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Nvidia nForce4 Ultra Mobo Shootout
[Abstract]
Features At A GlanceNow that we've completed our showcase of all eight nForce4 Ultra based motherboards, we move on towards the benchmarking and testing section of this shootout. The following ...
[Content] PCDigitalMobileGame
Motherboard Summary
After detailed reviews on each of the eight motherboards and a comprehensive performance comparison, we've almost come to the conclusion of out nForce4 Ultra motherboard shootout. In closing, let us trace our steps back and summarize the most important points we've touched upon. In terms of performance, all the boards based on the nForce4 Ultra chipset performed relatively close to each other. While the performance delta was a slim 1-2%, the Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-9 was able to score better and more consistently throughout our benchmark tests. Considering SYSmark 2004, our business performance benchmark showed almost no differences among the boards. Hence, only the gamers out there will definitely want to take note which board can give them that extra FPS (frames per second) advantage.
Tying in with performance is a board's overclocking capabilities. While stock performance will give you an idea of how well a board can run, the amount of overclocking and tweaking capabilities of a board can definitely tip the scale for the adventurous enthusiast. Though you may be spoilt for choice with the good selection of overclocking friendly boards, DFI's LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D is really the smarter pick due to its myriad of tweaking options and special features. ABIT's Fatal1ty is also an excellent contender with an aggressive OTES cooling design that will appeal to many overclockers. Of course, having many boards with high overclockability is a good thing for the consumer as you can have a piece of mind that you will still be able to get a decent overclock even if you decide on something else.
When it comes to features, new chipsets like the nForce4 must be examined in better detail. With the introduction of PCI Express, many users may have a misconception that boards without PCIe devices are bad. However, one needs to note that the nForce4 Ultra chipset has a limited width of 20 PCIe lanes. As the main graphics slot uses up 16 lanes by default, motherboard manufacturers actually only have four lanes to juggle. This means compromises between the number of PCIe expansion slots and PCIe based onboard devices that can be active on a board.
If you are looking for an all-in-one board with the most fully-featured package, then we believe the best choice to be Gigabyte's GA-K8NXP-9 due to its PCI Express LAN, Wireless LAN 802.11g, IEEE 1394b FireWire and additional SATA RAID support. The ECS KN1 Extreme, MSI's K8N Neo4 Platinum and Gigabyte's own GA-K8N Ultra-9 are also excellent feature-filled boards to be considered. If however, you are a power user and would rather have a board with extensive PCI Express configurations, the choice falls on DFI's LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D although MSI's K8N Neo4 Platinum again stands out as a an equally good alternative.
Finally, lets look at the audio capabilities. AC'97 may not be music to most ears, but as far as onboard audio goes, most boards support 8-channel surround capabilities. Looking for something a little different? Both ABIT and DFI offer more interesting technologies (AudioMAX and Karajan respectively) that help increase audio quality output over analog connections. However, not all is lost. Every board except the Chaintech VNF4 Ultra also came with S/PDIF connectivity, which can be used in conjunction with external digital encoders/decoders.
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nForce 4 SLI Mobo Roundup (2005-04-01)