NVIDIA nForce4 Chipset Preview
 |
|
| SYSTEM 1: AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 (2.6GHz) NVIDIA Reference nForce4 Motherboard NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra Chipset 2x512MB Corsair PC3200 "XL" CL2 (2-2-2-5) NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra PCI Express On-Board 10/100 Ethernet On-Board Audio WD "Raptor" 36GB Hard Drive 10,000 RPM SATA Windows XP Pro SP2 (Fully Patched) NVIDIA Forceware v66.81 DirectX 9.0c |
SYSTEM 2: AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 (2.6GHz) MSI K8N Neo2 NVIDIA nForce3 Ultra Chipset 2x512MB Corsair PC3200 "XL" CL2 (2-2-2-5) NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra AGP 8x On-Board 10/100 Ethernet On-Board Audio WD "Raptor" 36GB Hard Drive 10,000 RPM SATA Windows XP Pro SP2 (Fully Patched) NVIDIA Forceware v66.81 DirectX 9.0c |
 |
|
Again, this is one area where NVIDIA has a hard time differentiating itself, since the Athlon 64 FX's memory controller is integrated into the processing core.
Indeed, there's hardly any difference moving from nForce3 Ultra to nForce4 Ultra, at least when it comes to memory performance. And because Corsair has already topped out at 2-2-2-5 timings, we don't expect to see much more real-world throughput anyway. As it is, AMD64 is running at more than 95 percent efficiency on its memory controller - a figure that we never would have seen from external controllers.
