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Hardware

Chipset Duel - VIA vs. Nvidia nForce 197

Posted by michael from the dueling-banjos dept.
msolnik writes: "Tom's Hardware has put 13 motherboards to the ultimate test in their lab. The outcome? By and large, the VIA KT266A chipset knocks the stuffing out of the Nvidia nForce 420D. True bright spots were the candidates sent in by Soltek and Soyo."
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Chipset Duel - VIA vs. Nvidia nForce More

Chipset Duel - VIA vs. Nvidia nForce

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  • I like the nForce still. I'm always scouting for cheap, fast linux-supported hardware. In a couple years these boards will be dirt cheap, compact slutions for nice linux boxes.
    • My next motherboard is probably going to be the ECS K7S5A, based on the SIS735 chipset. Reviews of both the chipset and ECS's implementation have been excellent. I need a low-cost part and for CDN$99 this seems to be a fast (DDR supported!), affordable solution. You might want to consider it.

      I can't speak to its linux compatibility, since none of the reviews have touched on that...

  • Compiling linux kernel on windows ? (Score:4, Informative)

    by kraf ( 450958 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @09:09AM (#2618746)
    It's quite possible, look at this pic [tomshardware.com].
    • EH, It's Linux 7.3.
      I suppose all 2.4.15 bugs have been ironed out.
      • The caption does say "Compiling Linux: Suse Linux 7.3 / Kernel 2.4.13" so Tom isn't that far gone.

        I suppose compilation is a nice benchmark, regardless of what you are compiling. That used to be one of the few sites to regularly include Linux tests and benchmarks with most of their reviews and roundups and the like. But lately - with his, what 20m a month audience - Tom's really been targeting the lowest common denominator.
    • This image must have been changed because now it's just a site logo.
    • The image has been changed, here [djand.com] is a copy.

      I read the article last night and thought this was pretty funny.

    • You're right, a hammer just might help compile Linux within Windows!
    • ok, so someone has to ask this:

      tell me when the hell did kernel 7.3 come out, when 2.2.16 was just released a day or so ago!?
      • It's SuSE 7.3, kernel 2.4.13, as spec'd in the Test Setup [tomshardware.com] page.

        It's good to see the kernel compilation back in the benchmarks. Tom's Hardware started that last year and then it kind of disappeared for a while. It's a shame that whoever did that graphic is such an idiot, though...

        I just upgraded to SuSE 7.3 from 7.1 and it is sweet. I was amazed at the improvements from an incremental release, especially the hardware management capabilities in YAST2. KDE2.2 is much smoother and more responsive as well. I would be totally comfortable handing the CDs to my mom and letting her install it herself (she'd be scared shitless, but she could do it). It's certainly a distro I'd wave in the face of the Linux naysayers that whine about how Linux is to difficult to install and configure.

        SuSE's not just for wierd Germans anymore!

  • nForce vs KT266A performance (Score:5, Informative)

    by Xugumad ( 39311 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @09:32AM (#2618832)

    Yes, the KT266A does show an approximate 5-10% lead on the nForce, however:

    • This is using an external graphics card - the GeForce 3. The nForce has a GeForce 2 MX equivalent, and I imagine that comparing the speed of the nForce to a KT266A with GeForce 2 MX would prove insightful, too.
    • The nForce, IMHO, is aimed at the OEM market. It has not just graphics, but sound integrated onto the motherboard, at a significant cost saving compared to buying them seperately.
    • I cannot find any reference to stability, and my experience of Via chipsets, compared to Intel and AMD chipsets, is that they are less stable and more likely to have problems (the last Via based computer I had to set up took two people 5 days to get working correctly, compared to AMD and Intel based computers which have worked perfectly from first boot up).

    If you're looking for raw speed, over all other concerns, yes the KT266A is probably for you, and would go well with a Creative Audigy and GeForce 3 Ti500. However if you're looking for a less powerful system, with a still respectable specification, the nForce is likely to work out a lot cheaper.

    • Re:nForce vs KT266A performance (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hetfield ( 129762 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @09:53AM (#2618908)
      One issue to keep in mind when talking about AMD/VIA chipsets is that most, if not all, AMD chipsets are meant to be reference designs only and to get new technology (like DDR) on the market before others can catch up. For example, the 760MP, which is only present on two Tyan boards, is being phased out for the 760MPX. Those Tyan boards have been in production for only about 6 months. The AMD 760 (sans MP) is being phased out because there are DDR chipsets being produced in mass quantity by VIA and SIS. Most AMD chipsets don't last very long because AMD expects VIA, SIS, and now Nvidia to pick up the ball from there with their own chipsets.

      As far as stability, I've had just the opposite experience you've had. My two Tyan motherboards with VIA chipsets have worked flawlessly since I received them, but my Tyan S2462 board was RMA'd once and cursed at many more times. The Tyan S2462 (Thunder K7) and S2460 (Tiger MP) have many known problems with memory and power supply compatibility as well as high DOA rates; just search groups.google for tyan's newsgroup.

      --

    • Don't forget... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SaDan ( 81097 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @09:58AM (#2618937) Homepage
      The nForce is nVidia's first attempt at a chipset for AMD systems. How long has VIA been making chipsets?

      I think this is a really good showing for nForce.

      I also think that Tom is starting to lose focus when it comes to what people really want. With processors as cheap as they are, there's not much point to overclocking anymore. If a board doesn't make it easy to nuke your processor, that shouldn't be held against the manufacturer. Stability should be the priority, not how fast you can run the board out of spec.
      • Agreed! Someone should mod the parent comment up.

        My last MB was an Epox 8KHA+, but I don't OC it. I just wanted a fast board to go with my Athlon XP proc. I bought the XP 1700+, by the way, since it seemed to be the best value for the dollar at the time (a month or so ago). When the time comes, I can upgrade the proc.

      • Yes - personally I'm looking forward to seeing what nVidia come up with next - I bought a new machine in August, so I won't be upgrading quite yet . I'm guessing we will see continuing product releases that have certainly very acceptable, if not top of the range, graphics/sound, at the time. So 6-12 months from now, we'll be looking at a nForce board with GeForce 3 Ti200 level graphics.

