A lot of technologies are introduced way before their time or, in other words, offer a lot more than what is required of them. For example, SATA2 provides 3.0GB/sec bandwidth but even the fastest hard drives in RAID cant offer sustained data throughput that matches even half of the bandwidth available.
Today, we take a look at nVidia’s nForce4 x16 chipset that offers two PCI-E x16 slots to provide the maximum bandwidth to video cards running in SLI mode. However, is this really needed with the current generation of cards or, like SATA2, its simply an overkill? That’s precisely what we’ll find out today by using two 7800GTX cards in SLI mode on a standard nForce4 SLI motherboard as well as an nForce4 SLI x16 motherboard. Lets look at the testbed.
CPU: AMD Athlon64 X2 4800+ CPU
Memory: 2 x 512MB Corsair DDR400 Memory Module
Motherboard: DFI nForce4 SLI DR :: MSI K8N Diamond Plus
Optical/Hard Drives: Generic 8X DVDRW, Western Digital 80GB 7200 RPM/8MB Cache SATA
Monitor: LG 19" CRT Monitor
Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2
VGA Drivers: nVidia Forceware 81.98
Conclusion :
We initially started out by conducting tests at only 0X and 4X AA however looking at the benchmarks in the previous pages, we really didnt see any difference at all. We contacted nVidia about this and they suggested doing tests using 8X and 16X AA and thus we went back and benched all four games using that setting as well. Besides Quake4, we really do not see the X16 posting higher results in anything else. In fact, Serious Sam 2 and Call of Duty 2 consistently showed the older nForce4 SLI performaing better in most of the benchmarks.
That being said, we recently asked DFI why their latest limited Venus series of nForce4 boards was not based on the X16 chipset and we were told that the Venus board would produce results equal to or even faster than an X16 board. Also keep in mind that ATI has the faster solution with the x1900 and Crossfire at the moment and neither ATI nor Intel is making any noise about requiring anything above than an X8 slot.
We're not saying that X16 doesnt provide the bandwidth it promises. It sure does, but we think that two x16 slots are a bit of an overkill- at least for the current generation of graphics cards. Its time will come when graphics cards get fast enough to require that much bandwidth but we really don’t see that happening too soon and by that time, we're sure that two x16 slots will pretty much be the standard in all motherboards.
For the complete review visit T-break
Today, we take a look at nVidia’s nForce4 x16 chipset that offers two PCI-E x16 slots to provide the maximum bandwidth to video cards running in SLI mode. However, is this really needed with the current generation of cards or, like SATA2, its simply an overkill? That’s precisely what we’ll find out today by using two 7800GTX cards in SLI mode on a standard nForce4 SLI motherboard as well as an nForce4 SLI x16 motherboard. Lets look at the testbed.
CPU: AMD Athlon64 X2 4800+ CPU
Memory: 2 x 512MB Corsair DDR400 Memory Module
Motherboard: DFI nForce4 SLI DR :: MSI K8N Diamond Plus
Optical/Hard Drives: Generic 8X DVDRW, Western Digital 80GB 7200 RPM/8MB Cache SATA
Monitor: LG 19" CRT Monitor
Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2
VGA Drivers: nVidia Forceware 81.98
Conclusion :
We initially started out by conducting tests at only 0X and 4X AA however looking at the benchmarks in the previous pages, we really didnt see any difference at all. We contacted nVidia about this and they suggested doing tests using 8X and 16X AA and thus we went back and benched all four games using that setting as well. Besides Quake4, we really do not see the X16 posting higher results in anything else. In fact, Serious Sam 2 and Call of Duty 2 consistently showed the older nForce4 SLI performaing better in most of the benchmarks.
That being said, we recently asked DFI why their latest limited Venus series of nForce4 boards was not based on the X16 chipset and we were told that the Venus board would produce results equal to or even faster than an X16 board. Also keep in mind that ATI has the faster solution with the x1900 and Crossfire at the moment and neither ATI nor Intel is making any noise about requiring anything above than an X8 slot.
We're not saying that X16 doesnt provide the bandwidth it promises. It sure does, but we think that two x16 slots are a bit of an overkill- at least for the current generation of graphics cards. Its time will come when graphics cards get fast enough to require that much bandwidth but we really don’t see that happening too soon and by that time, we're sure that two x16 slots will pretty much be the standard in all motherboards.
For the complete review visit T-break
hyeah: .
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