Gigabyte K8NNXP-940: Built on Athlon64 FX51 Strengths
by Wesley Fink on October 9, 2003 11:52 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Words
The Gigabyte K8NNXP-940 is an impressive motherboard. The performance it exhibits at standard settings in our benchmarks is simply outstanding. The early impressions of the Athlon64 FX51 were that it was not much faster than Athlon64. Perhaps we should recast this to say that the early Athlon64 FX motherboards were not much faster than the Athlon64 motherboards running Athlon64 processors. In almost every benchmark, the Gigabyte K8NNXP-940 with an Athlon64 FX51 tops our fastest Pentium 4 motherboard — the Asus P4C800-E running a 3.2GHz processor. Even the usual P4 stronghold of Content Creation sees the Athlon64 FX51 and 3.2GHz P4 in a dead heat. In almost every other benchmark, the Athlon64 FX51 is a clear winner — over both the Pentium 4 3.2GHz and the Athlon64 3200+. The only exception here is our Media Encoding benchmark, which tends to favor Intel processors and will soon be replaced with an updated benchmark.The features, layout, and included accessories make the Gigabyte K8NNXP-940 a stellar home for a new FX CPU. Gigabyte has done an outstanding job in the engineering of this Socket 940 motherboard, and in standard testing, it is in every way a winning combination with the Athlon64 FX51. The addition of Multipliers to the release K8NNXP motherboard just sweetens the picture that much more. With the high cost of the FX51, Enthusiasts will need some persuading to pay the price for the FX processor. AMD and Asus were smart to make it clear that the FX51 could be unlocked in the BIOS, unlike regular, cheaper, single-channel Athlon64 chips. Gigabyte becomes the second manufacturer to add the ability to manipulate FX ratios in the BIOS.
With this high praise, we do believe Gigabyte has more work to do on the BIOS of the K8NNXP-940. It is certainly fast and full of options in the release F1 version, but it is disappointing to find that the new CPU ratios do not work reliably, and the FSB often exhibits some strange behaviors — resetting itself to lower values on boot — and we don't just mean default 200. We had two cases where settings of 220 came back at boot as 209.5, and the 12 multiplier only worked at 200 FSB setting.
Despite the issues with the immature BIOS, we still highly recommend the Gigabyte K8NNXP-940. It can take the Enthusiast to new performance heights as it is, and we fully expect even better overclocking with some of the BIOS kinks worked out. It performs better than any Socket 940 board that we have tested so far.
We have been told that we will see at least a couple of new and revised Athlon64 FX motherboards in the near future. They may prove to be even better, in particular, an update with the VIA chipset that is said to have new features for that chipset. However, until we test those Socket 940 boards and perhaps find one that performs even better, the Gigabyte K8NNXP-940 is King of the Hill.
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Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
64-bit tests running Linux and hand-compiled programs would be:a) Really time consuming
b) Artificial
c) Not relevant to the real world
Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
It is odd that NO 64-bit tests has been made. Why don't people fire up Linux and compile a few programs like MPEG encoding, video/divx processing etc etc?Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Has anyone tried decreasing both the memory speed and the LDT speed when overclocking an athlon 64 board via the fsb?The reason I ask is that being able to set the memory, and hypertransport ratio's, may make an independant CPU multiplier adjusment redundant.
(obviously it would be nice to rule CPU frequency out of such a test)
PrinceGaz - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
...almost forgot, why was the P4EE 3.2 not included in the benchmarks?PrinceGaz - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Very very nice board and CPU, and impressive benchmarks throughout (you can't expect it to match the P4 for encoding). But next year's 939-pin FX is definitely the one to wait for.#4- QDR is just as unlikely as RDRAM but for different reasons, a key point of the A64/FX is the on-die memory-controller but that means you can't just add another couple of memory-channels to it without a total socket re-design (and for QDR a ridicoulously high pin-count). DDR2 is the way forwards in the future rather than more channels.
I'd really expected the fastest CPU nearly two years after getting my XP1700+ to be more than just 85% or so faster than it (the Barton 3200+ is barely over 50% faster, and the A64 3200+ about 70% faster). Unfortunately I can't justify an upgrade until its over 2x, preferably 3x as fast so I'll wait into next year and see what speed increases the shift to 90nm brings.
Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Very impressive board, We've used Gigabyte boards almost exclusively for the past few years at our computer shop and they just keep getting better with every revision. What I'm looking forward to is what they're going to have coming out early next year for the FX, by that time, having an FX system will become a reality for those of us who can't pay an arm and a testes.Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
I want to know whats up with Gunmetal. Otherwise, great review. I just hope that the prices come down, alot, by spring for my upgrade.Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
If anyone had doubts about the A64 and FX performance there should be no questions now!FX is intended to satisfy the extreme demands of power users who want the best and they want it now. A64 is a more cost effective solution for those who want outstanding performance at a consumer price point.
As A64/FX ramp all prices will drop as is normal. You'll likely find that the FX series is quite affordable to the enthusiast market and a Helleva value as things ramp.
And there are some more goodies on the way from AMD and it's partners to make all consumers very happy. Stay tuned!
Wesley Fink - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
#5 - Regular Opterons are locked - at least that is what we found in the 2 we tested. The FX is unlocked.#6 - Yes, this is the first 1394b 800mb/sec Firewire board.
mcveigh - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
is this the first PC board with firewire800?