nForce 500: nForce4 on Steroids?
by Gary Key & Wesley Fink on May 24, 2006 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
SLI Performance
The performance pattern continues in our SLI benchmarks with the nForce4 platform slightly outperforming our nForce 500 system in certain benchmarks while finishing right behind in others. The interesting showing is the reversal in the Serious Sam II benchmarks with the nForce4 system showing improvements and a significantly better minimum score.
NVIDIA has stated the nForce 500 series contains optimizations for improved SLI operations, but except for the F.E.A.R. benchmark we are not seeing anything to back these claims up. It could be due to the beta platform and graphics drivers we are utilizing, or perhaps the improvements are only seen at specific resolutions and settings. All SLI board benchmarks are run at 1600x1200 with 4X antialiasing and 8X anisotropic filtering enabled. This resolution requires at least a 20" flat panel monitor, while our standard 1280x1024 benchmarks can be achieved with the more common 19" and 17" flat panels.
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Olaf van der Spek - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
<quote>These devices can be configured in RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and 5 arrays. There is no support for RAID 10.</quote>That's probably because there's effectively no difference between 1+0 and 0+1 on a good controller.
Olaf van der Spek - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
Doesn't this require support from the modem/router too?
The delay (usually) happens in the modem and not in the network card.
Zoomer - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - link
No, because you make the bottleneck your network card, instead of the modem. :)There will be a slight loss of throughput. Read some QoS articles. lartc.org is also a good resource. I bet it's the same principle. ;)
Trisped - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
<quote>Multiple computers can to be connected simultaneously </quote>http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
take out the "to"
Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
Thanks, it is corrected.....Googer - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
When benchmarking core logic it's should be a high priority to measure I/O performance, since that is the primary job of any AMD Chipset.Where are the HDD, Network, Audio, and R.A.I.D. benchmarks?
Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
I answered above but we will have full benchmarks in the actual motherboard articles. Our efforts in the first three days was to prove out the platform and features that were added or changed (still doing it, feels weird to be up almost 72 hours). In answer to your question-
Foxconn Board
Network-
Throughput - 942 Gb/s
CPU utilization - 14.37% (with TCP/IP offload engine on), near 30% off.
HDD/RAID
No real difference compared to nF4 as we stated. The numbers are within 1% of each other. The interesting numbers will be in our ATI SB600 comparison.
Audio-
Dependent on the codec utilized in each motherboard, the RealTek ALC883 used in most of them have the same numbers as the nF4 boards. The only difference is the new 1.37 driver set we used. It will be interesting in the comparison as Asus went back to ADI for HDA.
Pirks - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
That's why AT is my favorite review site - 'cause you're really crazy bunch :-) Just don't ruin yourself completely, we need you!Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
The ending should read NF4 Intel or ATI/Uli AMD boards. Where is that edit function? Hit enter too soon. :)Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
They will be in our roundup comparison and ATI AM2 articles.