>

 

[jlbigguy]

Yes, a disappointment after all of the hype. While the integrated video will be the best around, it still pales when compared to an external Gforce2 MX.

Will it be worth the premium price? I may have to start looking at VIA again....

<font color=blue>This is a Forum, not a playground. Treat it with Respect.</font color=blue>

 

[phsstpok]

The point is, the nForce boards, with an AGP video card, perform as well as the KT266A boards. In 2 of 3 memory benchmark types, write speed and latency the nForce is the better performer.

This shows that top performance is possible with these boards. Add to this the fact that the boards have good on-board sound and should have built-in networking, etc. If the retail boards have good overclocking options you could have a single board that can go from budget level to high-end. Start with no video card and later add whatever you want. Yes, this all depends on the price point, especially for the 420 boards. They would have to be very highly priced, indeed, not to be a good value. I mean, how much does one have to presently add to the cost of a motherboard for Dolby Digital sound card, NIC, modem (I think the nForce has built-in modem)?

I would like to have seen hard disk benchmarks and see if they benefit from Hyper Transport technology and some mention of reliability. (The latter will be more important in the retail boards, though).

Would you like a Quarter Pounder?
No, thank you. Just give me the BIG heatsink. It's an Athlon.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 09/24/01 03:30 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Guest]

>I may have to start looking at VIA again....

oh please dont. Get an ECS board with the SiS735. I got one a few weeks ago, and I aint looking back to that VIA junk. This is my best board bar none, and that includes my previous all time favourite BX board. Stable as hell. Even with maxed out DDR CAS2 "ultra" memory settings, I'm still waiting for the first crash/illegal operation under XP beta 2. Been playing OFP and Max Payne non stop. When I'm not, seti is running. Im very very impressed. No USB issues, no Vortex2 trouble, nothing. No patching, no tweaking, damn this is one boring board.

And did I mention its also just about the cheapest and fastest board out there ? If not THE fastest (nforce and KT266A arent out yet here) and maybe even THE cheapest ? A real no-brainer.

Its only not very overclocking friendly, but frankly, with such a cheap Athlon 1.4 who needs overclocking these days ?


---- Owner of the only Dell computer with an AMD chip

 

[Guest]

oh, almost forgot.. there is one cave-at with this board. IDE performance is quite a bit lower that it should be. My 7k2 rpm ATA100 drive roughly performs like ATA66 board according to Sandra. In any case it IS slower than with my previous KT133A board.. maybe a new bios and/or drivers will cure it, but if not, I dont care too much. Like I said in another post, I could still get a PCI IDE controller, and pay less than for a KT266A / nForce board.

---- Owner of the only Dell computer with an AMD chip

 

[rcf84]

Well the Nforce isn't that great. If the KT266a can beat it. Creative SB! Audigy should kill the APU on the Nforce. I hope SiS is going to make some more noise next and step up with SiS 740.

Nice Nvidia and ATi users get a Cookie.... Yummy

 

[zengeos]

Well RcF..

Performance is quite good...not as good as many had hoped and as rumors had suggested, BUT KT266A wasn't even sampling then either.

As for Audigy...

I think the nForce is a much better deal since an nForce 420 board will be less expensive than most iterations of the Audiigy. Audigy is pricey!

Mark-

When all else fails, throw your computer out the window!!!

 

[Raystonn]

Someone with an nForce chipset motherboard should grab an unlocked Athlon processor, double its memory bus, and halve its multiplier. I would be interested to see what happens. You might actually be able to use the extra memory bandwidth. Then again, nForce might not be able to handle a 533MHz frontside bus. It would require decent clock generators.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[FatBurger]

Interesting thought, Raystonn. Might have to put a Pentium Pro cooler on the Northbridge or something to keep it cool enough. However, I don't think it'd really be any different than single-channel RAM, unless you're suggesting only overclocking the CPU, not the entire FSB (which is what I assume, now that I think about it).
I don't know if the nForce would be able to handle a 2x FSB running asynchronously. Be nice if it did.

<font color=green>In memory of all the Americans that died 9/11/01
Rest in peace</font color=green>

 

[Raystonn]

Well, I'm suggesting overclocking the FSB, but not the processor. Since the FSB is controlled by the motherboard's chipset, it is just a matter of whether the component providing the 133MHz clock for the DDR memory (effectively performing memory data transfers at 266MHz) will work at 266MHz (effectively 533MHz.) Thusfar I have never seen any SDR or DDR SDRAM chipset motherboard offer a clock of 266MHz. I would actually doubt the components in nForce are capable of this, but it would be interesting to see. If it worked you would actually get 4.2GB/s of memory bandwidth to the CPU.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[FatBurger]

Right. But then the memory would be giving 8.4GB/s (theoretically), but no RAM could handle twice the clock speed. So you would have to just double the FSB on the CPU (and halve the multiplier). And no PCI card could handle double the FSB, either. The AGP port would bump down to 2x and probably be ok.

<font color=green>In memory of all the Americans that died 9/11/01
Rest in peace</font color=green>

 

[Raystonn]

Well that depends... There may be a way to independantly increase the FSB clockspeed without affecting the speed of the rest of the nForce chipset. It depends on how they designed everything. If the FSB is asynchronous to the rest of the chipset, this is possible. Indeed, if it is asynchronous, it would not affect the speed of the rest of the buses in the system.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[SerArthurDayne]

I don't understand how you consider this a disappointment.... I think we were all blown away by the preview kt266a benchmarks. If not for having seen those benchmarks already, doubtless we would have been blown away by the Nforce benchmarks. The Nforce is essentially equivalent in total performance to the kt266a, and as such provides the fastest available performance for any athlon platform.

