Gigabyte K8NNXP-940: Built on Athlon64 FX51 Strengths
by Wesley Fink on October 9, 2003 11:52 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Gigabyte K8NNXP-940: Stress Testing
We performed stress tests on the Gigabyte K8NNXP-940 in these areas and configurations:1. Chipset and motherboard stress testing, conducted by running the FSB at 219MHz.
2. Memory stress testing, conducted by running RAM at 400MHz with 2 DIMM slots filled and at 400MHz with all 4 DIMM slots filled at the lowest memory timings possible.
Front Side Bus Stress Test Results:
As is normal in our testing, we ran a full range of stress tests and benchmarks to ensure the Gigabyte K8NNXP-940 was absolutely stable at each overclocked FSB speed. This included Prime95 torture tests, and the addition of other tasks - data compression, various DX8 and DX9 games, and apps like Word and Excel — while Prime95 was running in the background. Finally, we ran our benchmark suite, which includes ZD Winstone suite, Unreal Tournament 2003, SPECviewperf 7.0, and Gun Metal Benchmark 2. At default voltage, 219MHz was the highest overclock that we were able to achieve with the K8NNXP without encountering any reliability issues. We will take another look at the K8NNXP-940 when a new BIOS update corrects the multiplier and FSB adjustment issues.Memory Stress Test Results:
This memory stress test is very basic, as it simply tests the ability of the KX18D PROII to operate at its officially supported memory frequency (400MHz DDR) at the lowest supported memory timings that our Mushkin High Performance ECC Registered Modules will support:| Stable DDR400 Timings — 2 DIMMs (1/2 Dual-Channel banks populated) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| Timing Mode: | N/A |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| Bank Interleave: | N/A |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 3T |
| RAS Precharge: | 8T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | N/A |
We currently have 4 DIMMs each of Registered ECC DDR400 from both Legacy Electronics and Mushkin. The Legacy runs well at 2.5-3-4-5 timings, while the Mushkin has SPD timings of 2-2-3-8. Until we complete our upcoming roundup of Registered (ECC) DDR400 memory, we are using the Mushkin as our test standard. We had no problem at all with absolutely stable performance of the Mushkin High Performance ECC Registered at SPD timings.
Filling all available memory banks is more strenuous on the memory subsystem than testing 1 bank (2 DIMMs) in dual-channel mode, as it tests four DIMMs (2 banks) of Registered ECC memory running 400MHz DDR at the most aggressive memory timings the memory will allow.
| Stable DDR400 Timings — 4 DIMMs (2/2 Dual-Channel banks populated) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| Timing Mode: | N/A |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| Bank Interleave: | N/A |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 3T |
| RAS Precharge: | 8T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | N/A |
Running both Dual-Channel Banks required the same timings as a single Dual-Channel Bank. It appears you can load the Gigabyte K8NNXP-940 with four DIMMs and still expect the fastest performance that your memory is capable of achieving.
We tested all these memory timings using several stress tests and general applications to guarantee stability. Prime95 torture tests were successfully run at the timings listed in the above charts. We also ran Sciencemark (memory tests only) and Super Pi. None of the three stress tests created any stability problems for the Gigabyte K8NNXP-940 at these memory timings.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
35 Comments
View All Comments
Anonymous User - Saturday, October 11, 2003 - link
Hmm.. something just occured to me. (This is #24 again.) Anyone else remember the days of the Pentium and Pentium Pro? Well, it seems like we may be reentering the whole "high-end CPUs are different from midrange ones in ways other than clock speed" thing.. except this time around, the Macs aren't faster (the G5 and its super-deep pipeline can kiss my ass, thanks.. and probably the Hammer's while it's at it), and there are two companies in the game. This is going to be fun.Anonymous User - Saturday, October 11, 2003 - link
Hey, why isn't the Nehalem in this review? So what if it doesn't exist? They've got like 80% of it planned out now anyway, it's unfair to have this review biased towards AMD.Well, SOMEONE had to be ignorant and stupid, and hell if I'm going to say a thing about the Pentium 4 Xeon MP Edition.
Uh. Anyway. The Athlon FX may just be a rebranded Opteron, but it's cheaper than the rebranded Xeon MP and much better at its job, so who cares what's a rebranded what? Not that I'd ever buy an Athlon 64 at these prices, but it seems the only market sector Intel has left is the low high end :D
Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Excellent review! I'll be reading all of your writings from now on. :Dsandorski - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Sweet motherboard, makes me think that as Athlon 64/FX motherboards mature, more performance will be acheived.Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Haha, good point #20!Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
#12, perhaps because P4EE does not exist...Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
When will this board be released?Reflex - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
#11: I am not reffering to Quad-Channel DDR as I think you believe. I am reffering to Quad-Data Rate SDRAM. It uses the same pin count as DDR but sends information four times per clock, resulting in twice the bandwidth as DDR. If AMD supported it in their on board controller it would not require a higher pin count.However there must be some technical reason for QDR not appearing by now since its been 'just around the corner' for over two years now...
Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
Mostly I meant that running hand-compiled 64-bit apps would be irrelevant. I'd love to see another article in a few months, when Linux apps start actually arriving in 64-bit versions. But until then, it would be akin to Tom's OC'ing the P4EE. It may be interesting to a few people, but it would appear biased to almost everyone else.Anonymous User - Friday, October 10, 2003 - link
#15, 64-bit tests running linux would not be relevant? what about those of us who are running linux right now? I for one would love to see a 64-bit set of linux benchmarks included.