        They may also, and I'm personally quite enthusiastic about this, release boards without integrated graphics/sound. Or perhaps just without integrated graphics - I seem to recall that the sound matches almost anything currently available anyway. Given this is their first attempt, future motherboards may well show significant speed benefits over the competition, and I'd certainly consider using an nForce board for my next machine.

      • Re:Don't forget... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Pfhor ( 40220 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @11:43AM (#2619494) Homepage
        Also, if you look at the actual numbers, the difference in the boards statistics was around .2 or so, from fastest to slowest. All of the boards are performing obscenely fast, yet tom doesn't seem to pay attention to his own graphs or statistics.

        http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q4/01112 6/ kt266a_nforce-18.html

        the 5 fastest boards for Lame MP3 encoding all have times of 178 secs. No decimal points included. "The nforce boards come out on top" yeah they really are when the slowest KT266A board has a time of 179 seconds.

        Or for another fun bunch of numbers, look at the flask mpeg encoding. The "fastest" fps is 21.51 (nForce board) and then there are 6 boards following it, all at 21.25 FPS. According to Tom the nForce boards "Pummeled" the competition.

        Just some funny statistics stuff i noticed. Of course, Tom isn't lying per say, but it would be more impressive if he did an analysis based on cost etc. Like best board for a $600 system, $900 system, $1300 system.

        • Exactly! (Score:3, Interesting)

          by SaDan ( 81097 )
          All of these boards appear to be performing so close as to not make ANY difference in real world use to the end user. They're all fast.

          None of the boards really shine over another in performance (there are a few that lag in some of the tests). I think now you really have to look at the total package (the mobo, included accessories and software), and the prices to make a fair comparison anymore. Tom did say a few things about what the boards came with, but neglected the average retail prices of the boards.

          Overclockability needs to become a side note after the conclusion, or part of a different review. Stability, integrated stuff (like IDE RAID, SCSI, ethernet, USB 1/2, sound, slots, etc), BIOS features and cost are pretty much all I (and a lot of people I know) care about in a hardware review.
      • I'm still a little interested in overclocking, just because it's an indicator of how reliable the board will be at normal memory speeds, esp at high loads after a few years of usage.

        Still though, that's not that much of an issue, and they probibally go too in depth about it.

    • VIA Stability (Score:4, Interesting)

      by CaptainSuperBoy ( 17170 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @10:06AM (#2618966) Homepage Journal
      VIA's stability / ease of setting up has been nothing short of awful in the past. The KT266A is suprisingly reliable, however. With VIA's 4in1 drivers 4.35 on Win 2000, or Windows XP (which includes VIA chipset drivers) users have found it to be pretty stable.

      I agree with you they're comparing apples to oranges. When nForce was first announced, I questioned the decision to integrate an underpowered graphics chip, when most power users would want at least a GF3. The answer, as you say, is that this board isn't for power users. Sure our ears perked up when we heard nVidia was making a chipset, after all they revolutionized the 3D world. I'm sure future offerings from them will live up to their name. If you remember, it took them several tries with the Riva128, TNT, and TNT2 before they had a true performance winner in the Geforce256.
      • If you compare them to their respective tdfx competitor chipsets, only the Riva128 was slow. The TNT was faster than the voodoo1 and had a better feature set (although it did come out some months later) and the TNT2 was better than the voodoo2. Quite a bit better actually.
        • You may have your timeline a little confused there. Voodoo1 was out long before the TNT was released - TNT's main competitor was the Voodoo2. TNT2 was released at the same time as the V3. The cards did have better features and MUCH better quality, but they were slower than their 3dfx counterparts.
      • The nForce [...] has not just graphics, but sound integrated onto the motherboard, at a significant cost saving compared to buying them seperately.

      And a NIC. I go for integrated boards (at least sound + NIC) simply because it allows me to buy a faster processor and more RAM, which pretty much negates the advantage of the bare bones performance board. Before the nForce, I wouldn't have gone down the integrated gfx route, but really, a GeForce2MX paired with an Athlon 1800+ is a pretty good solution right now. Off the top of my head, I work the KT266A + GeForce3 solution as about $300 more than the equivelant nForce before adding processor and RAM, and that's a pretty big differential.

      • Although interestingly enough it appears that the ASUS board is using a seperate network controller, which would suggest that they have significant problems using the onboard one.

        As to cost - yes, although I beleive in the test both were using GeForce 3s - a straight nForce wouldn't be even close to a match for a KT266A with GeForce 3, but I do feel it would be interesting to see a plain nForce compared to a KT266A with a GeForce 2 MX card.

      • Err...pairing an 1800+ with a GeForce2MX is daft as far as doing anything 3D goes. The MX is very very bandwidth limited and will just act as a bottle-neck.
          • pairing an 1800+ with a GeForce2MX is daft as far as doing anything 3D goes

          Quite right. Sorry, I do a lot of compiling, so the extra crunching works out to a good compromise. That gets back to my original point though; if you're really looking for a game solution, then the price difference in the tested systems works out to the cost of a PS2 or Xbox!

      • I have heard google managers say that they are trying to get hardware that is as integrated as possible since this increases the stability for them. In their case NIC is integrated at the minimum. having thousands of linux computers, you want them as failsafe as possible.

        To connect this to the topic at hand, Dell and others might be interested in nvidia boards since they won't get as many tech support calls as before.
    • Are you joking? Did you read the article? ALL 13 BOARDS were tested with identical GeForce3 cards. And furthermore, the tested NForce boards DO NOT have integrated graphics. If anything, the nForce board SHOULD have had the advantage, since it was employing the 128-bit memory bus, but it didn't.

      You're correct on your other two points...however, you might take note of the fact that VIA chipsets sacrifice a tiny bit of stability for the sake of performance. With Intel and AMD chipsets, you lose a tiny bit of speed for the sake of stability. It's a give-and-take situation - you just have to decide which is most important to you.
      • The nForce chipset has a Geforce2 integrated into the northbridge... it's not exactly the type of thing you just leave off a board. Not only that, but since it's in the northbridge, the interface is equivalent to AGP 6x. I really question why they didn't test or show results for the nForce boards sans Geforce3.