For those who dislike, distrust, or refuse to use VIA, the Nforce is the perfect alternative. For the huge masses of consumers who choose value systems (which outnumber us 10 to 1), the Nforce will no doubt be providing a high performance budget alternative. You consider the Nforce a disappointment after seeing it compared to separate and expensive video and audio peripherals, yet you haven't seen the comparisons vs. the other integrated competition. There is no doubt in my mind that the Nforce is leaps and bounds above any other integrated platform in existence.

I for one am thoroughly impressed with Nvidia's offering and can't wait to see the kind of improvements their second and third generation chipsets will bring.

"Laziness is a talent to be cultivated like any other" - Walter Slovotsky

 

[AMD_cErTiFiEd]

Are u on crack
I have via kt266 with vortex2
usb tv tuner and usb camera
play all the same games with no BSOD or illegal ops
I am on 98se and XP release 1 with 0 probs
with BIOS settings to ultra cas 2 interleave 4

Blame the newbies not the technology

 

[lhgpoobaa]

good to see though that we have a number of choices now with a DDR chipset, and i think the review shows that the new KT266A and NFORCE are fully utilising the benifits of DDR.

and if one doesnt like Via there are worthy alternatives now

Religious wars are 2 groups of people fighting over who has the best imaginary friend.

 

[Raystonn]

I would say that nForce is not fully utilizing its bandwidth at all... The CPU is given access to 2.1GB/s out of 4.2... Your hard drives might take up 100MB/s... couple kb/s here and there with various components... 1GB/s with an AGP card... That's a lot of wasted bandwidth.

-Raystonn


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[Crashman]

Well, if your looking at a chipset with the performance of the 266A and awesome integrated audio, forget the video it's still a good deal.

I see they actually kept revising it until they were fairly certain they got it right BEFORE they released it! When has VIA ever done that? Very impressive for a companies first efforts!

Especially laughable is the fact that the Live used 23-34% of the processor power on a 1.2GHz machine! I keep telling people the Live is garbage, they see the proof, and they still don't believe me! The nForce's audio will make the Live and probably the Audigy look like the [-peep-] that Creative is! I'm thouroughly happy with my Vortex2, so I don't know if I'm "ready" for anything superior to it!

Back to you Tom...

 

[Kelledin]

Definitely. The SBLive gets <i>smacked!</i> Audigy better be waaaaay ahead of SBLive, or Creative's lost my patronage. :tongue:

Kelledin

"/join #hackerz. See the Web. DoS interesting people."

 

[Matisaro]

I havent read the review yet, (just clicked it) but to point out, it is not just integrated sound, it is supposed to be the BEST sound system in the world currently out. Lets see if I wait for the nforce abit board of go with the kt266a board.

~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

 

[phsstpok]

it is supposed to be the BEST sound system in the world currently out

Since the review is of a reference board I was commenting on generalities. The nForce reference board seems to perform at least as well as the KT266A board. If the retail units are priced well then nForce can range from entry level systems to top-performers at a value price. All one has to decide on is the CPU, amount of memory, and the level of graphics performance.

Would you like a Quarter Pounder?
No, thank you. Just give me the BIG heatsink. It's an Athlon.

 

[phsstpok]

Especially laughable is the fact that the Live used 23-34% of the processor power on a 1.2GHz machine!

23-34%! I never knew that. I would avoid the SB Live if one has a VIA southbridge because of the bug but that's a different (well known) story.

Which sound card(s) do you like? (Sorry to go off-topic).

Would you like a Quarter Pounder?
No, thank you. Just give me the BIG heatsink. It's an Athlon.

 

[Crashman]

I like the Vortex2, I own both the Vortex2 and Live, and the Vortex2 sounds better, as well as using less CPU overhead. Also not recommended for VIA chipsets because of their greater PCI latency which can in some cases cause a data loop or something like that. For the past year I've been hearing about new cards that "sound like the next Vortex 2" according to reviews. The Hecules Game Theater and Phillips Accoustic edge are both rated highly, but I don't own them. Eveyone I know who owns the Accoustic Edge praises it highly. I don't know anyone with the Game Theater. But the nForce's audio looks very promissing.

Back to you Tom...

 

[phsstpok]

I also heard good things about the Acoustic Edge. I thought I heard about a cheaper version which is minus the dolby digital encoder. (This is not the seismic edge which is terrible).

I've been using an old Turtle Beach TBS-2000 (ISA) which doesn't sound great but neither does it have the "crackle" problem that my friend's SB Live on an A7V has.

The TBS-2000's days will likely come to an end with the my next system upgrade. An nForce is a likely candidate for me if they turn out to be extremely stable. I'm not ruling out a future Northwood system either.

Would you like a Quarter Pounder?
No, thank you. Just give me the BIG heatsink. It's an Athlon.

 

[Guest]

You said:

"I would say that nForce is not fully utilizing its bandwidth at all..."

I think (the author alluded to this too) the current Athalon design is getting all the memory bandwith it needs from previously reviewed motherboards (read based on KT266A). In order to use this kind of memory bandwith we need a new processor design. I think this situation is very analogous to the situation with the coppermine/RDRAM boards in that all that extra bandwith goes unused by a processor design that is only capable of using a smaller amount of bandwith effectively.