Digital-Daily : Motherboard Reviews : nforce4-asus

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nForce4 family chipsets in ASUS motherboards

Author: Date: 17.10.2005

Running through the price lists, you get the impression that soon motherboards for Socket 939 built on chipsets other than those of the nForce4 family will be extinct. While the first implementations of this chipset family in motherboards looked a bit too expensive, today they are making their way to the market of lowest-end PCs. An example of that could be ASUS A8NE-FM/S, ECS nFORCE4-A754 and others priced below 75$. In view of the wide availability of inexpensive boards to any taste, the buyer increasingly has to choose among varied implementations of this popular chipset. Managers and sales assistants often advise the buyer to take "Ultra" as being allegedly faster. Is that really true? That is why decided to verify in practice - moreover, to prove some theoretical findings.

Let's recall the specific features of the chipsets being reviewed (according to the manufacturer's data).

All the three chipsets are being positioned as the basis for building high-performance systems for advanced gamers, overclockers and power users. Among the not yet listed, only nForce4 falls within the sector of mass PCs.

So, which distinguishing features of the chipsets may affect the performance? Since the memory controller is embedded in the processor, this subsystem should not depend on the chipset - it can only be affected by the BIOS flaws - both in the development and setup. In other words, if during the system start-up the BIOS launched the memory modules correctly and did not introduced any additional delays into their operation, it does not matter which chipset a motherboard is built on - the memory operation speed will be the same.

The performance can be somewhat affected by the bandwidth of the HyperTransport bus which is in charge of communication between the processor and the system, but in almost all of the modifications the controller of this bus runs at 5x speed, i.e. 1 GHz. It should be noted that there are motherboards built on the nForce4-4x chipset not included into the table which stands out with the HyperTransport controller slowed down to 800MHz. That should not be of special concern since such motherboards are aimed at the lowest-end solutions where performance is normally not an issue. At the same time, the 6.4 GB/s bandwidth is normally more than enough. That is in fact the theoretical bandwidth of two DDR-400 (PC3200) modules in the dual-channel mode which in practice is unattainable, that is, with active data swapping from the system to the memory or vice versa the 6.4 GB/s should be quite enough. We should keep it mind that nForce4-4x is more often used in motherboards for Socket 754 where the memory controller is single-channel, thus its requirements are twice as low. It turns out that even with the slowed down HyperTransport the processor should not run slower. There is no special performance difference seen among different modifications of nForce4. Anyway, each has its pluses which are able to affect the system performance.

Indeed, compared to the regular nForce4, the positive aspects of nForce4 Ultra are support for SATA-300 hard disks and hardware ActiveArmor firewall. Unfortunately, most users will not be able to enjoy the the effectiveness of these features to the full. First, hard disks with the interface like that have not yet proved popular, and it still doesn't give a noticeable speed boost in running disk operations. Secondly, the hardware firewall will unload the processor (so that the user could see that) only if resource-hungry applications are run on top of high network activities, but that is not a frequent occurrence.

nForce4 SLI Ultra primarily stands out with its support for two video cards to increase performance in games. That's an irrefutable plus! It's a pity that for most users it will still remain potential and will always be like that. We'd rather not go deep into the details finding out WHY, because that is a separate discussion.

That's about all the differences of the chipsets which may affect the system performance. Not very much, is it? In other words, most systems based on varied modifications of nForce4 should offer similar performance.

Now we are moving on from theory to practice. Let's look at the live chipsets on the example of inexpensive motherboards by ASUS. To compare performance and estimate the overclocking capability, as well as the serviceability of motherboards, we used two processors - Athlon64 3200+ (Venice) and Athlon64 3800+ (NewCastle). Since more interesting results were shown by the former, we are bringing in just them, because this processor is more common in entry-level systems (we are taking the level of boards being tested into account).

To minimize the effect of the memory upon the overclocking results, we took Corsair CMX512-3200XLPRO 2-2-2-5 memory modules of 512 MB capacity each. The remaining components of the test-bench: cooling system - GlacialTech Igloo 7200 Pro, video card - Gigabyte GV-66T128D based on GeForce 6600GT, hard disk - Samsung SP0812C, PSU - Chieftec HPC-420-102DF 420W.

nForce4 in ASUS A8N5X

Specifications:

The board is shipped in a package standard for all the AI Proactive series.

The package bundle is not rich, even for a value motherboard.

Additionally to the large user manual and the drivers CD, there is a thin leaflet containing a brief system assembly guide in the Russian language. To acquire the remaining data, it's better to know English.

The board's layout is excellent - engineers at Gigabyte have made a good job. There is almost nothing to complain about the components layout. Of interest is the sticker with the name and revision of the product. The thing is that the board is built on the PCB of a different series, used is the base taken from A8N-E, only the chipset has been replaced (you can try finding the differences in a bit below).

