Chaintech VNF4 Ultra: Tremendous Value in a Performance Motherboard- Page /5
September 14, 2005
By
Thomas Soderstrom
SysOpt lately has examined several Socket 939 motherboards that offer exceptional value by targeting the "Performance-Mainstream" market. Today, we present a product with a price tag that, at first glance, seems to redefine "value" entirely: the Chaintech VNF4 Ultra Zenith VE. With Web pricing as low as $80, how can it possibly compare to the more expensive units we've covered?
Founded in 1986, Chaintech Computer Co. Ltd. has focused primarily on the ultra-competitive entry-level market. Over the last 19 years, it has succeeded where much of its competition failed, delivering respectable quality without getting priced out of the market. In fact, failing competition allowed Chaintech to grow even as the industry declined!
(Ironically, recent rumors have surfaced about its being forced out of the motherboard market -- a charge company management loudly denies. Adding to the speculation, this week Chaintech also announced that it would be taking on a minority partner in Walton Advanced Engineering and announced a new line of memory products, but reaffirmed its dedication to the motherboard business.)
Chaintech is marketing its Zenith series to enthusiasts and power users, although its low prices almost betray such product positioning, making it easy for the market to view Zenith as "merely" another budget offering. Yet buyers with lofty expectations as well as humble budgets should appreciate the efforts Chaintech has taken to maintain low average selling prices.
Layout and Features
Maybe it's not colorful and won't glow under a florescent tube, but Chaintech's black PCB really stands out against the sea of colors offered in competing products. Tired of pink and purple components, we appreciate the professional appearance of such simple color schemes.
Chaintech chose black and white as the VNF4 Ultra's color theme.
Chaintech equips the VNF4 Ultra with all the bells and whistles of the nForce4 Ultra chipset upon which it is based -- and not much else. Gigabit networking, ten USB 2.0 ports (six internal), four SATA and two PATA headers are par for the course with the entire nForce4 series. Any combination of SATA and PATA hard drives can be used in RAID mode, and the Ultra chipset adds 300MB/s SATA transfers plus its Active Armor secure networking engine. A Realtek ALC850 codec supplies audio.
We had a few issues with the layout of the motherboard, most notably the location of the power connectors, which are both located between the ports and processor. Such arrangement pulls these cables either over or around the CPU cooler, and on this board, the DIMM slots as well. The floppy header is also located at the bottom, so this cable will likely be routed clumsily around all hard drive cables. Also, some users with sinks on the back of their video cards may have clearance issues with the chipset cooler.
Three PCI Express and three PCI slots use six of a possible seven slot positions. We'd like to see a fourth PCI Express slot in the empty position, now occupied by one end of the 24-pin ATX connector. Having said that, six slots has become routine, with manufacturers looking to diversify on-board features and get the most out of every square inch of board space.
Six sound ports round out an otherwise commonplace selection
External connections include such legacy items as PS/2 keyboard/mouse, one Parallel and two Serial ports. Four USB and one Gigabit-capable network port add connectivity, but the PCB has no room for an IEE1394 FireWire controller.
What's really interesting is the sound port selection: six jacks support eight analog channels, plus Microphone and Line-In simultaneously, and the Line-In jack also contains a Digital Optical Out sender.
Digital Optical Output adaptor and adaptor cable as shown in the manual -- but missing from the actual packaging!
Why Chaintech decided to sacrifice the Line-In jack for use as a Digital Optical Output, rather than another output port such as Rear Out or Center/Sub, we'll never know. What bothers us most is the lack of an appropriate Digital Optical Out adapter, which should have been included in the retail box.
Construction and Quality
Exemplary! A standard 40mm fan sits atop a standard cooler.
Already pleased to see the chipset cooler with standard corner pin locations, we were overjoyed to see it using a standard 40mm fan as well. This type of fan tends to have a longer service life than typical low-profile versions, and if it does wear out, replacements can be found nearly anywhere, even Radio Shack. So while the entire cooler could be easily replaced, the standard fan makes this unnecessary.
Little things like the double-thickness backplate add to the quality appearance
Frighteningly obvious but often overlooked, small details like the decorative metal cover over the center of the backplate give the appearance of a professionally assembled system, rather than something put together in your cousin's basement. It's a shame that so many "premium" brands have omitted this to use a simple "tin plate."
