Socket 940 Roundup: Motherboards for the Athlon64 FX
by Wesley Fink on December 18, 2003 1:39 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Asus SK8N: Stress Testing
We performed stress tests on the Asus SK8N in these areas and configurations:1. Chipset and motherboard stress testing, conducted by running the FSB at 213MHz at default voltage. We also ran a few stability tests at the highest overclock of 2452GHz at 1.65V.
2. Memory stress testing, conducted by running the Registered ECC Memory at 400MHz with 2 Dual-Channel (1 bank) DIMM slots filled, and at 400MHz with all 4 Dual-Channel (2 bank) DIMM slots filled at the lowest memory timings possible with Mushkin Registered ECC 3200 memory. Since the Athlon64 FX does not require ECC for proper operation, all memory tests were run with ECC disabled.
Front Side Bus Stress Test Results:
We ran a full range of stress tests and benchmarks to ensure that the Asus SK8N was absolutely stable at the overclocked speed at default voltage. 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. At default voltage, 213MHz was the highest overclock that we were able to achieve; 2452MHz was the highest overclock that we could achieve by raising the CPU voltage or Hammer VID to 1.65V.Memory Stress Test Results:
This memory stress test is very basic, as it simply tests the ability of the SK8N 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. The Registered Modules were run at SPD timings:| Stable DDR400 Timings — 2 DIMMs 2/4 DIMMs populated — 1 DC bank |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| Timing Mode: | 128-bit DC |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| Bank Interleave: | N/A |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 3T |
| RAS Precharge: | 6T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | Auto |
| ECC: | Disabled |
We had no problem running 2 DS 512MB DIMMs of our standard Mushkin ECC Registered in the SK8N at the aggressive SPD timings at default memory voltage.
Filling all available memory banks is more strenuous on the memory subsystem than testing 2 DIMMs, but we had no problem at all running with all 4 matching DIMMs installed providing 2 Dual-Channel Banks.
| Stable DDR400 Timings — 4 DIMMs 4/4 DIMMs populated — 2 DC bank |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| Timing Mode: | 128-bit DC |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| Bank Interleave: | N/A |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 3T |
| RAS Precharge: | 6T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | Auto |
| ECC: | Disabled |
The required memory timings with 4 DIMMs were the same as 2 DIMMs, the fastest 2-2-3-6 SPD timings of the Mushkin Registered memory. No memory voltage increase was required for stability as the SK8N was stable at default memory voltage with 4 DIMMs.
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 Asus SK8N at these memory timings and standard memory voltage.
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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