Two SLI and one Nforce 4 Ultra match

JUST BEFORE Nvidia updates its SLI platforms with two times 16 PCIe slots, we are ready to bring you some of the motherboards that we have been playing around for a while now. The first SLI motherboard that we ever saw was a Gigabyte GA K8NXP-SLI SLI motherboard and I have to admit that it was not love at first site. The board kept crashing and I just could not, make SLI runn. OK so I got a faulty board and this was back in February. Nvidia said it would replace the board with a new one, it sends the board and I managed to make SLI run fine. Since then I've never had major problems with the Nforce 4 SLI chipset. It works well.

My confidence in SLI returned, and I started to feel better about it. Since that day we have used Nforce 4 SLI motherboards from different vendors as a reference testing platform. We played with Gigabyte, Epox, DFI and Asus so far. When we test two cards in SLI we turn the SLI feature on and if not we just use those boards with single PCIe graphic cards we turn SLI on. Some earlier boards had not that nice SLI switch mechanism while the newer boards such as Asus do it automatically. We use Nforce 4 SLI chipset for all PCIe cards including Radeon cards. It works well with Nvidia or ATI.

I have to admit that I was sceptical about Nforce 4 SLI at the start as I and my brother separately had many problems with Nforce 3 especially with the Nforce 3 150 chipset. Luckily Nforce 4 didn't inherit the same problems and it was running fine. We tried to play with Nforce 4 Ultra and apart of missing SLI feature this chipset is also something that you might like in your Athlon 64 setup.

On this particular test we had two boards. We compared Epox 9NPA+ motherboard powered with Nforce 4 Ultra chipset. We used X800XT card from ATI as our reference cards and in SLI case we used two times 6600 GT cards. Epox motherboard comes with nice power pack. It includes screwdriver, manuals and CD's some passive motherboard heatsinks, slim IDE, Floppy and SATA cables, and additional USB and Firewire ports.

Epox 9NPA+ Nforce 4 Ultra

The board itself has active fan on a chipset, one 16X PCIe slot, three PCIe 1X slot and three PCI slots. The board we tested has four SATA ports, two IDE channels and four memory slots. Back panel features two PS2 ports, SPDIF and Optical audio out, Serial and parallel port, four USB's 1 Gbit LAN card and 5.1 sound out. A Gigabyte GA K8NXP-SLI board wrapped in very nice package. It features bunch of cables and ports, 802.11B/G W-LAN card and a DPS Dual Power System card that makes your motherboard more stabile.

Gigabyte provide four yellow and four red SATA cables, two molex to two SATA power cables, two raisers with two USB 2.0 ports, IDE and floppy cable, two Firewire and two more USB on a raiser card and that's about it.

Gigabyte GA K8NXP-SLI board

The board has this special connector for its proprietary DPS card that is suppose to make motherboard more stabile, it has two times PCIe 1X connectors and two PCI slots. The board features sight SATA connectors, dual channel IDE and four memory slots. Back panel features two PS2 connectors, SPDIF in and out, Parallel and Serial port, four USB's dual LAN and 5.1 analogue audio connectors. Third board that we played with is DFI Lan party NF4 SLI-D overclocker's favourite board. We used this board for a while and didn't have any major problems. It is very stabile overclockers friendly board that comes with Audio module, a IDE and SATA cables, manual, installation CD and back panel and that's about it.

DFI NF4 SLI-D Nforce 4 SLI motherboard

It has unique design as all of its slots are paint in yellow. It has completely different position for a socket and memory and features good old socket 939 and four dual channel memory slots, comes with four SATA ports, dual channel IDE active fan on Northbridge, two PCI, two PCIe graphic ports one PCIe 1x and one PCIe 4X motherboard comes with a active chipset cooler. On the back panel you get two PS2 ports, SPDIF in and out, detachable Audio module, six time USB 2.0 dual LAN and Firewire port.

Test:
We tested Epox Nforce 4 Ultra and Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI boards with ATI X800XL card and we tested it as a motherboard only. We wanted to see who can provide more juice. In a while we tested two Club 3D 6600 GT cards as we wanted to see how those boards can handle SLI. We tried those cards on Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI motherboard and it was working just as good as on DFI, unfortunately we don't have the numbers and some cards had to go back.

