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Hardware Used
Now we begin the benchmark portion of this article, but first let me show you our test system.
Mainboards
NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition C19 CRB (reference mainboard)
Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI motherboard, nForce4 SLI, Socket 939
Processor
Pentium 4 3.6 GHz (Prescott)
Pentium 4 3.6 GHz (Prescott) @ 4 GHz
AMD64 4000+
Graphics Cards
ATI RAdeon x800 XL
ATI Radeon x850 XT
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT (PCX), 128 MB
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT SLI (PCX), 2x128 MB Prolink
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT SLI (PCX), 256 MB
Memory
1024 MB (2x512MB) DDR2 -
Corsair XMS2 5400 DDR2 3-2-2-7Software
Windows XP Professional SP2
DirectX 9.0c End User Runtime
ForceWare 71.84
RivaTuner 2.0 (tweak utility)
3DMark03
3DMark05
AquaMark 3
Doom 3
PCMark 2004
SiSoft Sandra
LAME MP3 encoder
Tests
As stated we are a hardware site with an audience that is primarily targeted at gamers, therefore we will review CPU's and mainboards in a somewhat different way then other sites tend to do, mostly with gamer's benchmarks in various resolutions. Not because we like them so much, no because I know you want to see that. We could test how fast your spreadsheet's macro function is updated or if that mp3 was encoded 2 seconds faster but I know for a fact you don't care very much about that. We'll go in-depth the gamers way. We will also test games under normal settings and conditions.
Let me explain, the best way to produce benchmarks scores in a gaming environment for a CPU is to lower the screen resolution and measure at 16-bit. Why you ask? Well, the graphics card bottleneck is a key issue here. At a certain point your graphics card becomes the more important and dominating factor to influence overall performance. I believe that the CPU and graphics card are a symbiosis though. There's only one important rule I uphold strongly and that is to use a fast graphics cards and use that to produce results. Do you really care how CPU's rate at 640x480 @ 16 bit ? No, we don't either, therefore we are testing hardware the way you play it at home as well.
SiSoft Sandra was used to measure CPU and Memory Bandwidth, while MadOnion's PC Mark 2004 was also used to measure memory bandwidth and CPU performance. Furthermore, Doom 3, AquaMark 3 and a several OpenGL and Direct3D games were used to measure real-world multimedia performance.
NVIDIA nForce4 SLI (Intel Edition) Specifications & FeaturesPerformance - Frontside Bus: Pentium 4 CPU Interface
- 2× address and 4× data
- QDR (Quad Data Rate) support for 400 MT/s - 1066 MT/s (100MHz 266MHz FSB)
- Theoretical maximum burst bandwidth of 8.5GB/s
- Standard bus speeds up to 266MHz supported
- 36-bit addressing for access to 64GB of memory space
- Dynamic Bus Inversion
- Frontside bus (FSB) pipeline depth of 12 in-order queue depth
- Hyper-Threading Technology support
Dual Channel DDR2 128-Bit Memory Interface
- Two independent 64-bit memory controllers
- Can also operate in ganged mode (as one 128-bit controller)
- Support for 400 MT/s (200MHz), 533 MT/s (266MHz), and 667 MT/s (333 MHz) for a theoretical
maximum bandwidth of 10.6 GB/s
- Up to eight internal banks per DDR2 chip
- Up to two DIMMs per controller for a maximum of four DIMM support
- Separate 64-bit data bus per controller
- Separate address and control bus per DIMM
- Up to 16 GB using four 4-GB DIMMs
- Supports synchronous and pseudo-synchronous operation with FSB
- Supports un-buffered non-ECC DIMMs
- Low power suspend-to-RAM (S3) support
- Active and pre-charge power down
- Support for SPD (Serial Presence Detect) scheme for DIMM detection and configuration
Power Management
- Internal clock generator
- Support for Pentium 4 performance states
- Support for HyperTransport link lower power disconnected state
- PCI Express L0s and L1 active link power management support and L2/L3 low power state
support
- Full ACPI 2.0 and PCI PM 1.1 support, including C2/C3, Power on Suspend,
- Suspend to RAM, Suspend to Disk, and Soft-Off CPU power state support.
