Socket 940 Roundup: Motherboards for the Athlon64 FX
by Wesley Fink on December 18, 2003 1:39 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Words
When AnandTech took a look at Athlon 64 motherboards, we found no difference in the performance of the nVidia nForce3-150 and VIA K8T800 chipsets. Our recommendation for the Athlon64 was to buy the Athlon 64 board with the best features for the money if you planned to run at stock speed. Since the nForce3-150 boards did overclock better on the A64, we recommended the nF3 boards for those planning to overclock.The Athlon64 FX is a completely different ball game, however. nVidia's slower 600 HyperTransport and 8-bit uplink appear to have met their match in the broader bandwidth of the Socket 940 processors. The VIA K8T800-based boards are clear winners at stock speed in our Socket 940 shootout. Perhaps just as important, the top overclocker in the 940 shootout is also the VIA K8T800-based Asus SK8V. In fact, the SK8V's ability to run very well at a 225 setting forces a re-examination of our assumptions about how VIA manages the PCI/AGP bus on the Socket 940 design.
With the memory controller on the Athlon64 FX chip, we really expected the performance of Socket 940 motherboards to be extremely close. Instead, there is a clear winner in the shootout. The Asus SK8V is the best performing, best overclocking, and best featured Socket 940 motherboard. While the MSI K8T Master 2 also performed well in our tests, the very limited Enthusiast features (no multipliers, no voltage adjustments) combined with the inability to run 4 DIMMs with a A64 FX makes the MSI a lesser choice for the Athlon64 FX user. The K8T would be an excellent choice, however, for Opteron users who do not have multipliers, or especially for those planning an Opteron Dually rig.
The nVidia nForce3-150 PRO boards performed well and were quite stable. Where features are most important, the Gigabyte K8NNXP-940, in particular, is hard to ignore. It is the only board in the Socket 940 roundup that even includes the latest “B” version Firewire with the 800MB/s data rate. In the end, though, all of the nForce3-150 PRO motherboards were overshadowed by the incredible performance of the Asus SK8V. nVidia will soon be updating the nForce3 chipset to the Nforce3-250 PRO version, and that will likely change the performance landscape again. We are also expecting the SiS755FX, which should provide competition to both VIA and nVidia.
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It is rare to find such a clear winner in a shootout, but the Asus SK8V is that clear winner. It is the Socket 940 board that will please most Computer Enthusiasts aiming to squeeze the most from an Athlon64 FX processor. In fact, the SK8V is the best performing desktop motherboard AnandTech has ever tested. AnandTech is pleased to honor the Asus SK8V with our Gold Editor's Choice as the best motherboard for the Athlon64 FX. |
AMD will launch a revised Athlon64 FX around the end of the first quarter of 2004. The new Socket 939 A64 FX will be able to use the standard unbuffered memory that most Enthusiasts already own instead of the more expensive, harder-to-find Registered memory required by the Socket 940 processors. This will not represent the death of Socket 940, however, since the FX 940 versions will continue and the Opteron will remain a Socket 940 processor. However, it will mean new boards, new revisions, and a new round of performance comparisons. Until March/April 2004, though, the best Athlon64 motherboard you can buy is the Asus SK8V.
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AnonymouseUser - Saturday, December 20, 2003 - link
Since this review is for the Athlon64 FX motherboards, shouldn't the links for the "Anandtech Deals" (just below the title) be for Athlon64 FX (socket 940) instead of the non-FX 3200+ (socket 754)?O_o
Wesley Fink - Saturday, December 20, 2003 - link
#7 -The scores with the 11/03 nVidia platform drivers combined with Catalyst 3.9 and the latest BIOS' we tested have dropped the GunMetal 2 benchmarks to those reported in this review. We have discussed the very unusual GunMetal scores we got in the past with Yeti Studios who is looking into the scores.
At this point, we are concerned that the GunMetal 2 bechmarks are really telling us very little about the performance of the boards and systems we are testing. Unless Yeti can update or explain what we have been seeing in Socket 940 scores, we will likely drop GunMetal 2 from our benchmarks.
We apologize for the confusion regarding GunMetal 2 bechmarks, but we have shared with you over several reviews our growing skepticism over their validity in benchmarking FX and Opteron.
TrogdorJW - Friday, December 19, 2003 - link
#7, if you look at those benchmarks in question, the results are HIGHLY questionable in the original benchmarks. They even mentioned it at the bottom of the page:"The astounding scores in GunMetal 2 by the Dual-Channel Opteron and Athlon64 FX51 are difficult to explain, since they are not duplicated by our single-channel Athlon64 benchmark. We were convinced that these scores on the original Opteron must be a fluke until they showed up again in our tests and retest of the K8NNXP-940 Dual-Channel."
My bet is that the earlier versions of the GunMetal benchmark were in some way flawed. Perhaps it was a driver issue, and the game was really only rendering about 2/3 of the screens that it was reporting. Given that all the other systems appear to be close to maxed out on frame rate by the graphics card, the FX and Opteron scores were initially incorrect and have now been fixed.
justly - Friday, December 19, 2003 - link
Wesley Fink, I have had issues with previous Anandtech articles and I thought (or at least was hopefull) that they would happen less often with some of the new staff. I now regret being so hopefull as I am still seeing the same problem.What I would like to know is what would cause the gun metal benchmarks on the Gigabyte K8NNXP-940 to drop 25% or more since the review of that same board on 9 Oct (there was even a link to this article on page one).
I realize that the motherboard and video drivers have changed along with some hardware, and BOIS updates mentioned on page 1 (stating that they "offering improved performance and added features"). The thing is that none of these changes should lead to this kind of preformance hit. What is the story here, was there a mistake in benchmarking, if so what article is correct, if not how do you explain this since most of the other benchmarks on this board varied (an estimated)5% or less.
Icewind - Friday, December 19, 2003 - link
Doubtful #5 as there is no BIOS option to enable or disable it for the VIA boards.bex0rs - Friday, December 19, 2003 - link
The integrated LAN on the SK8N is 10/100 only, not gigabit as mentioned several times.http://www.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=SK8N&langs...
http://www.realtek.com.tw/products/products1-2.asp...
Also, would there be any way to run the HT bus on the VIA boards at 600 to make a determination if that is the limiting factor on nV's implementation?
Wesley Fink - Thursday, December 18, 2003 - link
#1 - You are correct, and page 4 has been corrected. The SATA ports for the SK8N were correctly stated as 2 in the Feature listing for the 4 motherboards.Icewind - Thursday, December 18, 2003 - link
Unless im mistaken #1, is that one right next to the CPU cooler itself in the picture below? Hard to judge from the contrastIcewind - Thursday, December 18, 2003 - link
Best to wait for the 939 pin socket without the unregistered memory modules. I know I will. Paired with a possible PCI Express, SATA 2.0, ATi's 420, 2004 is gonna be a freaking expensive upgrade but better get the best before I finally move outa my folks house.adipose - Thursday, December 18, 2003 - link
http://anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1936&p=...On this page you state:
The IDE connectors, IDE RAID, and 4 SATA connectors are all in good locations. They should present no problems in most case designs.
But I believe the SK8N only has 2 SATA connectors, and I can only see two on the image.
-Dan