nForce4 Ultra Roundup: Charting the Mainstream
by Wesley Fink on July 5, 2005 10:28 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Abit Fatal1ty AN8: Overclocking and Stress Testing
FSB Overclocking Results
| Front Side Bus Overclocking Testbed | |
| Abit Fatal1ty AN8 | |
| Processor: | Athlon 64 4000+ (2.4GHz, 1MB Cache) |
| CPU Voltage: | 1.5375V (default 1.50V) |
| Cooling: | Thermaltake Silent Boost K8 Heatsink/Fan |
| Power Supply: | OCZ Power Stream 520W |
| Memory: | OCZ PC3200 EL Platinum Rev. 2 (Samsung TCCD Memory Chips) |
| Hard Drive: | Seagate 120GB 7200RPM SATA 8MB Cache |
| Maximum OC: (Standard Ratio) |
234x12 (Auto HT, 2-3-3-7, 1T, 2.8V) 2808MHz (+17%) |
| Maximum FSB: (Lower Ratio) |
250x11 (2750MHz) (4X HT, 2.5-3-3-7, 2.7V) (1:1 Memory, 1T, 2 DIMMs in DC mode) (+25% Bus Overclock) |
Abit almost invented the concept of the overclocker's motherboard, so we have to wonder what went wrong in the design of the AN8. The board is OK at stock speed overclocking at 234, but several other boards in this roundup do better with the same CPU. The real disappointment, however, is 1:1 overclocking with a reduced CPU multiplier. No matter what we did, we could not coax the Fatal1ty AN8 above a 250 CPU clock setting. The DFI and Epox both handle 300 or better just fine, but the Abit has something holding it back.
Perhaps this can be corrected with a BIOS upgrade, since we also played a bit with asynchronous overclocking on the Abit with the new 433, 466, 500 ratios with Rev. E. The Abit reached around 280 in some of those setups, but 1:1 was much poorer. Until Abit is able to fix this issue with 1:1 overclocking, it should be clear that there are better choices for an nForce4 board if overclocking is your goal.
Memory Stress Test Results:
Memory stress tests look at the ability of the Abit An8 Fatal1ty to operate at the officially supported memory frequency, at the best performing memory timings that our standard OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2 will support. Memory stress testing was conducted by running 1:1 at DDR400 with 2 DIMM slots operating in Dual-Channel mode.| Stable DDR400 Timings - One Dual-Channel (2/4 DIMMs populated) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 2T |
| RAS Precharge: | 7T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | 1T |
The Abit was completely stable with 2 DDR modules in Dual-Channel at the settings of 2-2-2-7 at default voltage. All of the nF4 motherboards in this roundup were able to reach these fast timings with OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev.2 memory.
Filling all four available memory slots is more strenuous on the memory subsystem than testing 2 DDR modules on a motherboard
| Stable DDR400 Timings - 4 DIMMs (4/4 DIMMs populated) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 2T |
| RAS Precharge: | 7T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | 2T |
The Abit AN8 Fatal1ty was completely stable at 2-2-2-7 memory timings, but the Command Rate did need to be lowered to 2T. This is a function of the on-chip Athlon 64 memory controller. We also found that the new Rev. E chips with an updated memory controller required 2T for 4 DS DIMMs.
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vijay333 - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link
oh...final system will have 4-5 HDs, standard DVD reader/writer along with (most likely) a 6800Ultra or a X800XL...Xenoterranos - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link
Anandtech did toy with a listening test a while back (I really don't remember much about it, other than the fact that they should have used Klipsch proMedia Ultra 5.1 speakers...)vijay333 - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link
Maybe I missed this info in the article somehow, but could you provide the minimum/recommended PSU wattages for the motherboards? esp the DFI and the Epox. I have a Antec 400W Smartpower PSU right now, but read a few posts on newegg that this might not be enough? Hope I don't need to upgrade this too along with the mobo, cpu and gpu...vijay333 - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link
knitecrow - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link
I have a comment about audio -- a topic that most sites ignore.Shouldn't there be a blind listening test?
i mean cpu utilization is fairly useless. If i am listening to mp3s i care more about the quality than cpu utilization.
flatblastard - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link
I stopped reading on page 4 upon discovering the round-up. No explanation needed...Wesley Fink - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link
g33k -The DFI was more a control to demonstrate SLI and Ultra performance were the same other than SLI video. Drivers have updated and we retested everything on the DFI as a sanity check. We ran benchmarks and not a full review, but it was hard to ignore the excellent performance.
There is also a comment in our Final Words that the MSI Ultra board should also be considered a winner, since the SLI version was a Gold Editors Choice in the SLI roundup, and the Ultra should perform the same.
g33k - Tuesday, July 5, 2005 - link
Along the same logic though, I'm curious as to why you chose to review the DFI Ultra-D when you reviewed the SLI version of this board earlier as well?.g33k - Tuesday, July 5, 2005 - link
Jeez, read Wesley's comments, he just answered why he did not review, the MSI board. It was already reviewed in the SLI roundup.Wesley Fink - Tuesday, July 5, 2005 - link
"As you can see, none of the onboard audio solutions were quite as low in CPU utilization as the Creative SoundBlaster Live! Chip, which is used on the MSI K8N Neo4 SLI Platinum tested in the nForce4 SLI roundup."Since this is still nF4 we included components tested on all nForce4 boards. The Ultra version of the MSI, BTW, uses the Realtek ALC850 chipset and not the Sound Blaster Live!. The SB Live! is only used on the MSI SLI.