Test Methods, System Setup and Power Consumption

Our testing method for this chipset preview was the same as any other platform launch; we compared the new NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipset to the only other enthusiast level chipset for the Intel platform: the Intel 925XE chipset.  I continued to use the same system configuration that has been populated in our past reviews including an ATI X800 XT graphics card and 1 GB of memory. 

For the AMD platform, I used an nForce4 Ultra chipset motherboard and an Athlon 64 4000+ processor.

AMD Test System Setup

CPU

AMD Athlon 64 4000+

Motherboards

NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra Motherboard

Power Supply 

Antec 480 watt

Memory 

2x512MB Corsair Micro DDR500
2x512MB Kingston HyperX 4300 DDR

Hard Drive

250 GB Maxtor 7200 RPM SATA

Sound Card

Creative Labs Live!

Video Card

ATI X800 XT

Video Drivers

ATI Catalyst 4.11

DirectX Version

DX 9.0c

Operating System

Windows XP w/ Service Pack 1

 

 Intel 925XE Test System Setup

CPU

Intel 3.73 GHz Extreme Edition

Motherboards

Intel 925XE Reference

Power Supply 

Antec 480 watt

Memory 

2x512MB Corsair Micro DDR2-533

Hard Drive

250 GB Maxtor 7200 RPM SATA

Sound Card

Creative Labs Live!

Video Card

ATI X800 XT

Video Drivers

ATI Catalyst 4.11

DirectX Version

DX 9.0c

Operating System

Windows XP w/ Service Pack 1

 

 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel Edition Test System Setup

CPU

Intel 3.73 GHz Extreme Edition

Motherboards

NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel Edition Reference Board

Power Supply 

Antec 480 watt

Memory 

2x512MB Corsair Micro DDR2-667

Hard Drive

250 GB Maxtor 7200 RPM SATA

Sound Card

Creative Labs Live!

Video Card

ATI X800 XT

Video Drivers

ATI Catalyst 4.11

DirectX Version

DX 9.0c

Operating System

Windows XP w/ Service Pack 1

It should be noted that the memory on the NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel Edition motherboard was running at substantially lower timings than those on the 925XE memory.  The NVIDIA chipset came equiped with some super fast Corsair Memory modules rated at 675 MHz at 3-2-2-8 timings!

NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel Edition Review - Chipsets 56

What’s the catch?  It needs to run at 2.1v to reach that speed!  Standard DDR2 memories run at 1.8v, so that is a significant increase in power.  What’s even more of a catch?  NVIDIA is starting a “memory module certification” program of sorts that will allow memory companies to submit their memories into NVIDIA for verification of standing up to the stress of living in an NF4-Intel based motherboard.  Does this all sound very familiar?  It should, because its the same principle NVIDIA had with the release of SLI. 

I’ll have some editorial on this in the conclusion of this article.

The benchmarks used were:

  • SiSoft Sandra 2004 SP1
  • AIDA32
  • Cachemem
  • Quake III: Arena
  • Unreal Tournament 2003
  • X2: The Threat
  • 3D Mark 2001: SE v330
  • 3DMark03
  • Far Cry 1.1
  • Doom 3
  • PCMark04
  • Business Winstone 2004
  • Content Creation Winstone 2004
  • LAME MP3 Encoding
  • XMPEG / DivX Encoding
  • WinRAR Compression
  • CineBench 2003
  • ScienceMark 2.0 Beta

Power Conumption

I threw on the old watt power reader to see if the NVIDIA chipset made any changes to our P4 platform’s power problem.

NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel Edition Review - Chipsets 57

Nope, not really.  The P4 still uses a lot of power and the NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel Edition didn’t change that.

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