nForce reviewed by Anandtech!

[zengeos]

That's right folks! nForcew is reviewed, including core benchmarks. Comparisons include:

Benchmarks of nForce420, nForce220, KT266, KT266A, SiS 735 and AMD760 systems

Video capabilities between verious GeForce, nForce IGP and Radeon

Sound comparisons between SB Live! and MCP, especially actual memory usage comparisons, etc.

While the initial nForce doesn't perform as much better as rumors claimed, it definitely performs at or near the top of the heap. KT266A outperforms it in some areas and vice versa.

Mark-



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

 

[SammyBoy]

Well, so far so good for NVIDIA. I'd have to say that it was a pretty damn good first try for them. Considering they were only beat by the KT266A, the second incarnation from a company with a long history of chipsets, I'd have to say that once NVIDIA gets some experience under their belt, they might be a force to be reckoned with. I'm a bit dissapointed by the integrated video results, but I s'pose that you really can't expect much, even from the video card giant. Maybe the next version of it, the GeForce3 MX will be a little more worthwhile, but most of us would rather get a stand alone AGP card. I wish they would have done a review with the KyroII included, so I had an idea as to whether my AGP card will function properly on an nForce (she's a bit tempermental to 'board settings it seems), but it was nice to see that the latest Radeon was working properly. At least we won't have to worry about everything but the CPU in our box being NVIDIA (considering it has Ethernet and a wonderful audio processor already). Speaking of sound, without seeing CPU usage results from the Audigy, or whatever Creative is calling it, I'd have to say that the onboard sound is real nice, and very CPU independent. Should allow a couple more frames to be squeezed out of a game. Now, I wonder about the overclocking and the stability under intense stress. But, that might be a kink for the manufactures to work out.

All in all, not too bad. I can only wonder what a final version released by the likes of Asus, ABit, Gigabyte, and MSI would run like. Won't have to worry about VIA trying to cow them, since NVIDIA is a massive company, probably able to subvert any attempts by VIA. I mean, look how they handled 3Dfx and ATI. Ah, I love cutthroat business practices.

-SammyBoy

 

[phsstpok]

Aaargh! Links! LINKS! <b>LINKS!</b>

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=1535&p=2" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=1535&p=2</A>

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

 

[phsstpok]

I agree with everything you said.

I guess the integrated graphics performs about as well as the numbers would have estimated. As the author mentioned, although the 420's video theoretically has a bandwidth up to 4.2 GB/sec, the practical estimate was 2.1 GB/sec. Compared to the 2.7 GB/sec bandwidth (also theoretical) of the regular Geforce 2 MX and the 3.3 GB/sec bandwidth of the faster MX-400's (not mentioned by author), the 420's integrated video does perform in line.

I'm pleased to see that the 420 compares very favorable with the KT266A chipset when an AGP card is used. This is great for a first effort (also as mentioned by the author).

I would like to have seen disk drive benchmarks.

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 02:20 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[rcf84]

I want to ATi and Intel Mobile chipset for the P4. Rumor to have the Radeon 7500 for onboard video.

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

 

[zengeos]

It should be interesting to see nForce 2...on an AMD system up against the new ATI equivalent.

nVidia has a couple advantages.

They will be a generation ahead of ATI and will have worked out the bugs
They have a better driver trackrecord.

Mark-

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

 

[SerArthurDayne]

I think if we hadn't seen the preview benchmarks for the kt266a, we would have all been blown away by the Nforce's numbers. The kt266a is amazing in my opinion, and that the Nforce provides basically the exact same performance is nothing to be scoffed at, especially if you're on a budget.

Sure, most of us in the performance crowd don't care about a lot of the integrated features, but there are many, many, many people who buy an integrated system for the savings, no matter how bad the audio or video may be. Perhaps Anandtech should have reviewed Nforce's integrated video/audio against other integrated motherboards? Or I suppose it's just taken for granted that the Nforce blows away every other integrated chipset in the market...

I'm not due for an upgrade for another 6 months at least, but if I were upgrading now, I would be seriously torn between the Nforce and the kt266a. For those people who refuse to use VIA, they now have a viable alternate for top of the line performance. I think I heard that future revisions of the Nforce would allow users to use both the integrated video as well as an agp card for multiple outputs. Can't wait to see what the second and third generation Nforce's are like

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

 

[upec]

I was very disappointed at nForce. I thought Dual channel DDR will performance a lot better then VIA's KT266a. The 420-D only perform about the same as KT266A.
If I am upgrading now I will go with KT266a since the 420-D version of the board will be more expensive.