NVIDIA NFORCE MARKETING MATERIALS
NETWORKING
Native Gigabit Ethernet technology
- The fastest Gigabit Ethernet solution in the market
- Supports 10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet
- RGMII or MII interface
Advanced networking features
- TCP segmentation offloads
- Jumbo frames
- Checksum offloads
- Interrupt moderation
- Traffic prioritization
- Remote wake-up
- Network management for easy set up, configuration, and monitoring
SECURITY
NVIDIA ActiveArmor Secure Networking Engine
- Dedicated hardware engine
- Enhances network security
- Reduces CPU overhead
- Powers and accelerates ActiveArmor Firewall
ActiveArmor Firewall technology
- Industrys first true hardware-based firewall
- Unmatched performance and protection
- instant-on and tamper resistant
- Advanced management features through user friendly interface
- Remote access, configuration, monitoring
- Command line interface (CLI)
- Intelligent application management
STORAGE
NVIDIA MediaShield Storage
- RAID 5 faster disk access with fault tolerance and optimized capacity
- RAID 0 disk striping support for highest system and application performance
- RAID 1 disk mirroring support for fault tolerance
- RAID 0 +1 disk striping and mirroring support for highest performance with fault tolerance
- NVIDIA Disk Alert System provides a visual indication so users know exactly which SATA hard
drive to replace during an array failure
- Converting allows users to change the current state of an array to another using one single step
without reboot of the PC
- Cross Controller RAID uniquely supports both SATA and PATA disk devices within a single array
Serial ATA
- Support for SATAII 3Gb/s and SATA 1.5Gb/s disk controller standards
- Supports full Tagged Command Queuing (TCQ) and Native Command Queuing (NCQ)
Dual controller architecture
- Two separate and independent controllers. Results in up to twice the bandwidth to disks
- Four (4) integrated SATA 3Gb/s ports
Fast Ultra ATA-133 Disk Drive Controller
- 5V-tolerant primary and secondary channels, with support for up to four devices
- Supports Ultra-DMA modes 6-0, DMA modes 2-0, and PIO modes 4-0
- Industry-standard PCI bus master IDE register set
- Separate independent IDE connections for 5V-tolerant primary and secondary interfaces
NVIDIA NFORCE MARKETING MATERIALS
CONNECTIVITY
PCI Express Interface SLI
- PCI Express high-performance, scalable interconnect. Rapidly being adopted by the PC industry;
designed to replace the AGP and PCI interconnects currently in use.
- A x16 PCI Express link has 4 times the total bandwidth of todays AGP 8X interface
- x16 PCI Express link for high performance graphics cards featuring the latest Graphics
Processors with DirectX 9.0 and Shader Model 3.0 support
- Additional x1 PCI Express links for other add-in cards
- Five independent PCI Express controllers with 20 total lanes that can be configured as follows:
- One ×16 and four ×1 PCI Express lanes
- Two ×8 and three ×1 PCI Express lanes (SLI Mode)
- x16 controller can support isochronous data channel
- Supports PME messages for power management
- 2.5 GHz support for a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 2.5Gb/s per lane per direction
USB 2.0
- USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller Interface (EHCI) / USB 1.1 Open Host Controller Interface
(OHCI)
- Support for up to 10 ports
- Supports transfer rates at high speed (480Mbps), full speed (12Mbps), and low speed (1.2Mbps)
- Dynamically configures slower devices for best utilization of bandwidth
- Allows USB concurrency
PCI Interface
- Includes an arbiter that supports six external master PCI slots.
- Features of the PCI interface include:
-PCI 2.3-compliant, 5 V tolerant
-Supports six external PCI slots at 33MHz
-Supports five bus master arbitration
-PCI master and slave interfaces
-Supports both master-initiated and slave-initiated terminations
-Bidirectional write posting support for concurrency
-Flexible routing of all four PCI interrupts
-Supports read ahead: memory read line (MRL) and memory read multiple (MRM)
AUDIO
AC 97 2.3 compliant interface
- Supports 2, 4, 6, or 8-channel audio
- Dual AC-Link supports up to two codecs
- Dual SPDIF supports two simultaneous digital outputs; handles stereo PCM or AC-3 output
- 16-bit or 20-bit stereo, 48kHz output and 16-bit input streams across AC-Link
- 24-bit, 96kHz stereo output on the secondary SPDIF output
- Supports input, output, and general purpose input/output channels for host-based modems
- Separate independent functions for audio and modem