        Furthermore, can somebody explain to me why they used a memory configuration of 1x256, 2x128? Doesn't this switch off the nForce dual-channel configuration by using three dimms?

        I really have issues with their methodology and conclusions here... "Trounces"? The best KT266A mobo does marginally better on Q3A and office benchmarks and gets beaten on bandwidth intensive apps. I don't know about Germany, but where I come from, that's not a trouncing by any means.

      • Both have integrated GeForce2MX's, which were disabled, integrated sound and NIC's. With the NIC's disabled, in order to balance the field (all boards had integrated sound of some sort IIRC)
      • Are you joking? Did you read the article? ALL 13 BOARDS were tested with identical GeForce3 cards. And furthermore, the tested NForce boards DO NOT have integrated graphics.
        Umm...they showed a picture of a doohickey that was bundled with the MSI motherboard that plugs into the AGP slot and provides S-video and composite video out. That relies on the onboard video, which must still be brought out to a VGA connector somewhere if they're going to convert the AGP slot to a simple video-out port.

        Just because they might've chosen (I didn't notice) to put the same video card in each system to ensure an apples-to-apples comparison doesn't imply that the nForce-based motherboards don't do onboard video.

    • * This is using an external graphics card - the GeForce 3. The nForce has a GeForce 2 MX equivalent, and I imagine that comparing the speed of the nForce to a KT266A with GeForce 2 MX would prove insightful, too.

      This isn't true. The benchmark was fair indeed for, when testing the nforce boards, they disabled the onboard graphic chip and used the geforce3 as well. See the test setup [tomshardware.com].

      * The nForce, IMHO, is aimed at the OEM market. It has not just graphics, but sound integrated onto the motherboard, at a significant cost saving compared to buying them seperately.

      However, if you're a geek who upgrades his computer every once in a while, you're better off with separate nic / graphic / audio cards that you can reuse in your new computer.

      * I cannot find any reference to stability, and my experience of Via chipsets, compared to Intel and AMD chipsets, is that they are less stable and more likely to have problems

      I don't have enough experience with via chipsets to respond to that. However, I bought a via kt266A motherboard last week (the epox one), and have had absolutely no problems with it. So far, it is as stable as my previous all intel setup (p3+bx chipset).
      • I cannot find any reference to stability, and my experience of Via chipsets, compared to Intel and AMD chipsets, is that they are less stable and more likely to have problems (the last Via based computer I had to set up took two people 5 days to get working correctly, compared to AMD and Intel based computers which have worked perfectly from first boot up).
      FWIW, I've never run into stability problems with any of the VIA-chipset boards I've run, going back to an FIC PA-2007 (VP2) running a K6-200. VIA's IDE driver has had issues in the past, but the default drivers provided by Win98/Win2K/Linux work well enough. I've had a K6-III-450 on an FIC VA-503+ (MVP3) running my web/mail/etc. server [dyndns.org] for nearly a year with no hiccups, and the same board ran Linux and Win98 (the latter often under VMware) in workstation use for some time before that with no issues.

      (That said, the board that replaced it in workstation use was a Biostar M7MIA (AMD 760) running a 1.0-GHz Athlon. The server will be replaced by a new one I'm building up around an Intel N440BX (the chipset should be obvious) and a pair of P!!!-500s. The former was just moving up to a faster processor; the latter is the result of finding something to do with a couple of freebie processors and having never done SMP under Linux before.)

    • "I cannot find any reference to stability, and my experience of Via chipsets, compared to Intel and AMD chipsets, is that they are less stable and more likely to have problems..."

      Aren't we comparing VIA to nForce here? By the way. Many people have little problems with VIA chips. Some people have loads of problems. When you get into building a system with poorly designed parts, like the SB Live!, then the VIA boards become difficult to work with. Wonder why? The VIA boards don't tolerate the resource hogging og the Live! and Audigy cards. Stick a Santa Cruz or a Phillips card in the machine and they work beautifully. They sound better too.

      If you had two people working on a VIA machine that you built, then you probably didn't do something right. Granted, VIA machines can be more difficult to set up, but they often are MUCH more configurable than an Intel machine. That may be based upon the BIOS options for the individual machine, but I have never had a machine from Intel that had the configurability of my Abit KT7A-RAID. YOu just have to know what you are doing. Configuring a computer goes deeper than putting parts together and installing Windows/Drivers/Software. There is a base level of configuration that should be done to any machine to achieve performance and reliability.

      FYI: My Abit KT7A-RAID Via KT133A based board never crashes, even while running Windows. So much for a less stable machine that is "more likely to have problems."

      So here you are, comparing an nForce board, which you have probably never used/configured/etc. to VIA based boards that you have problems with because you have difficulty configuring computers. I fail to understand why you can suggest the nForce as a viable product yet. Let me guess though... You have a GeForce in your computer.

      • The VIA board in question myself and my flatmate worked on, and its an Abit KT7A. Admittadely, having got it up and running, it seems to be okay, but we still have a lot of problems at the start.

        Yes, we were using a SB Live! That was part of the problem, and playing with the settings in the BIOS did eventually help with that. The much more serious problem was that putting significant load on the IDE system (copying large files from CD-ROM to HD for example) caused the system to hang. There was a third problem involving AGP driving values. Yes, with the help of various web sites we finally solved all the problems, but compared to the two AMD 761 motherboards I've worked with, it was a helluva hassle.

        I agree that any system requires a lot of work to get it to perform optimally, but we were hitting problems just trying to install Windows, let alone actually being able to get to the configuration stage!