The chipset itself is covered with a decorative radiator to save against overheating and is blown by a mid-noise fan (rotational speed 4500-5000 RPM). During operation, the radiator heats up immensely, especially in an overclocked system, but that doesn't prevent the system from stable operation - the system copes well with the job. Anyway, a high full-featured radiator and a fan of lower rotational speed here would be right in place.

The three-phase scheme of the power control module is covered with a radiator that effectively spreads heat that comes from all the heated components. The power supply connectors are placed conveniently on the board: a 4-pin connector on the upper corner near the VRM, and a 24-pin connector in the upper right-hand corner.

The memory slots are of different colors, which facilitates switching the modules to a dual-channel configuration. There is a minor shortcoming in their positioning close proximity to the video card's connector. Access to the IDE connectors won't be an issue - the primary and secondary controllers are marked in different colors.

A bit below, there are SATA connectors. As you can see, an additional RAID controller is missing and perhaps will never be unsoldered - that is a value-level solution.

The expansion capabilities have already been listed in the table, and this is an illustration of plausibility of data presented over there.

Unfortunately, there are many empty spots on the board. We already told about the lack of RAID solutions as having little use in value PCs. Also forgivable is the missing controller for voice notifications and the second network adapter, but we say it's a pity there isn't a IEEE 1394 controller. In fact, its addition wouldn't have been much of extra cost but would make it more competitive.

The rear panel of the input/output ports looks as having middling functionality. Annoying is the lack of a COM port since its place is taken by a non-implemented FireWire.

The BIOS is based on the Award Phoenix code, and doesn't stand out with any special features from other ASUS boards. Here we could note the proprietary ASUS Multilanguage BIOS, but there is no Russian in the list of languages - German or French languages are of little help at understanding the settings.

The "Advanced" menu may be interesting to most users owing to the three items: CPU Configuration (setting up memory and HyperTransport bus), JumperFree Configuration (fine tuning of the frequencies and voltages of memory, processor, and PCI-Express), and Onboard Device Configuration (setting up integrated peripherals/hardware).

There is an abundant choice of memory settings. On the photo below, you see the pre-overclocking settings. The memory operating frequency has been intentionally reduced to 333 MHz in order to make the most of the processor's operating frequency.

In the JumperFree Configuration section, there are all the features required for overclocking. Along with the features aimed at beginner users of AI NOS and overclocking through Overclock Options to attain a boost as high as 10%, you can also do the following:

• Adjust the reference frequency of the clock oscillator for CPU (and other subsystems, respectively) from 200 to 400 MHz in 1 MHz increments;
• Adjust the PCI Express frequency from 100 to 145 MHz in 1 MHz increments;
• Adjust the supply voltage of memory modules within 2.60-3.00 V in 0.05V increments;
• Adjust the processor multiplier from 4x to that maximum for the model installed;
• Adjust the CPU supply voltage within 0.800-1.550V in 0.025V increments.

Monitored are also CPU voltages as well as 12.3V and 3.3V lines, temperatures of the processor and the board itself and rotational speeds of the fans cooling the processor, chipset and the first housing.

Overclocking

Among the important pluses of the board are its price and high overclocking capability.

Among the cons is the lack of IEEE 1394 controllers and under-bundling.

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	Content:
	nForce4 in ASUS A8N5X nForce4 Ultra in ASUS A8N-E nForce4 SLI in ASUS A8N-SLI Benchmarking results, conclusions Top Stories: MoBo: ECS X58B-A (Intel X58) ASUS Rampage II Extreme (Intel X58) MSI DKA790GX and ECS A780GM-A Ultra MSI P7NGM (NVIDIA GeForce 9300) Intel X58 and ASUS P6T Deluxe MSI P45 Neo2 (Intel P45) Foxconn A7GMX-K (AMD 780G) VGA Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 – a new leader in 3D graphics! ECS HYDRA GeForce 9800GTX+. Water-cooled and SLI "all-in-one" Radeon HD 4830 CrossFire - better than Radeon HD 4870! XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition in the SLI mode Leadtek WinFast PX9500 GT DDR2 – better than GeForce 9500GT DDR-3 Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic: exclusive, with unusual features Palit HD 4850 Sonic: almost Radeon HD 4870, priced as HD 4850 CPU & Memory: GSkill high-capacity memory modules CPU Intel Core i7-920 (Bloomfield) DDR3 memory: late 2008 CPU AMD Phenom X3 8750 (Toliman) AMD Phenom X4 9850 – a top-end CPU at affordable price CPU Intel Atom 230 (Diamondville) Chaintech Apogee GT DDR3 1600