Being successful, especially in the computer hardware industry, is no easy task.  While some companies struggle to win over customers with just a smattering of products, NVIDIA's brand recognition almost seemed to guarantee them success on a regular basis.  What seems like not so long ago, the nForce2 Ultra chipset was taking the AMD Athlon XP motherboard market by storm and today it still remains the chipset of choice for those with an Athlon XP.  The nForce2 chipset offered it all in terms of connectivity, speed, and reliability - but it was released well over a year ago and NVIDIA feels it is time for some change.

Today in the HotHardware labs we're going to take a look at the new NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400Gb chipset.  It carries with it all the same features of the original nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset, but with some interesting extras.  For starters, Gigabit Ethernet and SATA RAID are provided via the new MCP-Gb Southbridge chip.  To protect that new Gigabit Ethernet connection, the addition of a hardware-optimized Firewall will provide the armor necessary to thwart any unwanted attacks from the outside world.  These new motherboards will also support added functionality with NVIDIA's System Utility making real time adjustments to the BIOS a trivial task.  Without further ado, we give you NVIDIA's nForce2 Ultra 400Gb Reference motherboard.

NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400GB Reference Motherboard Reference Specifications

From the pictures above you can see that this motherboard is not highly decorated, which is typical of a reference motherboard.  These boards are used to lay the groundwork for retail products and showcase new technology.  It's up to each motherboard vendor to incorporate the various flashy features and brightly colored PCBs enthusiasts have grown accustomed to.  This reference motherboard is quite typical of other nForce2 Ultra motherboards in its offerings, except the MCP-Gb (Southbridge) now supports Gigabit Ethernet, PATA/SATA RAID, and NVIDIA's hardware based firewall.  Let's get a closer look at the implementations of these new features as well as the BIOS that shipped with this motherboard...

Gigabit Ethernet Top Speed

One of the main reasons for the launch of the nForce2 Ultra 400Gb is the addition of the Gigabit Ethernet, which is now provided via the new MCP.

This is the typical architecture for a Gigabit Ethernet connection.  Most chipsets will run the Gigabit Ethernet over the PCI Bus of the motherboard.  As you can imagine, such an implementation will only operate at the maximum speed of the PCI Bus, which is not fast enough to support the peak throughput of Gigabit Ethernet.  Yet another limitation is the shared resources of the PCI Bus because other PCI components are sharing bandwidth at the same time.

What NVIDIA set out to do was to offer Gigabit Ethernet using its own, dedicated pathway to the CPU and main memory so as not to be hindered by the limitation of the PCI Bus.   This is accomplished by providing an industry standard Reduced Gigabit Media Independent Interface (RGMII) and integrating the controller right into the MCP.  This allows motherboard vendors to interface this solution to the Ethernet PHY (OSI Physical Layer) using parts from an assortment of vendors.

This type of implementation permits NVIDIA's Gigabit Ethernet to operate at speeds much closer to its theoretical peak.  NVIDIA also offloads some Ethernet functions from the CPU, which minimizes CPU utilization during transfers, making this what NVIDIA likes to call "the fastest Gigabit Ethernet desktop solution today".

RAID Support Storage at Warp Speed

Another major motive for the release of this new chipset is the addition of RAID support into the MCP-Gb Southbridge.  NVIDIA RAID technology will support RAID 0, 1, and 0+1 for both SATA and PATA connections in a single RAID array.  NVIDIA dubbed this new technology "Cross-Controller RAID" since it can support both SATA and PATA controlled hard drives in a single RAID array.  A mixture of other technologies are used here such as bootable RAID drives, On-the-Fly Rebuilds and Spare Disk Allocation.  All of these pieces are brought together with a user interface which should make building a RAID array an easy task for both the beginner and experts among us.

We saw a demo of NVIDIA's RAID implementation at Editor's day back in April and were quite impressed.  They had set up a 4 drive SATA array, and were streaming 7 DVD feeds from the drives.  As we watched the video playing on screen, one of the NVIDIA reps pulled a drives from the array.  Surprisingly, the system continued to function normally and the video never skipped a beat.

The BIOS All Things Change

The reference motherboard used Phoenix's AWARD Bios.  Of course each individual motherboard manufacturer will be at liberty to choose their own BIOS.  The settings you see here should be quite typical of retail nForce2 Ultra 400Gb motherboards, but by no means is the end all solution.  Above are two standard screens which show the initial BIOS page and the Integrated Peripherals.  From the Integrated Peripherals page, any on-board component can be enabled or disabled depending on the user's wants and needs.  The Advanced Settings page is where the fun begins.  Here Memory Timings can be changed as well as Front Side Bus timings.  For those that didn't notice, the CPU Multiplier is not changeable here, but it will be in future BIOS revisions and should be standard in the retail product.

