nForce4 Ultra Roundup: Charting the Mainstream
by Wesley Fink on July 5, 2005 10:28 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
The Roundup
The seven motherboards in this roundup represent a broad range of available motherboards based on the nForce4 Ultra chipset. Also, keep in mind that the four SLI motherboards tested in nForce4 SLI Roundup: Painful and Rewarding are also available in cheaper nForce4 Ultra versions. Since the DFI nForce4 SLI was the co-winner of the SLI Gold Editors Choice and is readily available in an nForce4 Ultra version using the same layout and BIOS, we ran the same benchmarks on this board and included results for the nF4 Ultra board in this roundup. You can also find a launch review of the DFI Ultra and SLI chipsets at DFI nForce4: SLI and Ultra for Mad Overclockers.The four boards in the SLI roundup should perform the same as the Ultra versions of the same board running a single video card. The SLI and Ultra chipsets are the same chipset with different features enabled. You can see this clearly in the fact that early DFI nF4 Ultra boards could be easily modified to SLI by closing a component pair as we showed in Morphing nForce4 Ultra into nForce4 SLI. This means that you can compare single video results from our nForce4 SLI roundup if you are considering purchasing an nF4 Ultra version of the Asus, Gigabyte or MSI.
The boards in the roundup cover a very wide range of selling prices, from the clustering of the Chaintech/Foxconn/ECS/Epox/Biostar in the $92 to $112 range, the DFI at about $135 to the high-end Abit Fatality at $185. Included in the roundup are the Chaintech VNF4 Ultra, Winfast (Foxconn) NF4UK8AA, ECS KN1 Extreme, Epox 9NPA+, Biostar NF4UL-A9, and Abit Fatal1ty AN8. Test results are also included for the DFI LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D, which was reviewed in DFI nForce4: SLI and Ultra for Mad Overclockers.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
75 Comments
View All Comments
tribbleva - Tuesday, December 20, 2005 - link
Every single one of these MBs has a fan on the NB... where are the passively cooled mobos? The last thing I want is one or TWO more tiny fans just on the mobo to worry about failing...Zebo - Friday, July 22, 2005 - link
"someof you take Anandtech's word as the word of GOD"It's as close as you can get without dying.:)
Zebo - Friday, July 22, 2005 - link
Viper - You should come inside the forums for specfic help..dg3274 - Saturday, July 16, 2005 - link
The article states that the Abit board has a problem with 1:1 overclocking. I disagree. I think the problem is that it does not provide enough ram voltage to run the RAM at high 1:1 FSB. 2.8 volts is not enough to run ANY ram much higher than 280 or so FSB.Viper4185 - Thursday, July 14, 2005 - link
No one wants to help me with my n00b questions :(Marcel - Tuesday, July 12, 2005 - link
#67 I must be a little a slow …In the test “Maximun CPU Clock ( Lower Multiplier )”
For Chaintec, Abit, etc you use the multiplier in “11”, and only for Epox and DFI you use the multiplier in “9”, then you show a diagram with nothing more than the fsb.
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/nf4%20ultra%20r...
The first question is WHY ?? there is no explanation for use different multiplier in the review. Not some guys, but ALL ones have better result in chaintec and abit with a lower multiplier.
TheGlassman - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
Thanks Wesley, I did find you had checked HTT, and as I stated in my last post I don't understand what the problem was. But the deeper I looked into the review, the better job you seemed to have done, so sorry if I impied you didn't try very hard.DFI has a dual core (beta) bios available, dated 6-23-05
Epox has a dual core (release) bios available, dated 6-29-05
These were not used in testing.
Wesley Fink - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
#59 and #60 - One of the first articles I did a couple of years ago about Athlon 64 was how to overclock by manipulating HTT frequencies. I ALWAYS test manual HTT dividers I know should work for certain 1:1 memory clocks as well as Auto HTT if it is an available option.#58 - I was very CLEAR in the review that I tested with the BIOS that would allow the X2 A64 to work. We did check each board with an X2. That is the ONLY reason we tested and used very recent Beta BIOS'. Also there are 2 other very recent Chaintech reviews at other websites who had test results almost equal to what I found on the Chaintech, so there are at least 2 other Chaintechs loose with less than stirring overclocking. In the end, as I stated in the review, the Chaintech is a decent board, but at about the same price as the Epox, with poorer overclocking results, it was hard to give it an Editor's Choice this time around. The results found in this roundup should remove anyone's concern that we get cherry boards from manufacturers. I am a good overclocker, and very experienced in air overclocking and memory overclocking. What I got from these boards on air is all they could do with the TCCD memory that is all but standard test memory for motherboards these days. The capabilities of the memory we used is also well known and I tweaked for TCCD if settings were available if the board was not doing well at stock memory settings and our normal test timings.
I am really pleased some of you experienced better performance than I did with the Chaintech and Abit boards, but I can only report what I actually found in my tests. I don't think you come to AnandTech for a survey of what other websites or Forums found, because I find overclockers are notorious at exagerrating what they can reach with overclocks. We try to provide a consisten test environment for overclocking that will give repeatable overclocking results. Results, of course, always vary board to board, but having said that, OC results are usually pretty consistent on better boards from sample to sample.
lefenzy - Saturday, July 9, 2005 - link
Sorry, wrong link. that one was for the SLI version.http://www.foxconnchannel.com/productsDownload_mot...
lefenzy - Saturday, July 9, 2005 - link
Foxconn has a BIOS release that allow for multiplier adjustment.http://www.foxconnchannel.com/productsDownload_mot...