All testes were performed on:
Athlon 64 4000+
2x512 MB Corsair 3200XL memory
Western Digital 160 GB SATA drive
SEA sonic 430W power supply unit
Power Color X800XL card
Two Club 3D 6600 GT cards

Doom 3	640x480	1024x768
Epox 9NPA+ nF4 ULTRA 1x X800XL	112.5	91.6
Gigabyte GA-K8NXP nF4 SLI 1x X800XL	110.9	83.6
DFI nF4 SLI 2x 6600GT	102.3	98.7
Far Cry 1.3	640x480	1024x768
Epox 9NPA+ nF4 ULTRA 1x X800XL	74.54	75.33
Gigabyte GA-K8NXP nF4 SLI 1x X800XL	71.37	72.83
DFI nF4 SLI 2x 6600GT	67.96	66.67
UT 2004	640x480	1024x768
Epox 9NPA+ nF4 ULTRA 1x X800XL	188.38	189.62
Gigabyte GA-K8NXP nF4 SLI 1x X800XL	188.10	188.63
DFI nF4 SLI 2x 6600GT	170.91	171.70
Half Life 2	640x480	1024x768
Epox 9NPA+ nF4 ULTRA 1x X800XL	57.15	57.13
Gigabyte GA-K8NXP nF4 SLI 1x X800XL	55.99	56.37
DFI nF4 SLI 2x 6600GT	49.45	49.61
Sandra 2004 SP2	Epox 9NPA+ nF4 ULTRA 1x X800XL	Gigabyte GA-K8NXP nF4 SLI 1x X800XL	DFI nF4 SLI 2x 6600GT
CPU	11095	11087	10596
	3813/4935	3812/4934	3643/4714
Memory	4972	4964	4743
	4966	4962	4741
Multimedia	23031	23017	21993
	24767	24754	23654
3DMark 2003	CPU	CPU Test 1	CPU Test 2	Total
Epox 9NPA+ nF4 ULTRA 1x X800XL	1081	131.7	17.3	10761
Gigabyte GA-K8NXP nF4 SLI 1x X800XL	1060	128.6	17.1	10757
DFI nF4 SLI 2x 6600GT	1024	120	17.2	14115
3DMark 2005	CPU	CPU Test 1	CPU Test 2	Total
Epox 9NPA+ nF4 ULTRA 1x X800XL	4685	2.3	4.2	4867
Gigabyte GA-K8NXP nF4 SLI 1x X800XL	4522	2.2	4.1	4908
DFI nF4 SLI 2x 6600GT	5636	3.0	4.7	6418
PC Mark 2004	CPU	Memory	HDD	Total
Epox 9NPA+ nF4 ULTRA 1x X800XL	4486	4881	4823	4782
Gigabyte GA-K8NXP nF4 SLI 1x X800XL	4788	4936	5259	4788
DFI nF4 SLI 2x 6600GT	4325	4708	5234	4245

It turns out that Epox motherboard with a single X800XL card is a better choice for gamers as it can score a little bit faster in every single test. Epox 9NPA+ is just a little bit faster in Sandra 2004 SP 2 and the memory works a little bit more faster when you use this board. Gigabyte manage to get the crown in PC mark as it was running the memory little bit more faster in CPU test than Epox and DFI but total score was too close.

SLI on DFI board shows that two 6600GT cards are faster than single X800XL in 3Dmark05 while in 3Dmark03 total score is on SLI side but CPU works faster on Epox. Its also interesting that single X800XL Epox 9NPA+ motherboard can beat two 6600+ games in every single game benchmark that we performed.

Conclusion:
When it comes to a single card and you are sure that you wont upgrade to SLI at any times we believe that Epox has a little bit more to offer than a gigabyte motherboard K8NXP-SLI, when it comes to the features in the box you might want to think about Gigabyte but Epox performed a few frames faster in every single test. It clearly is better choice for single card users. Gigabyte is SLI motherboard so you might want to play with it and have two cards. Even if you have one only and you plan to upgrade you might want to get this one.

If you are not into tweaking and like nice retail packages this might be a choice for your, as for the bad memory scores on DFI you can fix it when you play a little bit more with the memory settings and you can chance million things on it. When it comes to SLI, tweaking and overclocking you want to go for DFI motherboard. It will run SLI just fine, will let you easily overclock the CPU and if you have some nice memory you might be able to hit some nice speeds. It doesn't come with loads of things in the box as Gigabyte but it sure is a great motherboard. It all depends what do you want to do with you board and weather you want single card or two card setup. I could recommend Epox 9NPA+ as a Single card Nforce 4 Ultra choice while I would advise you to go for DFI NF4 SLI-D motherboard for SLI and overclocking. µ