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Chipset Duel - VIA vs. Nvidia nForce
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."
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.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
It's quite possible, look at this pic.
I think that was part of the wind up actually...
Yes, the KT266A does show an approximate 5-10% lead on the nForce, however:
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.
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.
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.
NForce = NuisanceForce
You've probably seen some hardware reviews like this that describe some of the lateral front-side improvements that some of the ASIC frontiersmen have been embarking on, but the reality of it all doesn't always sink in during the course of creating a chipset duel like this. You can't ignore the inability to do PCI syncs on most of the higher-end pipelined components like the Creative Audigy and GeForce 3 Ti500.
If you dig a little, you'll see that those folks also have long history of solving problems like those described in your post. In fact, one of the market segments they've been targetting for the last few months involves sub-AGP register performance enhancement tailoring. So, while you end up with some benchmarks resembling AGP 8x, you find yourself wallowing in a sea of self-pity as your multimedia performace drops off the charts.
The practical implications of this are worse than vaporware. With all of this attention flowing in the direction of negative progress, we're likely to be more inhibited than we helped by this uncommitted branching of GDI code.
These bastards can take their front side resonating bleed factor, cover it in bubble wrap, and mail it to their mothers.
... 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.
something clever
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.
... also, the nforce has been out for what, 3 seconds? and the KT266 has been out for about a month?
Oh, and comparing the GF3 against a GF2mx equivilent video card just really isn't fair.
I think that the nforce stood it's ground amazingly well with only a 5-10% lower rating then the KT266 considering it's ONLY a GF2mx video card equivilent.
Slap a new GF3ti500 on that nForce, and I'm sure you would see a MAJOR increase in proformance.
Also, give the nForce a month or two to get mature drivers on the market and I'm sure you'll see another huge jump in preformance.
via (v, v)
prep.
By way of: went to Pittsburgh via Philadelphia.
By means of: sent the letter via airmail.
While I like what Nvidia is doing with there Nforce chipset, I really don't like embedded components in the first place. While I can understand the need for a cheap alternative, I would rather go out and spend a few more dollars. Embedded chips just eat away at much needed CPU cycles while a separate video card would just hold its own.
That is, the nforce is *NOT* via.
Via sucks.
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...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
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.
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?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
I just *love* your spamproof'd email address
karma capped
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.
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.
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. ;-)
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Check out the November '01 archives at www.3dnow.net for many reviews of KT266A mainboards and some nForce stuff.
Some links from 3DNOW that I will highlight:
VIA KT-266A Motherboard 3-Way Shootout
VIA KT266A Initial Roundup - October 2001
You know, dude, try to improve your trolling skillz a bit.
It's just boring.
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.
http://futur.thednb.com
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.
Aces Hardware shows a different story. 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...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
:) 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.
I must say, I've never had the privelidge of using such a stable machine before. Both in Linux (2.4.16
University - a box of academia nuts.
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.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
there is a marginal difference between them
If you call 10% 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.
"In this [LAME MP3] test, both boards based on the nForce chipset come out on top."
.26 FPS. That's about 1%. Hardly a "pummeling".
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
Something tells me they just glance at the graphs and make a judgement, rather than actually seeing what they say...
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
it's incredible to me that nvidia has produced
this competitve a product on their first go. if
you examine this review carefully, they place
within 10% on all the tests -- in fact, none of
the boards reviewed are that different from
each other (some surprise, they mostly use the
same base chipsets with different layout, etc.)
beyond that, this is nvidias _first_ mobo. i
can't wait to see what happens in a year from now.
though my bets are we'll see something which
looks a lot like an old sgi nt workstation
architecture. bandwidth is king.
You can crap in a soda bottle, but only if you first make a hole in the bottom of the bottle to allow displaced air to escape. Then insert the neck of the bottle in the anus (if it has a thread where the cap screws on, remember to twist, don't push) and release! Once you replace the cap your fecal matter will be safely held by the same air pressure that was once your enemy. Mail to Jon Katz :-)
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.
Um, this is my sig.
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.
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 bought the MSI board(266A) which he called only skin deep for $106 bucks. The difference in the vast majority of the tests was 1-5 fps. This is not noticable by anyone. Anyone who purchaed any on the boards on this test would be happy with their performance. FYI the MSI board comes with a cool bracket that is combo usb/diagnostic port. It can tell you what is wrong without you ever having to open up the case.
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.
It was a incomplete comparison
It really should have been a VIA KT266 vs VIA KT266A vs NVidia NForce vs AMD 760 vs SIS 735 vs SIS 745 vs ALI MAGiK 1 / M1647 (both revisions)
comparison.
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.
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
Campaign for Liberty
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.
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
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 and here? 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. All the benchmarks are run under Windows 2000, yet they state that Lame MP3 Encoder under Windows XP was used. When describing the benchmarks, 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.
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.
Did anyone notice how the nforce boards are still using BETA BIOS versions? Given that I wonder how fair the reviews really are, or if perhaps they should have waited a little longer to do the reviews of these boards.
I think I will wait a while to see if these nvidia boards improve much after a few bios revisions.
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.
[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.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
Again? Poor unfortunate bastard.
Still, he's only running second to Lazarus in the all-time list of greatest comeback appearances.
--This isn't a man who is leaving with his head between his legs.
There is an error in the article regarding the
Shutte AK31 V3.1. They state that the FSB clock
speed maxes out at 133Mhz, this is incorrect.
The Shuttle AK31 V3.1 supports FSB speeds up to
166Mhz! I have 2 of them, both with
the latest bios version. Both of them support a
166Mhz FSB. Anyway, that's all.
-----------------------------------------
Remove the Greed which plagues mankind.
I listened to Tom, I ended up with a mobo that caused the computer to randomly reset for no apparent reason.
And it wasn't just me having the problems.
Via? Vaya con queso.
I'm sure he's aware of that. Don't judge him too harshly, all trolls were newbies once. Instead, why don't you offer him some constructive criticism and perhaps a few helpful pointers to useful troll resources?
I ordered one of these nForce motherboards, from MSI. (It seems to be the only one vendors are actually offering.)
My philosophy when buying computers is to buy the cheapest new technology out there. The nForce motherboard is a steal at $189, you get GeForce2 graphics (~$60 value), a really nice audio chipset (~$90 value); those two things almost pay for the board right there. Sure, I would love to have the MB that scored 5% faster on the benchmarks, but to put together a similar system on a KT266A MB would cost at least $50 more.
I did get the Athlon XP 1600+ processor. It was literally $1 more than the 1500. I'll pay a buck for a five percent speed increase, but I won't pay fifty.
I've got this one, it is really quite good, unless you are a hardcore overclocker, it does support increasing the speed of the CPU/BUS, but not in 1MHz steps like other MB's (ASUS etc.).
And I'm running RedHat 7.2 on it with no problems.