Athlon64 PCIe Chipset Shootout

Zitat

Each of the four chipsets we’ve looked at has their own set of positives and negatives, but after our time with each individual board and chipset, we can certainly say that the nForce4 Ultra board from MSI is our favorite of the bunch. We say this as the nForce4 Ultra has a terrific feature set, performs great in all of our benchmarks (including disk and peripheral performance), and was by and large the most stable of the four boards. Even better, nForce4 Ultra boards are priced right on par with VIA K8T890 boards, while performing better and sporting a better feature set.

In terms of raw feature sets, the nForce4 SLI is still the top of the line, even though it only holds one major feature over the nForce4 Ultra, that being SLI graphics card support. That’s a pretty big feature though, and many people will find shelling out the extra $30.00 for an SLI motherboard over an Ultra motherboard to be a good deal. If SLI isn’t your thing, stick to the Ultra, and we think you’ll be very happy.

The ATI Radeon XPress 200 is a very interesting contender as well, as the MSI board using this chipset sports a price tag of just over $100, which is about 1/3rd less than other Athlon64 PCI Express motherboards. In testing, we found the board to perform quite well in games and applications, although our performance numbers were somewhat erratic in some cases. We also found that VIA’s Southbridge performance is still not up to par with their competitors, but there are making strides in the right direction. The Radeon XPress 200 will make for a great home theater box or a basic Athlon64 system, but we would still recommend the more stable nForce4 Ultra chipset if given the opportunity.

The VIA K8T890 is somewhat disappointing, as it has no major features to separate itself from the competition. Even worse, it had problems with our USB 2.0 speed tests, and these problems which do not appear to be isolated to our motherboard choice. Many first generation K8T890 boards appear to be suffering quite a few compatibility issues. It’s hard to recommend the K8T890 at this time, especially when the nForce4 Ultra does everything the K8T890 does (but better) at the same price point. If VIA wants to compete with nVidia, they’ll need to get a new Southbridge controller out the door with modern feature sets instead of relying on the aging 8237 design.