Setup went okay until we got into the Windows environment where during the initial testing phase we had many instability problems due to memory errors that were corrected after trying numerous types and speeds of memory. We have to take into consideration here that Brian and the boys at NVIDIA sent us an early reference board and the retail boards that will start showing up in the next few weeks will hopefully have all the bugs worked out. Overall other than a few driver issues and a couple of updates we were able to get up and testing in a relatively short while. Everything that is new the industry has a few wrinkles that get ironed out as the chipset matures.
All tests were run at a resolution of 1024X768 with a refresh rate setting of 75HrZ; memory was set at a CAS rate of 2.0 except on the LGA775 test platform as it uses DDR memory and has a CAS rating of 3.0. All tests were ran three times and then divided for a balanced score. Windows was updated to SP1, but not SP2 as errors with the update kept the system from running stable in SYSmark 2004. All drivers for the NF2 platform were BETA at the time of testing. We used other brand of memory for confirmation of memory compatibility, but only the Crucial Ballistix for the actual test results. I tried to get the test platforms to be as equal as possible for accuracy, which is not possible for all memory tests, so other than that most things are somewhat equal.
Test Systems AMD Platform
- Motherboards: NVIDIA Early Reference (NF4 0/ MSI K8N Neo 2 (NF3)
- CPU: AMD Athlon64 FX-55/FX-53
- Memory: Crucial Ballistix 2X512MB DDR PC3200 CAS 2.0
- Hard Discs: Dual WD Raptor 10,000RPM drives SATA 150 Mode 0 array
- Cooling: AVC Reference cooler
- Video: ASUS NVIDIA 6800 Ultra 256MB PCIX/ ASUS 6800 Ultra 256MB AGP 8X
- DVD: Sony 16X
- Power: Epower 450W Jaguar
Test System Intel Platform
- Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-8GPNXP-Duo
- CPU: Intel 560 3.6GHz Prescott/ 3.4EE Extreme Edition
- Memory: Crucial Ballistix 2X512MB DDR2 533MHz PC5400 CAS 3.0
- Hard Discs: Dual WD Raptor 10,000RPM drives SATA 150 Mode 0 array
- Cooling: Intel retail solution
- Video: ASUS 6800 Ultra 256MB PCIX
- DVD: Sony 165X
- Power: Epower 450W Jaguar
Test Software
- SYSmark 2004
- PCmark 2004
- Veritest Business Winstone 2004
- Quake 3 (Time Demo 1)
- UT2003 (Botmatch/Flyby)