        • Sorry. My last post was a bit of a flame. I have just seen so many posts on various boards from people who have difficulty due to simply BIOS configuration issues. Admitedly, the KT7 series was a bit problematic to some people in some circumstances. That doesn't make all VIA boards the same though.
    • It was a incomplete comparison

      It really should have been a VIA KT266 [via.com.tw] vs VIA KT266A [via.com.tw] vs NVidia NForce [nvidia.com] vs AMD 760 [amd.com] vs SIS 735 [sis.com] vs SIS 745 [sis.com] vs ALI MAGiK 1 / M1647 (both revisions) [ali.com.tw]
      comparison.
    • The nForce has a GeForce 2 MX equivalent, and I imagine that comparing the speed of the nForce to a KT266A with GeForce 2 MX would prove insightful, too

      Altough the integrated GeForce2 runs at 6x, all you could expect to see is some system performance degradation, not improvement, when you use the integrated graphics. The external graphics card has its own memory and the memory controller, while in the case of the integrated GPU, the CPU has to share the MC and the system ram with the graphics core.. This can make a significant impact on the memory latency and bandwidth, as far as the CPU is concerned.

  • Some bad information (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hattig ( 47930 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @09:35AM (#2618839) Journal
    Erm, when using 3 DIMMs, the nForce IGP 128 is still in 128-bit mode for accessing memory. You should balance the DIMMs though for optimum performance - channel 'A' should have the same amount of memory as channel 'B', which might mean a 256MB DIMM in the first slot, and two 128MB DIMMs in the other 2 slots (nForce has 3 DIMM slots, although it is possible to build a motherboard with 4 DIMM slots).

    Haven't got the time to read each motherboard in detail. In the end, KT266A looks to be a good choice if you already have a soundcard and graphics card, the nForce is a great first chipset and is great if you don't currently have a soundcard or graphics card - in fact the audio will be the best you can buy for under $100 at least.

    And what was that about VIA taking the SiS735 memory controller? Eh? They are different companies, and SiS would certainly not give VIA their memory controller, that just doesn't make sense from a business or engineering point of view. The KT266A memory controller is taken from the P4X266 chipset.

    • Good post! I would like to mention though that the VIA integrated boards don't have video capabilities that are at all close to the nForce's. Integrated Savage 2000 is pretty nasty. That is where the real advantage lies in the nForce. Unfortunately, the MX line of chips from nVidia are terribly stripped down from their full-bore counterparts. I don't particularly find the FG2MX to be a fast chip by any means, but it certainly has many advantages over te S3 Savage2000, besides a big name.
      • I meant ProSavage, which integrates Savage2000 with one of the other chips, I think.
      • [QUOTE]Integrated Savage 2000 is pretty nasty[/QUOTE]

        Its actually not a Savage 2000. Its the Savage 2000 2d core combined with a stripped 3d engine roughly comparable to the Savage 4 (with less memory bandwidth of course). Which really isn't bad compared to the alternatives from SiS (proprietary core, about as fast as a TNT2 m64), ALi (licensed TNT2 m64 core), and especially Intel (blech i740 derivative, absolutely abysmal for 3d). Thats the competition it was designed for.

        As much as all of you praise the nForce as an OEM solution, its really way to expensive to be competitive with any of these, and its capabilities (except maybe sound...but then again, you could do a SiS-730/740 board with onboard CMI-8738 sound for less than most nForce boards go for) are useless to anyone who would consider an integrated solution.
  • I bought the MSI 6380 and had trouble from day one with the USB controller in linux having hickups and jitters as well as the crucial ddr ram not working properly. After eating the $140 it cost me for the board, I invested in the Shuttle AK31 also listed here. It was $120, had an extra PCI slot as well as an extra dimm slot (1 gig of RAM, woohoo! No swapping!) and has worked from day one. The only thing it didn't have was the RAID controller and I wasn't likely to use it in the near future anyway but since it has the extra PCI slot, it will be an option in the future.

    Despite my experiences being different than Tom's, he does a nice job, as always.

    • I too have that same board by Shuttle and would highly recommend it as well. I picked it up for about $80 2 weeks ago, making it a VERY good deal even though Tom calls its performance and presentation "lackluster."
    • Did you actually fill all the banks? If so, did you encounter any problems? I'm shopping around and am looking for something that will be both decent performance and stable. I have heard all good things about the Shuttle board, but have also heard that the system can get flaky with all 4 banks filled due to memory timing issues.
  • ... that of all the boards tested, there is a marginal difference between them. Really, in all of the figures there is the slightest of margins between performance figures. Only thing that I can conclude from the bench marks is that if I were to buy a motherboard right now, it wouldn't be the Asus KT266A board.
    • there is a marginal difference between them

      If you call 10% [tomshardware.com] marginal, you are right. Looks like now that board with the same chipset perform within a few percent from each other. I do not think you will notice the difference. But then i am still using my pII 350 at home since it fast enough for diabloII & internet. (You can hit me with you club/truncheon now).

      If you have determined the the last few % of performance are not important for you, you should focus on features. If you do not play games the integrated Geforce2MX on the nvidia might be fine. And a integrated ethernet may save you a few dollar you can spend on a better display. I am suprisid they integrated a realtech ethernet in one of the nvidea board.
  • I looked at the benchmarks. The nVidia boards
    are somewhere in the middle of the pack and
    the diference is not noticable. The MCI board
    looks particularly good. Good work nVidia!
    By the way there was a benchmark of Linux
    kernel compilation done under... Win2000.
    Hm, Tom needs a clue.

    Da Bear.
    • By the way there was a benchmark of Linux kernel compilation done under... Win2000.
      Maybe he was using VMware [vmware.com] and didn't bother telling anyone...:-)

      (BTW, you should lose the <br> tags that break your post a third of the way across the window...they're hella annoying.)

  • Video out? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @09:58AM (#2618936) Journal
    I think that the nForce is being pitched improperly. What we need to know is - which board has the best TV out capabilities. With built in Dolby Digital, this thing could make a great set top box without making a huge investment. Hell, which motherboard has coax-in ports?

    The PC-TV revolution is coming and the only one poised to take advantage is Microsoft. Are there any Linux or alternate OS based projects that have real funding behind them? What ever happened to Indrema? This would make a perfect hardware match for the platform.

    Sigh...
    • "The PC-TV revolution is coming and the only one poised to take advantage is Microsoft."

      Finally, someone who might be able to agree with what I am trying to say.

      Enter X-Box, which is essentially the true firestarter of the PC/TV revolution. Like it or not, it's coming, and it will be done with the X-Box.

