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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."
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.
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.
sic transit gloria mundi
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.
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.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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.
"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
I didn't mean to imply that the only reason the integrated GeForce2 is 8x (I said 6x, my bad) is because it's in the IGP - merely that it is equivalent to 8x AGP, as a consequence of its location and nVidia's nice work.
You have no idea how hard I found it to respond to your comment in a civil manner. Next time, you try the whole "civility" thing.
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.).