Besides timings, all various voltages are adjustable from the Advanced Settings screen including CPU, AGP, Memory, VAux, and VID voltages.  The range of voltages offered here are a bit slim, but again, retail versions of this motherboard will most likely have a diverse collection of voltages to choose from.  In any event, the offerings here are ample enough to try overclocking this motherboard, but first we will cover the software that makes this motherboard tick, in the form of NVIDIA's System Utility and their new 4.24 Chipset drivers.  Let's have a look at the supplementary benefits that are packed into this software.

The Chipset Drivers Speed, Stability and Security

The screen shots below portray the web interface which is used to adjust settings for the Gigabit Ethernet, the Firewall, and the Administration of these particular settings.

As you can see from the screen shots, NVIDIA's firewall is highly configurable.  We felt that the web interface included with the latest nForce Chipset Drivers is an extremely valuable tool in this age of worms and viruses and is a nice upgrade compared to the default firewall that ships with the Windows operating system.

There are three main sections in the interface which allow for basic setup of the Gigabit Ethernet connection, the Firewall, and remote Administration.  The Gigabit Ethernet basic setup page allows for changes to the Speed Duplex, CPU Utilization, and Remote Wake-up to name a few.  This page will allow the user to achieve the best connection possible without sacrificing overall system performance.  Also available to the Ethernet connection is a graphical representation which shows the status of the current connection.

The basic page for the Firewall offers some predefined security profiles with the default setting of Medium in place.  The Medium profile offers good security, but for all those that want to manually change the settings, the Advanced page will do the trick.  A graphical representation is also available for the Firewall showing how many packets have been blocked and how many have been allowed to pass through.

Finally, the Administration page allows for settings such as remote access to the Web Interface which can be set to a specific IP address.  Overall, this Web Interface was easy to use and should make setting up the firewall a reasonable job for both novices and enthusiasts alike.

The System Utility Overclocking on the Fly

NVIDIA's System Utility is not entirely new, but this is the latest version of the product.  This program serves as a graphical user interface that hooks into the BIOS and allows for real time changes to certain BIOS settings.

Overclocking Going Above and Beyond

With the System Utility, we first started by raising the Front Side Bus speed a few MHz at a time and then applying the settings.  With each safe adjustment we ran through some benchmarks to ensure system stability.  After a couple of adjustments to the Front Side Bus speed, we would raise the CPU and Memory voltages to support the increased system speed.  The key in using this utility, or even when overclocking via the BIOS, is to make small jumps and test the system each time.  Incorporating this method we were able to hit a 199 MHz front side bus giving us a CPU speed of 12.5 x 199MHz = 2487.5 MHz!  This is a 412.5 MHz increase over the default setting of 12.5 x 166MHz = 2075 MHz.  While our particular CPU is unlocked, we were unable to alter the multiplier since the BIOS on this reference board did not yet support it.  We were informed by NVIDIA that this would be taken care of in the next BIOS revision and System Utility.  In any event, this is a respectable overclock and what makes it even better is we never had to reboot the system the entire time.

The Test Machine Ready to Rock

Motherboard:

NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400GB Reference Motherboard

DFI LANParty nForce2 Ultra 400 Motherboard

Common Hardware and Software:

AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Barton Processor 333MHz FSB

2 x 256MB Kingston HyperX PC3500 Memory

AOpen Aeolus FX5600S 256MB (Drivers - v.56.72 WHQL)

Seagate 40GB ATA-100 7200RPM Hard Drive

On-Board Sound

WinXP Professional w/ SP1

DirectX 9.0b

NVIDIA Unified Drivers v.4.24

Test Settings:

To start things off we ran the NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400Gb motherboard through a round of synthetic tests using SANDRA CPU, Multimedia, and Memory tests.  Below are the scores for this motherboard at both default and overclocked settings.  We kept the memory on somewhat aggressive timings of 6-3-3-2 for both default and overclocked tests.

Sandra Testing: Default Settings DDR333

Sandra Testing: Overclocked DDR398

Sandra CPU

Sandra Multimedia

Sandra Memory

These scores are right on par with other nForce2 Ultra motherboards we have already seen in the HotHardware labs.  The only scores that stray a bit from the norm are the Memory scores.  The lower score at default settings has to do with the fact that we were running at 333MHz front side bus which came in at 2283 MB/s while the overclocked scores came in at 2719 MB/s.  Even the overclocked scores registered on the low side despite running at a 398MHz front side bus and a little over 2.4 GHz CPU speed.  This is typical of reference boards, as they are geared more for stability then speed.  Motherboard manufacturers will generally wring more performance out a chipset with retail-ready product.