      Why else are other companies going the integrated route? This is being done in order to keep up with Microsofts new specifications for PCs, being closed boxes with integrated audio, video, and networking. These are going to be designed to not use any enduser upgradeability aside from USB/Firewire type solutions. While you are at it, why not use an HDTV with an 15 pin RGBHV plug as a monitor.

      I am all for the classic style of PC, but that is all going to change, like it or not.

  • RAID controllers... (Score:1, Informative)

    by Junta ( 36770 )
    I may be mistaken, but I have heard that most of these 'so-called' IDE raid controllers that motherboard manufacturer's put on their board are little more than typical IDE controllers. The manufacturer's get away with calling them RAID because they implement the RAID functionality in the Windows drivers. If this is true, I could care less about the inclusion of RAID controllers apart from having that many more ports on the MB. The only advantage is that you get a software RAID implementation for Win9x/ME, but under Linux, *BSD, and Win2k/XP there are provided facilities for doing software raid on arbitrary block devices. Additionally, I've heard the OS implementations are often both more efficient and more reliable than the drivers for these cheap IDE RAID controllers.

    Also, they mention the Shuttle MB having 4 DIMM slots, and not going far beyond that. Does anyone have experience with having all 4 banks in use? I have heard theat the Shuttle MB has problems with memory timings when all 4 are in use. Anyone want to enlighten me?
    • Not too sure about the 4 dimm slot issue, although, I do remember hearing the same as you about it. Something to do with the trace distance on the board being too great for 266Mhz DDR and having timing difficulties.

      As to the raid, I recently purchased the Dragon+ reviewed by Tom and am overall quite pleased with it. It's onboard Raid is of the Promise FastTrak variety using a PDC20265R controller chip. There is a jumper on the board to select raid operation or to simply use it as additional IDE ports. When selected as Raid, upon bootup you get a menu allowing you to setup the array. It only supports raid0,1 but appears to work straight out of the box. I set it up and used my Win98 startup disk to install. When starting up FDISK, it sees the array as 1 drive of an (erroneously) large quantity. I created a partition and installed windows and all appeared fine. I think the win drivers are there to enable the UDMA features of the drives once you're inside windows. None of this mattered of course, since I needed everything to work in linux and the fasttrak module included with Mandrake 8.1 just isn't up to snuff yet. I was able to get so far as to start installing linux using the raid controller and suddenly the system rebooted itself. So, at the present time, I'm running in software raid0 mode still connected to the Promise IDE ports, since you can't boot off a CD-ROM connected to the Promise IDE ports. That's OK though. Still lets me keep all my IDE devices on separate ports and performance has been stellar.

    • Yes, the RAID implementations are equivalent (or even inferior) to the OS implementations - its not "proper" hardware RAID.
      And yes, the biggest advantage to these boards is having a second controller - which I for one find very useful (I never use RAIDed, not with their software, not with OS options either)

      It's also worth mentioning that the HighPoint ones are bad enough that they are bloody unusalbe - RAID or no RAID. (This is, of course, only my own expirience; but it does include 3 brands of HDs)
      • These are real hardware RAID controllers, but only in a limited sense. Essentially, they are the same types of controllers that go into seperate cards, UDMA controllers with extra functions at best, but they are RAID controllers. It really just depends on the type of RAID operations that you want to acomplish. Most of these are only capable of striping/mirroring/combinations. It isn't really "software controlled," as they are perfectly functional WITHOUT the use of external drivers, however, they don't operate the way they were intended without them. I know this works for fact, because I have used them MANY times outside of a Windows based environment, on multiple OS's, and using multiple drive utilities, like Ghost. They function without a hitch. I assume that this software that people are referring is merely a special busmastering driver.

        The Highpoint controllers are fine. Some people find them perfectly useable for what they were designed for, simple RAID 0/1/0+1 implementation. They can also be used as a seperate IDE controller. I have one in my Abit KT7A-RAID and my burst transfer read rates (two Deskstar 60GXP drives) are higher than that of one the fastest Seagate Cheetah SCSI drives. I have no complaints, especially for what it cost me to implement it all. I can handle a +15 MBPs increase on a drive setup that costs hundreds of dollars less.
    • The RAID controllers onboard are hardware RAID controllers, not software. Both the HighPoint and FastTrak RAID controllers pop up a BIOS screen before booting that let you configure the drives. They both support RAID 0 (striping), 1 (mirroring), and 0+1 (both i.e. 4 drives). They are presented to the operating system as a single SCSI drive attached to a SCSI controller. They are bootable.

      This is not software RAID. This is not a 66MHz PCI Ultra 160 SCSI RAID controller with 128MB of battery-backed cache, but it is hardware RAID, and two striped 7200RPM ATA66/100 drives outperforms a single drive any day.

      • Re:RAID controllers... (Score:2, Informative)

        by Hamshrew ( 20248 )
        Wrong... the FastTrack series uses a BIOS implementation, true, but it offloads the striping calculations and such to the CPU. It's basically a BIOS trick that LOOKS like hardware RAID. For a true hardware RAID controller, you're looking at a few hundred even for IDE RAID, such as the Promise SuperTrack or, better yet, the 3ware Escalade series(which is supported in the 2.4 kernel series by default)
        • What's wrong about what he said? You are comparing an entry level HARDWARE based RAID controller to a more expensive HARDWARE based RAID controller.

          What's the difference? The more expensive controller feature RAID 5 implementation and 6 channel control. Oh... It also typically costs $500. Not exactly cost effective to a home users that's aiming for the spead of simple striping.

          The HPT370 is exactly what he said it was. "Both the HighPoint and FastTrak RAID controllers pop up a BIOS screen before booting that let you configure the drives. They both support RAID 0 (striping), 1 (mirroring), and 0+1 (both i.e. 4 drives). They are presented to the operating system as a single SCSI drive attached to a SCSI controller. They are bootable." "This is not software RAID. This is not a 66MHz PCI Ultra 160 SCSI RAID controller with 128MB of battery-backed cache, but it is hardware RAID, and two striped 7200RPM ATA66/100 drives outperforms a single drive any day."

