DFI NFII Ultra: Mean Green Dream Machine
by Wesley Fink on July 30, 2003 6:25 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
DFI NFII Ultra: Stress Testing
We performed stress tests on the DFI NFII Ultra in several different areas and configurations, including:
1. Chipset and motherboard stress testing, which was conducted by running the FSB at 223MHz; and,
2. Memory stress testing, which was conducted by running RAM at 400MHz in Dual Channel mode with two DIMM slots filled, and at 400MHz with all three DIMM slots filled at the lowest memory timings possible.
Front Side Bus Stress Test Results:
As standard practice, we ran a full range of stress tests and benchmarks to ensure the DFI NFII Ultra was absolutely stable at each overclocked FSB speed. These stress tests included Prime95 torture tests, which were run in the background for a total of 24 hours.In addition, we proceeded to run several other tasks, such as data compression, various DX8 and DX9 games, and apps like Word and Excel while Prime95 was running in the background. Finally, we ran our benchmark suite, which includes Sysmark 2002, Quake3 Arena, Unreal Tournament 2003, SPECviewperf 7.0, and Jedi Knight2. 223MHz FSB was the highest overclock we were able to achieve with the DFI NFII Ultra without encountering any reliability issues.
Memory Stress Test Results:
This memory stress test is very basic, as it simply tests the ability of the NFII Ultra to operate at its officially supported memory frequency (400MHz DDR) at the lowest supported memory timings that our Corsair TwinX LL modules support:| Stable Dual DDR400 Timings (2/3 banks populated) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| Timing Mode: | N/A |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| Bank Interleave: | N/A |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 2T |
| RAS Precharge: | 4T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | N/A |
It’s not surprising to see the DFI NFII Ultra achieve such low memory timings – we often see 2-4-2-2 timings are possible with the better nForce2 boards. The nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset, like Corsair LL memory, seems to be designed to give the lowest possible memory timings. As we have seen in other reports of memory performance, this does not always translate into the fastest memory performance, but the lowest memory timings is a means of comparing motherboards. It is most useful when comparing boards based on the same chipset.
Filling all three available memory banks is more strenuous on the memory subsystem than testing two banks in dual channel mode, as it tests the rare occasion that a desktop user will install three DIMMs running 400MHz DDR at the most aggressive memory timings available in the BIOS:
| Stable Dual DDR400 Timings (3/3 banks populated) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| Timing Mode: | N/A |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| Bank Interleave: | N/A |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 2T |
| RAS Precharge: | 5T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | N/A |
We were very pleased to see the fast timings that we achieved with all three DIMM banks filled on the NFII Ultra. Those who wish to use all three memory banks will not have to relax timings very much on this motherboard. We found 2-5-2-2 worked well with three banks filled, which is only slightly slower than the 2-4-2-2 timings that worked well with two DIMMs in dual-channel mode.
We tested all these memory timings using several stress tests and general applications to guarantee stability. We started the tests by running 24 hours of Prime95 torture tests. Prime95 ran successfully at the timings listed in the above charts. We also ran Sciencemark (memory tests only) and Super Pi. All of these stress tests ran on the DFI NFII Ultra without problems.
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Anonymous User - Thursday, July 31, 2003 - link
Anyone else having a problem seeing the images containing benchmark results? The Gigabyte board review had the same problem.Anonymous User - Thursday, July 31, 2003 - link
>Besides, nvidia is no longer the standard for performance, in fact they are becoming the (Trident) of the video card market.Can you say "drooling ATI fanboy"? I knew you could!
Anonymous User - Thursday, July 31, 2003 - link
errr that should be "new" not "knew" in comment 16....i'm sure i misspelled some other things too, which y'all are welcome to point outAnonymous User - Thursday, July 31, 2003 - link
hey guys as wesley stated, he's knew to AT...let's give him some constructive criticism - preferably in as nice a way as possible ;)to wesley, please don't take the comments here the wrong way - i think everyone here just wants to see quality reviews here and really are trying to be constructive, even if it doesn't really sound like it all the time ;) you have high standards to live up to at anandtech and when ya slip, they're gonna let ya know ;)
Anonymous User - Thursday, July 31, 2003 - link
I think you guys are being a bit hard on this review. Granted posting benchmarks comparing 2 different motherboards with 2 different video cards is just wrong but give them a chance to fix it.Sammual
Anonymous User - Thursday, July 31, 2003 - link
Anandtech is starting to lose my respect! Were you guys payed to make the board look good?If the video cards aren't the same then there should be no gaming benchmarks!
Peace
Anonymous User - Thursday, July 31, 2003 - link
I completly agree with number 8 above, there are a few primary boards that are the most popular, ASUS and EPOX being the main ones. I personally do not know anyone that uses a gigabyte nforce2 based board for their AMD chips. Heck that Gigabyte board you tested with was not even a consideration when I was looking for my nforce board.Besides the proofing issues involved in this article, it just would have been nice if you used the top tier of nforce boards as a comparison.
Also, why on earth are you guys still using nvidia based video cards for testing purposes????
In your attempt to keep us up to date and advised properly on new products and specially benchmarks, you should atleast keep your hardware up to date. Besides, nvidia is no longer the standard for performance, in fact they are becoming the (Trident) of the video card market.
Evan Lieb - Thursday, July 31, 2003 - link
Jeff7181,It's already been proven that nForce2 Ultra 400 motherboards are faster than KT600 motherboards. This DFI review wasn't meant to prove that again.
Yes, this review used the 9800 Pro instead of our usual Ti4600. We're sorry about that, as we're currently transitioning our motherboard testbeds. Be patient and you'll find data comparing KT600 and nForce2 Ultra 400 boards using a 9800 Pro like we normally do.
Take care,
Evan
Odeen - Thursday, July 31, 2003 - link
Once again, we have fluff on the PCI bus that doesn't belong there... Why not just put a PHY that implements the 3Com MAC on the southbridge, instead of stealing PCI bandwidth and adding extra componentry.As awful ad 3com drivers might be, they still beat the processor hogging "win-NIC" that is Realtek.. The only saving grace is the use of the Cmedia codec for the Soundstorm. While not on par with Asus' implementation of the A7N266-C (ACR card with Sigmatel codecs, as far away from the motherboard as possible), it at least beats the godawful ALC650..
(Before you jump on me with the Dolby encoding. DD is LOSSY as well, if you read 3dsoundsurge review of the Soundstorm audio, you'll find out that in DD encoding mode, you lose all frequencies over 18,000).. Granted, with all the fans yer average overclocker has, they don't really have the hearing to experience 18,000 hz, but it's still nice to know it's there :)
Anonymous User - Thursday, July 31, 2003 - link
I would like to add a point about the exclusion of gigabit lan on the DFI NFII Ultra LanParty mainboard. Although gigabit lan would be a nice feature for an enthusiast, adding gigabit lan in place of dual megabit lan would alter nVidia's original marketing strategy for the NForce 2 chipset. Remember nVidia was touting "DualNet" as a great feature of NForce 2? Well, here is a reminder:"DualNet
Part of the nForce2 Digital Media Gateway. DualNet is integrated support for an NVIDIA Ethernet Mac and for a 3Com® Ethernet Mac—allowing a PC to serve as a home gateway, managing traffic between two separate networks and ensuring rapid transfer of data from WAN to LAN without any added arbitration or latency."
So, DFI was just following along with the nVidia strategy. Besides, where are you going to put gigabit lan on this board? On the pci bus? You would saturate it. You need some bus which can handle a minimum of 133 MB/s throughput, like CSA, to get the full benefit of gigabit lan.