nForce 500: nForce4 on Steroids?
by Gary Key & Wesley Fink on May 24, 2006 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
SLI Performance
The performance pattern continues in our SLI benchmarks with the nForce4 platform slightly outperforming our nForce 500 system in certain benchmarks while finishing right behind in others. The interesting showing is the reversal in the Serious Sam II benchmarks with the nForce4 system showing improvements and a significantly better minimum score.
NVIDIA has stated the nForce 500 series contains optimizations for improved SLI operations, but except for the F.E.A.R. benchmark we are not seeing anything to back these claims up. It could be due to the beta platform and graphics drivers we are utilizing, or perhaps the improvements are only seen at specific resolutions and settings. All SLI board benchmarks are run at 1600x1200 with 4X antialiasing and 8X anisotropic filtering enabled. This resolution requires at least a 20" flat panel monitor, while our standard 1280x1024 benchmarks can be achieved with the more common 19" and 17" flat panels.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
64 Comments
View All Comments
DigitalFreak - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
Does NTune 5 also work with NF4 boards?Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
Yes, but depending upon bios support several of the new features will not be active. We have an updated bios coming for a nF4 board so we can verify which features do and not do work with full nF4 bios support.
nullpointerus - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
Does nTune 5 support multiple profiles and automatic profile switching? If so, do these things actually work properly? Unfortunately, nTune 3 was a mess on my MSI board.Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
Yes to multiple profiles and working correctly, what is your definition of automatic profile switching? You can setup custom rules that will dictate how the system should operate under different conditions, a game profile for max performance or a DVD profile that will instruct the system to go in to "quiet mode" once a DVD is inserted if you are watching a movie as an example. We are still testing the rules setup, but so far, it works. We only received the kits last Friday so all major features were tested first but I am following up on the bells and whistles now. nTune 5 probably deserves a small but separate article on its features. We just received a new build last night so testing begins again today.
We did report a bug to NVIDIA as the motherboard settings screen will not refresh correctly after loading a new profile. We had to exit to the main control panel and then return to the performance section for a refresh. I personally have close to 30 profiles setup for our test suites at this time. It is just a matter
DigitalFreak - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
JarredWalton - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
Sorry - that was smy fault and I'll edit it. Written while not thinking I guess.R3MF - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
"If TCP/IP acceleration is enabled via the new control panel, then third party firewall applications must be switched off in order to use the feature."this statement presumes that non third-party firewalls (i.e. nVidia firewall application) would work fine with the TCP-IP acceleration function.............?
nVidia: here is a great function, but you can't use it without getting haXXoR3d
???
Wesleyrpg - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
hey anand,wheres this dodgy nforce4 networking article that you been promising for weeks?
Gary Key - Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - link
The nf4 tests with driver sets back to the 5 series is complete, waiting on release versions of the new 9.x platform drivers to see what actual changes have been made since 6.85 on the nf4 x16 boards.
Wesleyrpg - Thursday, May 25, 2006 - link
can people with the 'normal' nforce4 chipset use the 6.85 drivers or are we stuck with the bodgy 6.70 drivers.