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The nForce 4 Chipset

For readers that would like a more indepth look at nForce 4 chipset, we encourage you to take a look at preview of the nForce 4 from last fall where we cover the feature set in more depth.

Benchmark Setup

Our benchmark system consisted of the following:

• AMD Athlon 64 3000+
• 2x512 MB OCZ PC4200 EL Memory @ 200Mhz 2.5-3-3-8 1T
• Chaintech VNF4 Ultra Zenith Value Edition
• Gigabyte GA-K8VT890-9 (VIA Hyperion 4.55vp1)
• Soltek K890Pro-939 (VIA K8T890) (VIA Hyperion 4.55vp1)
• DFI LanParty NF4 Ultra-D (nForce 4 Ultra) ( nForce4 Standalone Kit 6.37 Beta)
• Western Digital WD1200JD SATA hard drive
• NVIDIA Reference 6600 GT 128 MB PCI-Express (ForceWare 66.39)

As per the request of Chaintech, BIOS Version 2.0 was used for testing purposes. At the time of testing, there was a BETA version labeled 2.0a and at the time of writing it looks like that it has been updated to version 3.0. The only change seems to be the addition of fan control which we made a point of noting that it was lacking in the previous section.

A pair of K8T890 boards and a nForce 4 board, DFI's decidely high end nF4 Ultra-D are also included in this particular review.

A list of benchmarks performed follows:

• Business Winstone 2004
• HDTach
• NTTCP
• LAME MP3
• Rightmark Audio
• SiSoft Sandra
• Comanche 4
• Doom 3
• Halo
• Half-Life 2
• Call of Duty
• Unreal Tournament 2004
• X2 Rolling Demo