Athlon64 Motherboards: First Look at Chaintech, FIC, and MSI
by Wesley Fink on September 23, 2003 1:03 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
FIC K8-800T: Memory Testing
The K8-800T has 3 memory slots, but they are a little unusual, like those found on the Chaintech ZNF3-150. According to a note in the FIC manual:If you use double-sided PC3200 DDR DIMM, only DIMM1 socket is allowed. IF single-sided PC3200 DIMM is used, either DIMM2 or DIMM3 is allowed, but not both at the same time.
These interesting memory requirements will be explored further in future Athlon64 reviews and the Athlon64 motherboard roundup. It looks as if the DIMM slot precautions on the VIA K8T800 based FIC are similar to those on the Chaintech nForce3 board. We can only say that we had run all memory tests and benchmarks with 2 DS PC3500 DIMMs in slots 1 and 3, and we had no trouble at all with board stability. We made no attempt to check 3 filled slots in our memory stress tests, as we really didn’t want to push it with a pre-release BIOS, which are often more fragile than production BIOS.
Front Side Bus Stress Test Results:
We performed stress tests on the FIC K8-800T by running Mushkin PC3500 L2 DS DDR at 400MHz with DIMMs 1 and 3 filled.We ran a full range of stress tests and benchmarks to ensure that the FIC K8-800T was absolutely stable at standard DDR400 speed. We ran several tasks — data compression, various DX8 and DX9 games, and apps like Word and Excel — while Prime95 was running in the background. Finally, we ran our complete benchmark suite, which includes ZD Winstone suite, Unreal Tournament 2003, SPECviewperf 7.0, and Gun Metal Benchmark 2.
The FIC showed no stability problems in our stress tests with both banks filled with double-bank DIMMs at stock 400 speed.
Memory Stress Test Results:
The memory stress test is very simple, as it tests the ability of the FIC K8-800T to operate at its officially supported memory frequency (400MHz DDR) at the lowest supported memory timings that our Mushkin PC3500 Level II can achieve. Despite dire warnings in the FIC manual, we ran 2 DS DIMMs at DDR400 as follows:| Stable DDR400 Timings (2/3 banks single-channel populated) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| Timing Mode: | Auto |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| Bank Interleave: | Auto |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 3T |
| RAS Precharge: | 6T |
| Precharge Delay: | 3T |
| Command Rate: | N/A |
Since there were no memory timings available in our pre-release BIOS, we were forced to run Memory Timings at “Auto” settings. CPU-Z reported “Auto” was setting memory timings at 2-3-3-6. Please keep in mind that when comparing benchmarks, the FIC tests were run at slower memory timings than Chaintech or MSI. While 2-2-2-6 timings, set manually, did provide slightly better performance, the real difference between Auto 2-3-3-6 and manual 2-2-2-6 timings was small. For most situations, Auto timings will provide excellent stability and speed.
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Anonymous User - Friday, September 26, 2003 - link
#5I old too, but still keep buing from AMD, Intel is way too expensive for as in Latin America, and give no clear advantage for a programmer/gamer like me.
If you been having problems with AMD, surely your are building AMD chips with PCCHIPs mainboards, and Pentiums with Intel boards, you are a smart guy!
So, if you gonna build a modern PC, you'll experience problems becouse WinXP didn't include drivers for new chipsets, so, for it all going like a charm, you need an Intel Pentium III and a Intel 2001's mainboard, anything newer, you gonna have to look for drivers, whatever the platform you choose.
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - link
#10 -You are absolutely correct in theory. However, when we moved from the Ti4600 to the ATI 9800 PRO, our encoding scores on the P4 went up about 35-45%. Don't ask me why. They did not change on the Athlon, which had led in this area before. That is one of several reasons we will be changing to another encoding benchmark.
If you doubt what I say, check Evan's 20-board 865/875 roundup done with the Ti 4600, then check the retest of some of the top boards we include in our more recent P4 reviews. Evan did the original and the update tests, and I have confirmed his results.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - link
Since when does the video card have ANYTHING to do with DivX encoding? That is a purely CPU and RAM issue, even playback is not influenced too much by the video card anymore (speed not quality...that is an entirely different issue).Zoomer - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - link
Hey, could you please touch on what DAC chip is powering these setups? A picture would be nice too.Envy 24bit audio would be an utter waste if some crap Realtek codec was used. It would be good if this was highlighted so that motherboard manufacturers catering to the higher end of the market will take notice.
Chaintech apparantly took note of the fact that you guys bashed every single board that had the ATX connector near the board i/o ports. Despite it being a non issue. That thick bundle can be routed so that the interference with airflow is minimised.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 24, 2003 - link
Please, please, please stop using Flash for graphs.dvinnen - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
#5: Youe funny. Constant screw ups? It's Intell who has had to have 3 or so recalls over the last 4-5 years. And theres that bug with the Itantic which the only way to fix is to lower the clock to 800 mhz. AMD is the one who keeps screwing up?Wesley Fink - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
#3 and #4 - Thank you. Now corrected.Just before posting we decided to combine the 3 reviews into one larger launch review. Unfortunately I had used the same name for two different pictures and the first one was picked up. There is a socket closeup of the FIC that never made it to the server.
Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
yeah, about the only good thing coming out of this is the price drops soon. Otherwise still the same stupid +-5FPS differences = waste of time/effert to get excited about.i used to love amd, but just got tired of their constant screw ups, so anymore i personally don't care what stupid thing they come out with, i won't waste my time with it.
Perhaps that's cuz i'm older now and have a good job/salary and don't need/care about overclocking and or paying a few bucks more for intel quality/stability. yeah, must be just getting to be an old fogey, cuz this whole amd/intel wanna-be-war doesn't give me a hardon like it used to ;)
Thoreau - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
Correction, Page 11 in the index list. First pic.Thoreau - Tuesday, September 23, 2003 - link
The 2nd page of the FIC section shows a pic from the Chaintech board. Think you got that a little mixed up there.