          Here. I reposted what he said so that you can read it this time.
      • Yes, they do have a BIOS, and do show up as a SCSI device in Windows. However, they are only presented to the operating system as a single drive when the proper Windows drivers are loaded (actually the BIOS does support DOS hooks, so win98 fdisk works with no drivers, but that's the only thing that does).

        In Linux, the drives connected to it show up as IDE devices (usually /dev/hde through hdg). And until recent patches by Alan Cox, it was not possible to use the RAID functions of the controller in Linux, and it may not yet be bootable from a RAID array (not sure).

        And yes, RAID 0 is faster than a single disk. But I'd bet that Linux software RAID-0 is just as fast as this so-called "hardware" RAID-0.

  • Am I the only one who thinks that the lack of a clear way of scoring the boards and declaring the winners makes the review completely subjective? The way I read the numbers the A7V-266-E outperformed the Soyo and perhaps the soltek. The epox wiped the floors in the benchmarks but since they had stability problems they didn't push the board, but never clearly said so. This combined with the fact that stability and vendor support are just as important(if not more) than performance in determining which board to buy makes me question their final verdict. It's been a couple of years now that I've been critical of what I read on Tom's, bias and tilt factor towards certain vendors make Tom's questionnable at time.
    • All hardware reviews of any kind are subjective - every last one of them. That's why you read several, before making any sort of decision.

    • Re:Nebulous winner decision (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That was the most subjective review I've read at Tom's. They honestly seemed to match their final rankings with their opinons on the packaging.

      The numbers they supplied constantly put the nForce in the middle or at the top of the pack. Most of the benchmarks were close to eachother anyway, there was very little "trouncing" going on. But, all of the quips are about how the KT266A kicked the nForce's ass.

      That's my major rant (pis-poor interpretation of the data), but since I'm bothering to write at all:
      Another thing is, the nForce is focused toward the OEM market, and they were comparing it to the top-of-the-line KT266A solutions. How did the nFor ce compare to the OEM-centric KT266A solutions...? Exactly. Also, how much performance do you get from any of those KT266A boards without adding a sound card and video card. Thought so.

      I think the real problem with that review was the title and "quick quotes". It should have been titled something like "What is the best MoBo for all you extreme performance freaks?", and the summaries should have been along the lines of "Well, we were surprised that the nForce did as well as it did. But, as expected, the high-end KT266A boards are the choice for all you extreme overclockers out there."

      The fact that the nForce was middle- to top- of-the-pack on nearly all the benchmarks, and was summarily slammed by the reviewer, is sickening. I'm glad they took the time to get those numbers, but I'm definitely not letting the reviewer make up my mind on this one.

      Also, why are all the review sites putting off reviewing the nForce as it should be reviewed? Compare it to another decent Mobo with a GeForce2 MX, seperate network card, and soundcard. It is interesting to know how the nForce chipset will perform when you get that GeForce3 Ti in two years, but I want to know how it performs as a mid-level (less expensive) solution. My question is: Would I get the same (or better) performance with the nForce as I would by buying the components seperately? That's the intent of the nForce, and that's what I'd like to know.

      p.s. I took a look ot the 120GB WD HD review, and thought it peculiar that the obvious performance drop from the 100GB model wasn't noted at all. The file transfer speeds spike dramatically, and the other benchmarks often put the 120GB many slots down from the 100GB. What happened to the days of "well, nice try, but we'll have to wait for some kinks to be worked out before suggesting this product as a solution". Seems like they're keeping all of those comments for ATI now (deservedly. when will ATI wake up and do some major driver work? what friggin CEO or marketing person thought, "hey, we'll screw our customers by hard-coding settings for Quake, and when the FPS benchmarks come out, everyone will run out and buy a Radeon!". slime-ball tactics are a part of capitalism, unfortunately. but, that was stupid, plain and simple. nothing to be gained but a higher number in one of many benchmarks, and much to be lost.).
  • More and more, Asus appears to be lining up with the mass of generic manufacturers, rather than including clever, attention-grabbing overclocking features. And while the "quantity, not quality" ploy will definitely score points in the high-volume OEM market, it's likely a flop in the image-conscious retail segment.

    -What color is your new motherboard?

    -Duh, who cares when it's shaped like a skull, don't tell me your's square!
  • As an owner, I take offense at THG's statements regarding Shuttle's AK31 v3.1 board. Clearly when there is a 5 FPS differential between boards running the same configuration, same chipset there is some problem with the test setup.

    Shuttle's AK31 v3.1 has a known issue with detecting the proper memory timings, and I think Tom's hardware either forgot, or neglected to compensate for this. All you have to do is go into the BIOS and set the timings yourself. If you leave it on detect, it defaults to the slowest timings. They are using CL2 ram, and I wouldn't be surprised if the shuttle board was running at CL2.5. Yes, this is a problem with the board but it's a known problem and there is a workaround.

    Tom's Hardware has cut plenty of corners in the past and this is just another example of their irresponsible reporting and benchmarking. They were one of the first hardware enthusiast sites but they've fallen off.

  • Tom needs to take a chill pill (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @10:22AM (#2619032) Homepage

    Phew, another article that focusses on overclocking potential and absolute performance. All well and good, but I'd like to see Tom's doing more comparisons on total component price and bang per buck and not try and match specifications without regard to the retail price. When I upgrade, I pick a budget first, then go shopping to see what I can get for that money. The price difference between a fully integrated nForce and a bare VIA + NIC + GeForce2 + sound means I can afford to put a significantly faster processor and a shedload more RAM in the nForce. There's a tradeoff in that it's harder to upgrade piecemeal, but I choose not to do that anyway as I find that it's cheaper and more rewarding to make infrequent larger upgrades, and easier to find a deserving home for the old hardware if it can form the substantial core of a box.

    Informative article, but it's once again aimed at the geek who simply has to have the rootinist, tootinist fastest system west of the Pecos, with cost not an issue. Note to Tom's; for those of us who don't get free hardware, cost is always an issue. ;-)

    • I agree with you whole heartedly.

