NVIDIA nForce4 SLI XE: Enthusiast Features on a Budget
by Gary Key on March 23, 2006 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Memory Performance
The ECS board does not officially support DDR2-800 unlike several of the other boards in the test group. In our testing, we could never get the board to run reliably at DDR2-800 with several different memory modules at various settings. In fact, the board had issues with memory performance and stability when exceeding a DDR2 rate of 720MHz.
Overclocking Performance
The overclocking performance graphs have been added to the standard benchmark test suite and should allow for a better comparison on the overclocking capabilities of tested boards. For more details on the specific overclocking abilities of this board, please refer to the Overclocking and Memory Stress Test section in the Basic Features page.
The memory latency test continues to show a 3% advantage for the nForce4's memory controller on the Asus P5N32-SLI over the Intel 975X chipset solutions. The ECS board's performance was competitive with the other boards in the write and latency benchmarks.
The ECS board does not officially support DDR2-800 unlike several of the other boards in the test group. In our testing, we could never get the board to run reliably at DDR2-800 with several different memory modules at various settings. In fact, the board had issues with memory performance and stability when exceeding a DDR2 rate of 720MHz.
Overclocking Performance
The overclocking performance graphs have been added to the standard benchmark test suite and should allow for a better comparison on the overclocking capabilities of tested boards. For more details on the specific overclocking abilities of this board, please refer to the Overclocking and Memory Stress Test section in the Basic Features page.
The ECS C19-A SLI is a very good overclocker at stock or near stock FSB speeds when raising the CPU multiplier, but it falls short against the Intel 975x boards when raising the FSB speeds. Overall, the board matched or improved upon the other NVIDIA based offerings even with limited BIOS tweaking options.
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blackmetalegg - Friday, March 24, 2006 - link
"Unfortunately, we ran into an issue with this process as the clear CMOS process sometimes required the removal of the battery for the jumper process to work. This process is not acceptable, considering how well other BIOS recovery systems work."Sounds a lot like the reviewer is too lazy to use his finger to release the battery from its holder.
Gary Key - Friday, March 24, 2006 - link
Certainly not lazy as I removed the battery at least a dozen times during testing. The fact remains that having to remove the battery is not an acceptable option when the clear CMOS jumper does not work over 60% of the time because the bios self recovery routine fails 85% of the time when the memory settings are extended past the board's ability to boot properly. This only occurred a couple of times when setting the FSB past the board's limit.
kmmatney - Friday, March 24, 2006 - link
I hate removing the battery. I broke the flimsy battery clip off of one motherboard doing this, and had to solder new wires in place and dangle a new battery from it. Removing the battery for a BIOS clear is not good.cornfedone - Thursday, March 23, 2006 - link
Obviously this mobo wasn't tested before release or it wouldn't have all the problems it has.phillock - Thursday, February 1, 2018 - link
Sounds a lot like the reviewer is too lazy to use his finger to release the battery from its holder.https://jumjex.bandcamp.com/releases
Puddleglum - Thursday, March 23, 2006 - link
Not sure if it's worth fixing or not, but the Content Creation (Disk Controller Performance) chart shows the Biostar TForce4 in red, mistaken as the board being tested.smut - Thursday, March 23, 2006 - link
Is this going to be an Intel only board?Gary Key - Thursday, March 23, 2006 - link
Yes. The upcoming NVIDIA nForce 500 launch will address chipset updates to the AMD product family.
bldckstark - Thursday, March 23, 2006 - link
No, upon release the board will come with alternate CPU sockets included in the box. You got an AMD? Just pop out the Intel socket and plug in the AMD socket. Gat a VIA, Cyrix, or TI85 chip? Just break the chosen socket out of the plastic holders like a model car part.Oh, wait, I guess you want to know if ECS is going to make an AMD board. Duh.
Gary Key - Thursday, March 23, 2006 - link
Our next article will have a high resolution picture of the capacitors and other items of importance in a pop-up window. I am sure the capacitors utilized on this board will be of interest to you. ;->