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.
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lsman - Tuesday, July 5, 2005 - link
yet, "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 Platinum."so creative on board is a reference? because you do not test the MSI K8N Neo4 platium.
Wesley Fink - Tuesday, July 5, 2005 - link
#2 -As we said several times in the roundup, we reviewed the MSI and Asus in the SLI roundup. The SLI and Ultra chipsets are exactly the same chipset with SLI enabled on the SLI chipset. We did not see what new information we could bring you by reviewing the Ultra versions fo the same boards. As you can see in the benchmarks in this roundup the DFI perfoms in Ultra exactly as it did in SLI.
The MSI was an Editor's Choice in the SLI roundup and is a similar good choice as an Ultra board. There have been some issues with the Venice and San Diego overclocking and MSI has finally released a new BIOS to address these problems.
The Asus was not a particularly good overclocker in the SLI roundup, and not an Editors Choice, but it was a decent performer at stock speeds.
Djinni - Tuesday, July 5, 2005 - link
Very good work, but I too would of liked to see the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum in there since thats what I just bought yesterday :PMaxisOne - Tuesday, July 5, 2005 - link
Nice .. but partially useless considering the Asus A8N-E and MSI offerings are missing from the lineup which is what im looking to compare to the DFI Ultra DChrisSwede - Tuesday, July 5, 2005 - link