nForce3-250 - Part 2: Taking Athlon 64 to the Next Level
by Wesley Fink on March 29, 2004 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
nVidia prides themselves as the graphics card manufacturer and chipset maker that caters to gamers and computer enthusiasts. It must have been a bitter pill to swallow to see ATI making moves to the forefront in the graphics card business, and to see nVidia's hard-won market share in the AMD chipset business get lost in Athlon 64 to VIA. nVidia would tell us that nForce3-150 was interim, and that now the market gets more serious. Regardless of the words, it does look like nVidia has really concentrated on making the nF3-250 family all that the nF3-150 was not.The feature set of the nForce3-250Gb is excellent and well-balanced. We finally see a working PCI/AGP lock on an Athlon 64 board, which is good news for overclockers. The on-chip Gigabit LAN and Firewall are also welcome features that will make today's LAN gamers very happy once they have taken a test drive. The easy set-up of the Firewall for an avid LAN gamer will have them smiling in no time. No, there isn't Sound Storm or premium audio, but we think it's a fair tradeoff for nVidia, since they remain the only chipset vendor with a single-chip solution for Athlon 64.
nVidia also has demonstrated conclusively that their rumored problems with 1000 HyperTransport for socket 939 are a thing of the past. We were particularly excited to see that the nForce3-250Gb Ultra could also be used on Socket 754 boards, since it means that we may see a couple of nF3-250 overclocking dynamos in the near future. Dropping HT from 1000 to 800, dropping a multiplier, fixing the AGP lock, and cranking the bus means an easy route to the Athlon 64 overclocks that have seemed so elusive up to this point for the average overclocker.
The "any drive" SATA/IDE RAID is slick as we've seen and answers many enthusiast's worst nightmares. Finally, performance from an nVidia IDE solution is also up to the best available. However, this certainly does not mean that nForce3-250Gb is perfect, because it isn't. The downside is that CPU overhead is still higher than we would like. Perhaps with driver updates, we will see this area continue to improve. It would be a mistake, though, to place too much on the CPU overhead and overlook the wonderfully flexible setup, 8-drive RAID potential, and hot-spare mirroring that nVidia introduces with the full-blown versions of nForce3-250 family.
Performance testing showed nForce3-250 to perform about the same as the best Socket 754 boards that we have tested - no better and no worse with everything the same. This is pretty much what we have come to expect with the maturing Athlon 64 chipsets and the on-chip memory controller of the A64. There is, however, a little unexpected boost. While the best ATI graphics cards perform about the same in NF3-250 as they do in other Athlon 64 boards, the combination of nForce3-250 and nVidia graphics yields a nice performance boost. In this case, the sum is a little more than the parts, which is undoubtedly much easier to do when you manufacture both the chipset and the graphics card.
We are certainly impressed with nForce3-250Gb right now, but the real test comes with the introduction of the chipset with Socket 939. This chipset was clearly meant for that AMD socket, but the competition becomes stiffer with updated chipsets from both VIA and SiS for the new platform. If we were in the market for a top Athlon 64 today, we would search for a high-end nForce3-250Gb board - which you should be able to buy in a couple of weeks. The feature set and performance make it a great choice in today's market, but the main standout here is features because performance of all the chipsets is very similar. If you are an overclocker, then nForce3-250 may be your only choice for a working AGP lock - assuming production motherboards follow through. This is not to minimize the fact that there are a few VIA boards with additional multipliers for FSB and lower processor multipliers, which make some decent overclocking possible, but that solution is not nearly as flexible as a working AGP lock.
What about 939 and dual-channel? We suspect good things from the nF3-250 family, but until we see chips, boards, and the competitors' updates, the jury is still out.
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jeremyk442 - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
I was disappointed to see a comparison of the 10k RAID to a single 7200 drive. How does that show us the benefits of RAID when the 10K vs 7200 variable is in the mix. Also, performance tests of mixing SATA and IDE in RAID setups would be nice.Also, in comparison of the NVIDIA vs ATI graphics cards, the NVIDIA card was not tested on the other platforms (or at least it wasn't graphed) making it difficult to determine the benefit that the 250Gb chipset gives it. Also, I wanted some more commentary on why the chipset gives the NVIDIA card a performance advantage. It seems a little suspicious to me.
Reflex - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
#24 beat me to the punch. Even the digital output capabilities of SoundStorm are rather inferior compared to other solutions. Its not a great sound chip, but then I covered this territory in part one.Honestly, this chipset seems lacking to me. The best part of it is the gigabit ethernet, but even that is overkill for most setups. If it had included PCI-Ex I woulda considered it a better solution, but as it is I'd rather just wait...
Odeen - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
"Apparently you COMPLETLY overlooked the fact that most (all, AFAIK) SoundStorm boards offered digital output which bypassed those codec's completly. Which just happens to be EXACTLY what I use, and was a major selling point, allowing me to send out my DD/DTS signal to my amp for DVD's as I use for regular computer use. VERY handy."It's a nice solution, but a flawed one. It's not DTS, it's just a 640K/second 6-channel Dolby Digital stream that, because it's generated in real-time, doesn't use any "tricks" to boost effective bandwidth, just six independent channels occupying a little over 100K each, 5-to-1 compression ratio or so.
