DFI nForce4: SLI and Ultra for Mad Overclockers
by Wesley Fink on February 5, 2005 9:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Memory Stress Testing
Optimum tRAS
In past reviews, memory bandwidth tests established that a tRAS of 10 was optimal for the nForce3 chipset and a tRAS setting of 11 or 12 was generally best for nForce2. Since this was the first memory stress test of a production nForce4 board, tRAS timings were first tested with memtest86, a free diagnostic program with its own boot OS that will boot from either a floppy disk or optical disk. Bandwidth was measured from tRAS 5 to tRAS 11 to determine the best setting.
| Memtest86 Bandwidth DFI nForce4 with Athlon64 4000+ |
|
| 5 tRAS | 2191 |
| 6 tRAS | 2242 |
| 7 tRAS | 2242 |
| 8 tRAS | 2242 |
| 9 tRAS | 2141 |
| 10 tRAS | 2141 |
| 11 tRAS | 2092 |
The best bandwidth was achieved in the 6 to 8 range with this combination of nForce4 and the 4000+, so a mid-value tRAS of 7 was chosen for all tests.
Memory Stress Tests
Our memory stress test measures the ability of the DFI to operate at its officially supported memory frequency (400MHz DDR), at the lowest memory timings that OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2 modules will support. All DIMMs used for stress testing were 512MB double-sided (or double-bank) memory. To make sure that memory performed properly in Dual-Channel mode, memory was only tested using either one dual-channel (2 DIMMs) or 2 dual-channels (4 DIMMs).
| Stable DDR400 Timings - One Dual-Channel (2/4 DIMMs populated) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| CAS Latency: | 2 |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 2T |
| RAS Precharge: | 7T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | 1T |
Using two DIMMs in Dual-Channel 128-bit mode, the memory performed in all benchmarks at the fastest 2-2-2-7 timings, at default 2.6V voltage.
Tests with 4 DS DIMMs on an AMD Athlon 64 system are more demanding, since AMD specifies DDR333 for this combination. However, most AMD Athlon 64 motherboards combined with recent AMD processors (the memory controller is on the AMD CPU) have been able to handle 4 DIMMs at DDR400.
| Stable DDR400 Timings - 4 DIMMs (4/4 DIMMs populated) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 2T |
| RAS Precharge: | 7T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | 2T |
Tests with all four DIMM slots populated on the DFI nForce4 boards required a 2T Command Rate with 4 DS DIMMs in two dual channels. This is the pattern seen on other top-performing Socket 939 boards, but we hoped that higher voltage might allow us to eek out 4 DS DIMM 1T performance. However, additional voltage did not help and DDR400 with 4DS DIMMs still required a 2T Command Rate on the DFI nForce4 boards.
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rjm55 - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
It looks like your praise for the DFI riled the competition in #26. Frankly it is good to see your enthusiasm for the DFI. It is nice to see some excitement come through in the review.Over the years of reading your reviews I've learned that if you get excited it's a product I'll be very happy with. I just wish you could persuade DFI to use a VIA Vinyl codec instead of that very pedestrian Realtek 850. It's a shame to waste the potential of the Audio Module on the 850. This board deserves better.
bupkus - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
Oops, my bad. I need to wait until Epox releases their nForce4.Illissius - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
Awesome board. Unfortunately, not perfect. I find the following faults with it:- The second GbE is PCI and not PCIe.
- It uses the same crappy Realtek audio everyone else does, rather than Creative SBLive (a la MSI SLI) or VIA Envy24PT.
- Its color scheme is not blue thingies-that-are-not-the-PCB on a black PCB.
These shortcomings conspire to demote it from the status of 'awesomest motherboard in the history of history' to 'best A64 motherboard thus far, and possibly ever'.
Have a nice day :D.
As for the review; for the most part great, except... using 61.77 drivers for everything else, and 71.40 for the nForce4, probably invalidates all the gaming scores, as there have been significant performance improvements from the 61.77 to the 66.93, and I would imagine the 71.40 doesn't regress in this regard.
Also, I'm interested in the maglev chipset cooler. Is there any visual difference from a standard cooler? Is it quieter, at least?
bupkus - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
Was there anything good about the competition? Were they cheaper and almost as good, like a second place winner for us cheap economy guys. How about the Epox?knitecrow - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
The DFI board is very nice, and if anyone is going to overclock, this board is the one to get. For non-overclockers, MSI board looks good as well.The chipset fan seems gimicky, I wish it had a bigger heatsink with a more efficient fan.
I am reading correctly between the lines? Is Nvidia charging some insane SLI tax? I like to see what DFI can do with the upcomming ATI chipset for athlon64.
I can tell you from personal experience that the realtek ALC850 (also used on my DFI UT nF3 250GB) is absolute crap. And I am not being picky either. My old soundblaster 16 sounds better. Gone are the days of good audio on the NFII. There are SO many better choices, why not go with a better AC'97 codec? Via Vinyl, sigmatel, cirius logic?
Its really dumb to go through all the trouble of having an add-in card and then use the worst AC'97 codec chip on the market.
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
#39 - The FrontX is a "breakout box" that installs in a drive bay and provides front audio, usb, firewire, and SATA ports in this design. FrontX also features diagnostic LEDs that tell you how the board is functioning.We covered FrontX in detail in past LANParty reviews which you can look up at AnandTech. It is a modular design. You can also find more info at www.frontx.com
SPDIF is a digital audio input and output. I'm sure others here will explain more about SPDIF.
DeanO - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
Does anyone know what the FrontX and Diagnostic LED Connector, that are included with the SLI-DR motherboard, do?The manual says:
One FrontX device equipped with:
- 4 diagnostic LEDs, 1 S/PDIF-out, 1 mini 1394 port and 1 Serial ATA port
The article doesn't seem to mention it anywhere, and neither does the DFI website.
What do the LEDs do? And what is an S/PDIF-out?
Thanks ~ DeanO
Aileur - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
Any idea how much the SLI bridge will go for, seperately?I can see it being as much as 20$, bringing the price difference between real SLI and modded SLI to a point where youd have to ask yourself, do i wanna risk it.
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
#35 - 318 (DDR636) is the highest clock speed we have acheived with THIS memory at 1T with DS dimms in dual-channel mode AT ANANDTECH. The previous 1T record with this setup was 295.We are aware you can reach higher speeds with single-sided dimms and a single dimm, but users don't generally run their machines with 2 256MB SS dimms. We have seen reports of memory speeds of DDR680 and even higher with single-sided dimms.
You can also reach higher speeds with a configuration with water-cooling or phase-change cooling or liquid nitrogen.
The important thing in our opinion is performance with the exact same setup, and here the DFI reached new performance levels with this memory and this CPU with air cooling.
mctmcpoop - Wednesday, February 2, 2005 - link
318 is not the highest record ...The HTT record of this board is 456mhz ...
http://www.coolaler.com/ipb/index.php?showtopic=37...
The 1:1 DRAM record is DDR750 ...
http://www.coolaler.com/ipb/index.php?showtopic=38...