      At least in this case the Bang for the Buck choice is obvious. Even at $170 the NForce boards blow away the KT266s.
    • you maybe able to afford a slightly faster cpu if you go with nforce, but what for? You are buying a board with lower performance, and awful graphics just so you can get a slightly faster cpu that will not be able to compensate for the rest of the system?
      The GF2 MX sucks, its worse than the ones that are not integrated. It has known awful 2D quality, the money is better spent on a decent video card, even if you don't play games.

      The KT266A is much more o/cable, if you really want a faster cpu, just overclock it, you don't have to overclock to the extreme.

  • More Reviews... See www.3dnow.net (Score:4, Informative)

    by marcop ( 205587 ) <.gro.todhsals. .ta. .pocram.> on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @10:24AM (#2619040) Homepage
    Check out the November '01 archives at www.3dnow.net [3dnow.net] for many reviews of KT266A mainboards and some nForce stuff.

    Some links from 3DNOW that I will highlight:
    [gamepc.com]
    VIA KT-266A Motherboard 3-Way Shootout

    [anandtech.com]
    VIA KT266A Initial Roundup - October 2001
  • Nota Bene, guys and girls - Tom didn't "do" the review. It was Frank Völkel and Bert Töpelt . Tomas Pabst is the site founder, and in reality the writing is done by staff. Credit where credit is due and all that.

  • Aces Review shows different results (Score:4, Informative)

    by Fizgig ( 16368 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @11:02AM (#2619223)
    Aces Hardware shows a different story [aceshardware.com]. There, the nForce board from MSI seems to beat out the MSI K7T266 Pro 2 (KT266A chipset) in most of the benchmarks by a good margin. Not to say that I believe one over the other, but they do have widely different results.
  • What about this twinbank memory architecture nForce has. Why doesn't it make things faster for the Nvidia chip. I'd like to see some memory bandwidth tests of these chips... Anybody?
  • All over the place, a board is marked as a clear winner, even if another board shows the *exact* same result. The archiving benchmark where MSI was top dog was interesting, what about the Epox which scored the exact same thing? Also, the other boards had less than 0.5% difference from the winner, I doubt that is statistically significant. How many runs were done? With the kernel compile, again, how many runs were done, in what order? The same config? I seriously doubt motherboards with the same chipset would have such a dramatic difference as 15 seconds on Kernel Compilation, given equivalent Disk I/O and CPU...
    • I'm glad that I wasn't the only one to notice how biased and and misrepresentative this review was. How can they declare the KT266A "beat the stuffing" out of the nForce boards when there was less than a 0.5% difference AND the nForce was the best in some of the benchmarks!? I've lost a lot of respect for Tom's Hardware with this review.
  • While I don't have first hand experience with the Soltek board mentionned on this page, I do have first hand experience with one of it's predecessors, the Soltek SL-75KAV based on the KT133A and I'm running an AMD 1.4GHz Athlon.

    I must say, I've never had the privelidge of using such a stable machine before. Both in Linux (2.4.16 :) and Windows XP. I run this machine nearly 24/7 and have never once had any strangeness in either OS. All in all, I definately recommend Soltek boards - they are fairly cost effective too.
    • An where would one purchase one of these fine products? A search of the various comparison sites (and even tom's price shopper) didn't turn up so much as one site selling them.

      Seems pointless to recommend a board that can't be bought.
  • It is an integrated chipset, and the performance is excellent considering that, but it is not as good as high-end non-integrated boards, and as a result of the extravagent design, it is very expensive.

    The OEM market doesn't want it because it is more expensive than other integrated chipsets. They don't care that the performance is much better. If it is $5 more, they will ditch it in a minute.

    So the other market to target is the performance market. Unfortunately, the GeForce2MX and regular DDR memory don't provide good enough performance for that segment, and the performance lags high-end boards sporting other chipsets even with an offboard video card.

    By targetting two very different market segments with the same chipset, NVIDIA has put themselves in the position of having an excellent compromise product that is suitable for neither camp. I hope they get a P4 license, because the extra memory bandwidth might actually mean something there, whereas with the FSB limitations of Athlon processors it does nothing for them. That way, with an external video card, the NFORCE might actually roar, instead of being dead in the water as it is right now.
    • This chipset is set at the performance integrated market. i.e., not the low end i815 market that is only suitable for low end office machines, but as a good home machine or a good office machine. It is good enough for games, it will play those DVD movies nicely, and it is fast.

      Single point of failure - the motherboard. No graphics card, network card or audio card to also have to test for failure - it is all built in. Single driver set. Single CD to ship with computer with drivers on, not 5. Support is a lot easier. Aggregate costs for OEMs will be much lower with nForce than for a similarly powerful OEM box (i.e., not the low-end boxes, but the boxes that currently ship with GeForce 2 MXs, Live! Players, etc).

      It just needs a little bit of time to get some momentum. It will happen, eventually.

    • They are just splitting their marketing into two segments. It's overpriced and the performance isn't really worth it. GeForce MX chips of any type are terribly limited in their design. If I am going to build an integrated system, then why am I going to go the expensive route, when I can just having something cheaper. Some people, just want a computer to have internet access and do word processing. A more expensive alternative like the nForce doesn't do much for these people when they are looking for something that is really cost effective. It isn't on par with the performance of higher-end non-integrated machines. So where does the machine fit? Not in the integrated machines that I build.
      • Overpriced? Performance not worth it? Not on par with higher-end, non-integrated machines?

        Where the hell did you get this from?

        Let's see: nForce solution:

        • MSI nForce 420D - $129
          Includes:
          • GeForce2 MX (at 8x AGP, using system DDR RAM)
          • Dolby Digital 5.1 audio controller
          • integrated 10/100 NIC
          • 6 USB ports
          • integrated ATA100 IDE controller
        • Athlon XP 1600 - $114
        • 512 MB PC2100 Micron DDR RAM (2 x 256 MB) - $72
        Total: $315

        Now, let's try the "superior" alternative (and I'm trying to pick out the lowest prices I can):

        • Shuttle AK31 (KT266A) - $77
          Includes:
          • integrated ATA100
          • VIA AC97 sound
          • 2+2 USB ports
        • Athlon XP 1600 - $114
        • 512 MB PC2100 Micron DDR RAM (2 x 256 MB) - $72
        • Abit Siluro Nvidia Geforce2 Mx200 (but at 4x AGP w/ less memory bandwidth) - $43 --OR-- MSI G3TI200 PRO-TD GEFORCE3 TI200 $162
        • cheap-ass Realtek NIC - $10
        Total for GF2MX solution - $316 (for GF3 - $435)

        (Prices from Pricewatch... I skipped the "house brand" GF2 MX cards when finding that bank-breaking $43 Abit to spare myself much embarassment when the Shuttle combo came in $10 cheaper). I also neglect shipping - where I'll let you do the math as to which is cheaper: 3 boxes vs. 5.

