System setup and notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.- BIOSTAR K8NHA Grand, S754, NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb chipset
- EPoX 8HDA3+, S754, VIA K8T800 chipset
Other components
- AMD Athlon 64 Model 3200+ CPU (2.0GHz, 1MB L2 cache)
- NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT 256MB, AGP, 350/1000
- 1x512MB Crucial Ballistix PC4000 RAM, run at 2-2-2-6 @ DDR400 on both boards
- Pioneer 105 DVD-RW
- Western Digital 160GB (WD1600) 8MB cache hard drive
- Dell P991 19" monitor
Software
- Windows XP Professional
I've chosen to compare BIOSTAR's
nForce3 250Gb motherboard against an EPoX board sporting VIA's rival
K8T800 chipset. Note that this isn't the newer Pro iteration, but
benchmark results between the regular and Pro chipsets are within the
standard deviation of each test. No problems to report during
installation or testing, even when both boards were run with tight
memory timings.
Overclocking
The inherent problem with overclocking on the K8NHA Grand is the lack of multiplier selection. One is limited to simply raising the driven clock until stability failure, usually caused by the CPU's air-cooled ceiling and not the chipset's. In view of this and the use of an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Clawhammer CPU, I was able to run at a maximum driven clock of 225MHz before stability was compromised. BIOSTAR appears to be rather slow in releasing BIOSes for its range of motherboards, too.
