FIRST LOOK - nForce4: Gigabyte K8NXP-9
by Wesley Fink on November 12, 2004 8:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Performance Tests (Continued)
DirectX 8 & OpenGL Gaming
The pattern continues on DX8 and Open GL, with the K8NXP-9 topping the charts in every game benchmark. This is what we would expect in shipping boards compared to the Reference boards on which they are based. More often than not, however, the Reference Board retains the performance lead. Gigabyte did a very good job of tweaking the performance of this nForce4 board.
General Performance
Intel normally tops the PCMark 2004 benchmarks, as they do in Sysmark, which is also produced by Future Mark. This is one of the few remaining benchmarks where Intel is the usual winner. This is likely the result of code optimizations for Intel features, and even this advantage may change when the Rev. E Athlon 64 chips appear with SSE3 code. The Gigabyte is still a bit better in performance than the nForce4 Reference board.
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USAF1 - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
Nice job on the review, Wesley! It answered most of my performance-related NF4 questions. One thing it did leave me wondering though is the performance difference (throughput, CPU utilization, etc.) between the NF4 GbE controller and the Marvell controller on the PCIe bus. VIA has recently stated that they won't be offering an onboard GbE controller with the K8T890 because external GbE boards offer better performance. It would seem to me that this board would be an excellent platform to test that theory. Anyway, a fine job on the "first look" review.phaxmohdem - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
lol #11 I posted before I wanted to kick that kid on the nuts, Looks like Gigabyte got to him first :) Oh Fatal1ty, I'd recommend an ice pack for that... And your little p4 rig.Superbike - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
How about some Excel and Word benchmarks my money ison the P4EE.
blahpbla - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
What about nTune. Is it suported? Would be nice to see it in action.ImJacksAmygdala - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
I can't wait to see what people can do with this board and a +3200 once the new bios comes out...FinalFantasy - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
Wow...it looks like Intel is getting owned on both fronts. Regular AMD64 chips are killing P4 EE's and now we have ATI's RX480/RS480 and nVidia's NF4 mobo's killing Abit's just released Fatal1ty mobo that's based off of Intel's chipset.......hmm...not too good for Intel at all.Wesley Fink - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
#22 - As listed on p.2 of the review under "Expansion Slots" the Gigabyte has 1 x16 PCIe, 2 x1 PCIe, and 3 PCI slots. All current PCI Express boards we have seen offer some PCI slots.LX - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
As a person concerned about both backward and forward compatibility, I'd like to know if there are boards that offer both PCI and PCIe slots and how many.DrMrLordX - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
arswihart, I second that. I'd like to see s939 nf3-250gb vs s939 nf4 using the FX-55.Wesley Fink - Saturday, November 13, 2004 - link
#9 & #10 - Corrected.