        So for one dollar more, you would recommend to your customers that they get infinitely crappier sound, a far worse NIC, undoubtedly a crappier video card (by nature of the external AGP interface), less USB ports and a mobo with no good reputation for reliability?

        Wow. Way to do your homework.

        Or maybe you would instead recommend that they get the GeForce3 for an added $119. While they're at it, why not throw in an OEM Creative Audigy for an extra $50?

        Don't even try that lame argument that it's not "high-performance" enough. Do you mean to tell me that Johnny Necktie will notice the difference between 200 fps and 210? I've got an Asus A7V, Athlon TB 750 and Diamond TNT2... I play all the games I want. I still type my Word documents with no impediments. Honestly, the only thing I find might need changing is the four-generation-old TNT2.

  • Okay... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by athakur999 ( 44340 )
    "In this [LAME MP3] test, both boards based on the nForce chipset come out on top."

    Err, the nForce boards got 178. Three KT266A boards got 178, the rest got 179. The only reason the nForce boards are on top is the way the graph is sorted.

    Same thing with the Flask test. The fastest nForce board beats the faster KT266A board by .26 FPS. That's about 1%. Hardly a "pummeling".

    Something tells me they just glance at the graphs and make a judgement, rather than actually seeing what they say...
  • I'm bummed that the shuttle got such a lousy review. For $80 you can't knock that board. It's fast, and stable. I love mine, and so do many other people out there... Just take a look at the anandtech forums.

  • They're all about the same (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2001 @12:55PM (#2619970) Homepage
    Look at the performance charts. All the benchmarks are within 10% of each other, and often much closer. And yet the reviewer talks about variations as if they were a big deal. They write "The benchmark results in SPECViewperf were all over the place", while their own numbers show a range of 15.36 to 15.64. Users will never notice that without instrumentation.

    I'd like to see "we ran them in a burn-in oven at the maximum rated temperature for two weeks while running diagnostic programs that checked for correct functioning of everything". And "we put the machine on the shake table and ran the standard shake test profile". The reports should then show failure rates, like Consumer Reports. People notice when the product breaks. And then you'd find out which motherboard manufacturers actually build good PC boards.

  • I just picked up a Shuttle AK31 v3.1 board a week and a half ago along with an Athlon 1600+ XP (old motherboard just died, so it was upgrade time). It's good to see these kinds of review, but I've found that the performance difference is becoming truly negligable. The Shuttle board was one of the cheapest (I got it for $107) and one of the "lowest" performing in Tom's ratings, yet the difference between it and the best performing boards is generally about 2%. Similar KT266A boards at the recent computer show (where I bought mine) were $122-175 - much more than 2% higher cost. I think I found my price point.

    What's even better is that it will overclock from 1.4GHz to 1.575GHz, effectively pushing it to an XP 1900+ with no stability issues. It's got 4 DDR slots, 6 PCI, and it's rock solid stable. I know all the true overclockers in the crowd will rant about the performance difference, but I think if a comparison was done, you'd find that an Athlon 1900+ XP chip on one of the slower boards (like the Shuttle) would probably both outperform and cost less than an Athlon 1800+ XP chip on the fastest board. Besides, at this point, the biggest bottleneck in most systems is still disk I/O.

  • It's the bus from the chipset to the CPU that's the problem; Nvidia's 128 bit memory interface is cool and all, but the CPU can't really use it. If it could, the system would simply scream. But it can't,

    This results in a situation where the chipset can get more bandwidth from memory than it can deliver to the CPU. Nforce has a lot of potential that will only be realized as soon as the CPU can actually consume the bandwidth.

    C//
  • What I can't believe is there were no memory benchmarks. How can you compare the nForce without doing memory benchmarks? The coolest thing about the chipset is the dual DDR channels.

    Also, I would have liked to have seen was a GeForce 2 MX on a KT266A compared. I think anything that was using lots of memory bandwidth would have shown different numbers. Did you guys notice there was no 32-bit color depth for quake3? Oh well, little things aside it was still a good review though.

    JOhn

  • Quality of Writing (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Bastian227 ( 107667 )

    Though I trust Tom's Hardware with their benchmarks and recommendations, I have to question the details when it comes to their writing.

    Unless I'm missing something, what are these DIE devices and cables they talk about here [tomshardware.com] and here [tomshardware.com]? Could they possibly mean IDE cables? Though the article is in English, perhaps IDE is the same as DIE in another language.

    They are also confusing Windows 2000 and Windows XP, and I really hope they aren't compiling Linux under Windows 2000, as someone mentioned earlier [slashdot.org]. All the benchmarks are run under Windows 2000, yet they state that Lame MP3 Encoder under Windows XP [tomshardware.com] was used. When describing the benchmarks [tomshardware.com], they state that they chose not to use Sysmark 2001 because values can fluctuate under Windows XP. Am I supposed to assume they don't trust it under Windows 2000? They need to state that, not leave us to assume, if they meant to say XP at all.

    I'm just picking nits, but I think if you are going to write a technical review, you must be accurate and specific.

  • Most of the benchmarks look like this:

    Best is 100.5, NVidia is 100, worst is 99.5.

    Considering that for pretty much every benchmark except 2 or 3 of them, the NVidia chipsets are in the middle of the back of VIA chipsets, and the difference is around half a percent, which is less than the variation amount the VIA chipsets, it is pretty clear that these benchmarks don't show that the VIA chipsets are faster.

    Other differences in the motherboards are more significant than the chipset differences. Note that within the VIA motherboards, it tends to be the same ones near the top and the bottom of the results.

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