As 3dsoundsurge.com tests of the nVidia Soundstorm show, the compression essentially nukes ALL frequencies over 18,000hz. I would think that, as a sound purist, you'd object to listening to compressed audio, especially quick-and-dirty compressed audio, day in and day out.
I'd be much happier if Soundstorm either used firewire audio out for compatible receivers, which has enough bandwidth for a DVD-Audio stream(6 channel uncompressed 24/96 or stereo 24/192), or some sort of multiple digital outputs, each carrying a straight SPDIF stereo stream.
Wesley Fink - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
#21 -We showed some benchmarks of Gigabit LAN in Part 1, Page 6 of the nForce3-250 review. We also discussed throughput benchmarks in Part 1 of the article and in front page comments in reply to questions.
With a benchmark that could actually supply 2Gb/sec to test on-chip Gb LAN, throughput for a PCI-based Gb card was around 840kb/sec, while the on-chip LAN was about 1870kb/sec - more than double the throughput.
We chose NOT to publish these benchmarks in a splashier way because you will actually see the doubling of performance only in somewhat rare situations on today's systems. Instead, we talked about where the on-chip Gb LAN would make a big difference - LAN gaming with Gigabit switches, Corporate Gigabit LAN, file-sharing on Gigabit home network. You will not, for instance, see any difference today in broad-band network connections available to most users. nVidia's on-chip LAN is a great idea that will become even more useful in the future.
Wesley Fink - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
#19 -nVidia calls their version for Socket 939 'nForce3-250Gb Ultra', much as VIA calls K8T800 for Socket 940 the 'K8T800 Pro', and SiS calls their 939 version 755FX and not 755. Ultra, in the case of nVidia, means 1000 HT capable. I mention in the review that any of the chipsets can be used on 754 boards if the manufacturer chooses. It is also clear that the review board is based on the nForce3-250GB Ultra with 1000 HT that will be used in Socket 939 boards in the future.
Phiro - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
One comment, one demand/request.Comment: I like nvidia's onboard sound, but if really want to decouple it from the motherboard and sell them as stand-alone cards, that's fine with me too.
Demand/Request: You had a gigabit ethernet nforce3 and you never even benchmarked the damn thing? WTF is wrong with you people? Holy jeebus - even if you don't have the hardware from other manufactors to do some good benchmarks, you could at least show us what your reference board gets talking to card X or whatever, or better yet two 250gb's xfering files to each other over a crossover cable.
Regs - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
I want to see the K8T vs Nforce 250GB at their highest stable over clocks. I think the K8T can maybe reach 220 HTT with some difficulties, while the 250 can reach 240HTT. Then lets see some benchmarks.amalinov - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
OK. Nvidia have not included SoundStorm in nf3, becouse it is cheaper to manufacture (and design) this way.Also I see that you have corrected the 6.1 to 6-channel.
what about the "dual channel Ultra-version"?
#16, It is posible to make a S939 dual-channel board with current nf3-250 (and also with nf3-150, SiS760, K8M800, K8T800, SiS755, ALi, AMD, etc. - ALL Opteron/A64 chipsets). Regarding PCI Express and PCI-X - they can be added to such board (based on existing chipset) too. for PCI-X - AMD8131 chip, for PCI Express - some not-yet-announced chip. Becouse of HyperTransport it is possible to combine nf3-250 with any other HT-tunnel controller supporting PCI-X, PCI Express and other interfaces.
Another question is if some mobo manufacturer will do that. Becouse of cost reasons mobo manufacturers tend to make crimpled products not utilizing all chipset functions (nf3 with only 2 UATA channels instead of 3, etc.), so wanting even more than this seems unrealistic.
amalinov - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
OK. Nvidia have not included SoundStorm in nf3, becouse it is cheaper to manufacture (and design) this way.Also I see that you have corrected the 6.1 to 6-channel.
what about the "dual channel Ultra-version"?
#16, It is posible to make a S939 dual-channel board with current nf3-250 (and also with nf3-150, SiS760, K8M800, K8T800, SiS755, ALi, AMD, etc. - ALL Opteron/A64 chipsets). Regarding PCI Express and PCI-X - they can be added to such board (based on existing chipset) too. for PCI-X - AMD8131 chip, for PCI Express - some not-yet-announced chip. Becouse of HyperTransport it is possible to combine nf3-250 with any other HT-tunnel controller supporting PCI-X, PCI Express and other interfaces.
Another question is if some mobo manufacturer will do that. Becouse of cost reasons mobo manufacturers tend to make crimpled products not utilizing all chipset functions (nf3 with only 2 UATA channels instead of 3, etc.), so wanting even more than this seems unrealistic.
Wesley Fink - Monday, March 29, 2004 - link
#12 -We did not say Sound Storm could not be included on a single-chip, we said there was only so much real-estate PRACTICALLY available on a single chip. As complexity goes up, yields generally go down - raising the price of a chipset. This is a competetive market.
The next line in the review mentioned that nVidia is working on other sound solutions which may be included in a future chipset or separate card. This may be the most important reason why we did not see Sound Storm in nF3-250.