Socket 754 Roundup, Part 3: Asus, Soltek & DFI
by Wesley Fink on September 14, 2004 12:03 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Standard Performance Test Configuration
If you are interested in more information comparing the Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX, LGA 775 Prescott, P4, and P4EE, please see our in-depth comparisons in these recent reviews:Intel's 925X & LGA-775: Are Prescott 3.6 and PCI Express Graphics any Faster?
Intel 925X/915: Chipset Performance & DDR2
Socket 939 Chipsets: Motherboard Performance & PCI/AGP Locks
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ and FX-53: The First 939 CPUs
The Athlon 64 FX-53: AMD's Next Enthusiast Part
Intel's Pentium 4 E: Prescott Arrives with Luggage
Athlon64 3400+: Part 2
AMD's Athlon 64 3400+: Death of the FX-51
Athlon64 3000+: 64-bit at Half the Price
| Performance Test Configuration | |
| Processor(s): | AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz) |
| RAM: | 2 x 512MB OCZ PC3200 EL Platinum Rev.2 2 x 512MB Geil PC3200 Ultra X 2 x 512MB Mushkin PC3500 Level II or 2 x 512MB OCZ PC3500 Platinum Ltd |
| Hard Drive(s): | Maxtor 250GB 7200RPM IDE (16MB Buffer) |
| Video AGP & IDE Bus Master Drivers: | NVIDIA nForce Platform Driver 4.24 (5-10-2004) VIA 4in1 Hyperion 4.51 (12-02-2003) |
| Video Card(s): | ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB (AGP 8X) |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 4.8 |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Professional SP1 |
| Motherboards: | Asus K8N-E Soltek K8AN2E-GR DFI LANParty UL nF3 250Gb Abit KV8 PRO (VIA K8T800 PRO) Chaintech VNF3-250 (nVidia nForce3-250) Epox 8KDA3+ (nVidia nForce3-250Gb) Gigabyte K8NSNXP nVidia nForce3-250) MSI K8N Neo (nVidia nForce3-250Gb) nVidia nForc3-250Gb Reference Board |
Current testing of Socket 754 Athlon 64 motherboards used OCZ PC3200 EL Platinum Rev. 2 or Geil PC3200 Ultra X, which are based on Samsung TCCD memory chips. Earlier tests of Socket 754 boards used either Mushkin PC3500 Level II or OCZ PC3500 Platinum Ltd memory modules. Both these memories use Winbond BH5 chips, which have been discontinued. All benchmarks used 2-2-2-10 memory timings regardless of memory used.
Performance tests were run with the ATI 9800 PRO 128MB video card with AGP Aperture set to 128MB with Fast Writes enabled. Resolution in all benchmarks is 1024x768x32 unless otherwise noted.
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Term - Monday, September 27, 2004 - link
Uhm.. the new ASUS bios fix the OC stability problem with SATA right?Wesley Fink - Saturday, September 18, 2004 - link
#34 - The Asus K8N-E manual does state 3MB of memory as the maximum capacity. The specifications have been corrected in the review.LocutusX - Thursday, September 16, 2004 - link
Daxzus,For more accurate "real-world advice" concerning the K8N-E, please see the unofficial thread for that mobo at the Anandtech forums. There are people there who have been using it extensively for the last 2 months, who have tried a wide variety of components/overclocking on it.
justly - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link
#27 – WesleyThank you for the explanation about your testing methodology, now I feel more comfortable knowing that you do check for these minor deviations when comparing new products against older ones.
#28 – Wesley (again)
I agree about it being a shame that SiS seems to always get dumped on by big name motherboard manufactures and that even when a good product hits the street it seems to get forgotten about or overlooked. The thing is I still think you are just as guilty as many others reviewers. If you don’t understand what I mean then just look at #32 (by PrinceGaz) since I would have said the EXACT same thing.
This might be a little arrogant of me, but would it really hurt to mention their product when talking about a section of the market that they perform so well in (non-overclockers).
Daxzus - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link
also...I was wondering if anyone has a good powersupply and case that might work good for me for a good price.Daxzus - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link
I read every thing that was in the review about the 3 diffrent motherboards and I have some questions.In the review it was said that the Asus K8N-E deluxe maxed out at 2GB of memory, but at newegg and some all the other places I can buy it from-and even Asus homepage, say that the Asus K8N-E deluxe has a max of 3GB of memory. What this in error in the reveiw or am I looking at buying the wrong board?
Also I was thinking about buying the Asus K8N-E deluxe and I have a college budget and I was wanting to get some recomendation as to some really good cheap memory to get for it. Also maybe some good budget video cards. I saw that in the review that ATI 9800 was used...wouldn't a Nvidia video card work better considering the chip set?
but all in all thank for the info that you put into the reviews Fink!
Dax
AtaStrumf - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link
I just hope that your upcoming OC article will at least mention sempron 3100+, since you (AT)did promise to OC it, but untill now you have not done so.PrinceGaz - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link
#28 Wesley Fink-From the aricle- "If overclocking is not particularly important to you, then one of the first generation boards based on the VIA chipset might also meet your needs at a lower price."
And your reply- "There is actually another complaint about Sis. None of the Sis A64 cipsets I have tested, including the 939 Reference Board, have a working PCI/AGP lock."
If overclocking is not particularly important to someone, the lack of a PCI/AGP lock wouldn't matter.
jwix - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link
The article mentions overclocking difficulties with SATA drives with the DFI board being the exception. I wonder....if running 2 drives in a raid 1 config, would it make it any more difficult to overclock on the DFI?LocutusX - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link
"The problem is ports 1 and 2 on nVidia are coupled with the PHY Gigabit LAN and generally will not overclock very well."Source?