System setup and notes
Hardware and Software
Test Platforms
| MSI P4N Diamond System | Intel i925XE System | ECS PF88 Extreme System | Athlon 64 S939 PCI-Express System | |
| Processor(s) | Intel Pentium 4 660 | Intel Pentium 4 660 | Intel Pentium 4 660 | AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 |
| Mainboard | MSI P4N Diamond nForce4 SLI I.E. | ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE i925XE | ECS PF88 Extreme Hybrid | ABIT Fatal1ty AN8-SLI nForce4 |
| Memory | 1GByte (2x512MB) Crucial Ballistix DDR2-667 | 1GByte (2x512MB) Crucial Ballistix DDR2-667 | 1GByte (2x512MB) Crucial Ballistix DDR2-667 | 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS3200XL | Memory timings | 4-4-4-12 @ DDR533 | 4-4-4-12 @ DDR533 | 4-4-4-12 @ DDR533 | 2-2-2-5 1T @ DDR400 |
| Graphics Card | ATI RADEON X850 XT PE - PEG16X - CATALYST 5.4 | Graphics Card for SLI | 2x NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultras - ForceWare 71.89 | Disk Drives | 160GB WD IDE & 36GB SATA Raptor |
| BIOS Version | BIOS 1 - 19th April 2005 | BIOS 14 - 23rd March 2005 | BIOS 16/4/05 - 16th April 2005 | BIOS 13 - 25th April 2005 |
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional, SP2 | |||
| Mainboard Software | nForce4 7.02 platform driver | Intel INF Update Utility 6.3.0.1007 | nForce4 7.02 platform driver | nForce 6.39 platform driver |
Benchmark Software
HEXUS.in-house Cryptography Benchmark
HEXUS Pifast Benchmark
ScienceMark 2.0 (7th February 2005)
Realstorm 2004
CINEBENCH 2003 multi-CPU render
HEXUS.in-house MP3 Encoding Benchmark using LAME 3.97a (Intel HT compiler) - 701MB WAV
picCOLOR 32-bit v4.0
KribiBench v1.1.9
Microsoft Movie Maker 2.1
Simpli Software HDTach
SLI testing
3DMark05 b1.2.0
DOOM 3 b1282
Far Cry v1.3
Notes
MSI's P4N Diamond nForce4 SLI-powered motherboard will be compared to a class-leading Intel i925XE motherboard in the form of ABIT's Fatal1ty AA8XE. Further, ECS has recently launched a dual-platform motherboard that catered for both LGA775 and S939 CPUs; the latter via an add-in card. It was powered by SiS' 656/965 chipset combination, and it will be interesting to see how it squares up to Intel and NVIDIA's premier chipsets. ABIT's AN8 SLI is another top-notch NVIDIA-based board, this time supporting SLI for S939 CPUs. Like the P4N Diamond, it will be run with dual GeForce 6800 Ultra video cards in the gaming benchmarks, which will take in 1024x768, 1280x1024, and 1600x1200 resolution, both with and without anti-aliasing.
The running speed of the boards was as follows:
3619.5MHz - ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE i925XE - Intel Pentium 4 660
3600.5MHz - ECS PF88 Extreme - Intel Pentium 4 660
3599.4MHz - MSI P4N Diamond - Intel Pentium 4 660
2411.2MHz - ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 (nForce4 Ultra) - AMD Athlon 64 FX-53
Overclocking
BIOS iterations have a huge impact on overclocking performance. The sample board shipped with what amounted to a pre-production BIOS. Running an unlocked Pentium 4 570J CPU with a multiplier factor of 14x, a stable, overclocked FSB frequency of 272MHz was achieved. That's not much above the board's rated 266MHz, but newer BIOSes should improve matters. I'd expect 300MHz to be in the offing, and this review will be updated once a final BIOS is received.