 

[Crashman]

But it comes with awsome sound that makes Creative sound like the perveyors of garbage they are! The integrated sound ought to be worth at least $30-$50 compared to the lowest prices of quality soundcards. In fact if it beets the Accoustic Edge for performance it will be worth half the price of the board!

Back to you Tom...

 

[upec]

It worth $30-$50 if you do not already have a sound card. I get an Audigy already. I will not spend another $30-$50 for the Integrated sound.

 

[upec]

I really does not like integrated staff. Every time I upgrade my motherboard I always reuse most of the card on my old computer.

 

[SerArthurDayne]

I'm sorry Upec, but the non-ignorant of us already knew that the Athlon's can't use that much memory bandwidth

If you have totally unrealistic expectations, do not be surprised when you are disappointed by reality.

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

 

[SerArthurDayne]

And oh yeah..... where the heck did you manage to find confirmed price quotes for boards using both kt266a and the nforce in order to make your claim that the nforce will be more expensive?

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

 

[upec]

SerArthurDayne if you are non-ignorant how can you have such a low expectation? The review shows that nForce only perform about the same as KT266A.

I knew that the Athlon's can't use that much memory bandwidth but I still expect the chipset will be at least faster than KT266a. Base on what I know I do not think that is a high expectation nForce uses dual channel memery. It also have a Dynamic Adaptive Speculative Pre-processor (DASP). nVidia claimed DASP will improve the profermance by about 15%.

I am suprise that you are not disappointed.

 

[upec]

I read from www.theregister.co.uk about the pricing on nForce chipset a few weeks ago. Pricing on VIA KT266A chipset is avalible in many place including VIA's homepage. I actually read the price on a review comparing KT266A to SIS 735.
I was think about upgrading to a nForce based board so I read a lot news about nForce.

 

[mr_gobbledegook]

Nforce is the same as VIA KT266A.

The only bad point about it is the speed of the integrated graphics card, it is too slow !

Other than that is a great chipset and will get better and better as new drivers are released and design refined.

As for the memory performance...what do you expect with a FSB of 266Mhz for the CPU ?!?!! AMD have to increase it to 333Mhz to get any benifit out of the Nforce architecture.

For now Nforce motherboards will be a great buy for budget PCs for people who wish to use the integrated graphics card and superior sound system.

Pity about the DASP, I'm sure Nivida realise more work needs to be put into it especially with the palomino versions of the Athlon. I hope AMD and Nividia get together to resolve this problem.

Nivida has definetely got VIA, Intel etc a little paranoid.

P.S I have heard rumours that an Nforce chipset is being developed for the P4 (Is this true?). If that is the case P4 will be unstoppable.

<font color=purple> **I eat confusion and spit it out slow**</font color=purple><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by mr_gobbledegook on 09/25/01 08:38 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[stable]

I dunno, this should be a serious contender.

Two thoughts:

1) Interrupts... hmmmmmm
2) Think of all those people that are still looking at integrated I815E and I845 solutions.... Joe office doesn't need a GF3 GPU so that should be considered too. Do you think the folks at Intel (with the discontinuation of the P3) and the advent of the 478 socket are pondering more lost marketshare?

Steve Benoit


Stable Technologies
'The way IT should be!'

 

[SerArthurDayne]

How could I have such a low expectation? What?! No, see.. you're missing the entire point. I already pointed out that you had totally unrealistic expectations, whereas my expections were plenty high already. The nforce performed only *slightly* under my personal expectations, and for you to say that it "only" performed as well as the kt266a totally disregards the fact that the kt266a is unbelievably fast compared to the other available high performance chipsets.

I don't know where you got the misconception that the kt266a is only an average performer, but you need to realize that it is an incredible chipset. When I saw the numbers, I immediately raised my own expectations of the Nforce naturally... I assumed the DASP would help it edge out the kt266a, but maybe it IS aiding performance while something else is holding it down. It's too early to assume that the DASP is not performing it's job correctly, as there could be other issues that are preventing optimal performance. As to that 15% number, the actual number was touted as between 5-15% depending on the applications, and the Nforce shows quite a bit more improvement than that over most other chipsets. There are only two contenders for the top performance spot right now, and that's VIA and Nvidia.

You saw the incredible effect of VIA's revision on the kt266, and I think Nvidia can perform similar feats with future revisions of the Nforce. The dual channel memory is not going to aid anything except the integrated video until the athlon processor itself can take advantage of more memory bandwidth, and you should have already been aware of that.

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