ZD eTesting Labs Business and Content Creation Winstones Desktop Application Performance

The Business Winstone 2004 tests include:

• Microsoft Access 2002 SP-2
• Microsoft Excel 2002 SP-2
• Microsoft FrontPage 2002 SP-2
• Microsoft Outlook 2002 SP-2
• Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 SP-2
• Microsoft Project 2002 SP-2
• Microsoft Word 2002 SP-2
• WinZip 8.1 SR-1
• Norton Antivirus Professional Edition 2003

Content Creation Winstone 2004 tests include:

• Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1
• Adobe Premiere 6.50
• Macromedia Director MX 9.0
• Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 6.1
• Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9 Version 9.00.00.2980
• NewTek's LightWave 3D 7.5b
• Steinberg WaveLab 4.0f

As you can see from the graphs, these boards are pretty much running stride for stride in the Winstone Benchmarks.  The nForce2 Ultra 400Gb held onto a slight lead, but these numbers are within the margin of error for these particular tests.

We also used the latest versions of Futuremark's PCMark04 and SPECViewperf to test the overall system performance of the NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400Gb reference motherboard.

FutureMark's PCMark 2004 - Patch 120 System Performance

The race remains tight after a round of PCMark04 tests.  This is in line with what we were expecting since the Northbridge chips are identical on both motherboards and really the only changes lie in the new Southbridge which should not effect the performance in these tests with our current setup.

SPECViewperf v.7.1.1 Pro Graphics Performance

A round of SPECViewperf tests shows the same outcome, as both motherboards remain in a virtual dead heat.  Let's take a look at some gaming benchmarks and see how these products do in a three dimensional gaming environment.  

We'll wrap up this review with a round of benchmarks from Unreal Tournament 2003, Halo, and Aquamark3.  These tests run the gamut of the gaming engines in both DirectX and OpenGL.

Benchmarks With Unreal Tournament 2003 DX8 Performance

Unreal Tournament 2003

Epic's Unreal Tournament series has consistently been one of the most popular first person shooters, and by no coincidence is it also one of the most commonly used benchmarks. We continued our benchmarking with a completely patched, retail version of Unreal Tournament 2003. When benchmarking with UT2003, we use a utility that ensures all of the systems are being tested with the exact same in-game settings and "Low-Quality" graphical options. We ran the UT2003 benchmarks at a resolution of 640x480 without anti-aliasing.

This test consists of running a "Fly-By" on the "Citadel" level of Unreal Tournament 2003.  The latest version of the nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset manages a slight lead here, but again, these scores are all within the margin of error for the particular test.

Benchmarks With Halo Halo - All Patched & Ready To Go!

Halo

For many gamers, the release of Halo marked the end of a long wait, since it was originally released as an Xbox exclusive a few years back. No additional patches or tweaks are needed to benchmark with Halo, as Gearbox has included all of the necessary information in their README file. The Halo benchmark runs through four of the cut-scenes from the game, after which the average frame rate is recorded. We updated the game using the latest v1.04 patch and ran this benchmark at 640x480.

We are seeing similar results here with the Ultra 400Gb motherboard taking a slight lead over its older brethren.  One final test to go.

Performance Comparisons With Aquamark 3 DX8 and DX9 Shaders

Aquamark 3

Aquamark 3 comes to us by way of Massive Development. Massive's release of the original Aquanox in 1999 wasn't very well received by the gaming community, but it was one of the first games to implement DX8 class shaders, which led to the creation of Aquamark 2 - a benchmark previously used by many analysts. We ran this benchmark at a resolution of 640x480 with no anti-aliasing.

The "old man" (Ultra 400) manages to outpace is younger sibling (Ultra 400Gb) in the Aquamark3 test.  After seeing these scores, however, it's safe to say that these motherboards perform at virtually the same level.

NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400Gb Analysis:
There is no doubt about it that if you're still in the AMD Athlon XP market, the nForce2 Ultra 400Gb chipset is the foundation with which to build a system.  In terms of stability, speed, and connectivity this chipset is a well rounded solution.  A dedicated Gigabit Ethernet connection and RAID support are major pluses, as is the built-in friewall.  The additonal software support package for this chipset really classifies this particular motherboard as an "all-around" product. The System Utility and new unified drivers offer a lot in usefulness, security, and most importantly value.  We are definitely eager to see which motherboard vendors put this chipset to good use and the manner in which they do it.  Until then, we feel NVIDIA has another winner on its hands and this will only solidify its hold of their already tight grasp of the AMD Athlon XP market.

Dedicated Gigabit LAN SATA / PATA RAID Support Dual DDR400 support USB 2.0 support System Utility Web interface with Firewall Very stable with good performance	Performance right on par with previous generation chipset

Discuss this or any other Hot Hardware Review in the PC Hardware Forum