A mix of both good and ordinary capacitors
Capacitor issues have become a major concern with many purchasers, yet only one of the many boards we've tested recently has used a top brand. The Chaintech VNF4 Ultra uses a mix of Sanyo and G-Luxon capacitors, which we'd rate as "good" and "ordinary," in that order. Our experience with these brands has been mostly satisfactory, so providing your system with clean power and good ventilation will help to insure a long life. (The capacitor choice isn't surprising, as most manufacturers fail to use the preferred Rubycon or Nichicon capacitors even on their premium products.)
Software and Accessories
A limited selection of cables is supplemented by an adequate software package
The VNF4 Ultra includes only one ATA, two Serial ATA, and one Floppy cable, in addition to the 4-pin Molex-to-dual-SATA power adapter. Not so much as a USB breakout cable is included.
But what is included is a reasonable manual, driver CD, and software pack featuring Norton AntiVirus 2005, DPU and ProMagic Plus recovery utilities, and Image It backup utility.
BIOS and Overclocking
POST shows vital statistics, including RAM settings
A fair selection of BIOS settings include vDIMM, vCore, and chipset voltage
BIOS supports up to 400MHz bus in 1MHz increments
A wide range of DRAM ratios are provided
The A64 bus clock of 200MHz (before HT multiplier) can be raised as high as 400MHz by scrolling to the chosen setting. Both the CPU core voltage range of 0.900v to 1.700v and chipset voltage of 1.5v to 1.70v are reasonable, but a DIMM voltage range of 2.6-2.9v seems a bit restrictive. Memory ratios go from 1/2 bus to 5/4 bus, but are likely dependant on the CPU core revision used. While the 216MHz setting appeared ineffective, the 233MHz and 250MHz settings worked on our Venice core. Both were reported incorrectly below stock speed and differently by nTune viewer and CPU-Z, but Sandra memory benchmark showed a slight gain in bandwidth.
To find the highest bus speed regardless of the capabilities of our CPU and RAM, we set the CPU at 6x bus and RAM at 2/3 bus (133MHz, DDR266). Using the included version of nTune, 220MHz at 5x HT and 250MHz at 4x HT seemed to be the limits of overclocking, regardless of other settings.
How could other settings, such as chipset voltage, have no affect on the clock ceiling? It appears to be an issue with this nTune release. We tried a newer version of nTune, only to find it maxing out at 246MHz using the 4x HT multiplier. It was decreasing memory timings and increasing the performance of other busses first. That left us doing things the old fashioned way, in BIOS.
The VNF4 Ultra tested stable at 309MHz FSB using BIOS overclocking
We ran our full benchmark suite against the overclocked system and found our highest stable bus speed at an amazing 309MHz. But there's bad news for those of you accustomed to simply dropping the bus speed following an unstable setting; that doesn't work with this motherboard. It didn't matter whether we used nTune, ClockGen, or BIOS menus: Any instability detected by the board will reset nearly everything, not just the bus speed. Worse, the system has to boot successfully beyond POST before it will allow anything above stock settings to be saved.
The process gets rather old quickly: Boot the system past the POST screen after defaults are restored, reboot, go back into BIOS, change the HT multiplier under one menu, disable "Cool and Quiet" under another, disable smart fan controls in still another, set Frequency/Voltage control to "manual", reboot, and finally set your overclock. Any failure to follow the whole routine will likely cause the BIOS to restore defaults again. Some people have complained they couldn't get their settings to stick with this board -- we believe it's because automatic BIOS reset is on a hair trigger!
Performance
We compared the VNF4 Ultra to two other Performance-Mainstream boards, the EVGA 133-K8-NF43 and ECS KN1 Extreme, using the popular benchmarks 3D Mark 2005, 3D Mark 2003, and SiSoft Sandra. All platforms were set at stock bus speeds and 2.5-3-3-8, 1T memory timings.
As seen previously, AMD's on-die memory controller has made large performance differences improbable for most applications, and similarities between nForce4 chipset platforms have further normalized scores. In fact, a variation between 200 and 201 MHz default bus speed, normally accepted, would be enough to account for the differences seen here.
Conclusion
Targeting enthusiasts, the Chaintech VNF4 Ultra Zenith VE is actually a mainstream board with a budget-class price. For well under $100, buyers get an incredibly good board with the feature-packed nForce4 Ultra chipset. Supporting up to eight ATA devices natively, the board delivers solid storage options, making competing solutions' add-in drive controllers seem frivolous. But Chaintech's target market deserves an IEEE1394 controller, even if it adds a few dollars to the price.
The Chaintech VNF4 Ultra Zenith VE is among the most stable, highest-clocking boards we've tested. Finding the overclocking limit of this board, however, proved troublesome, as it lost every custom BIOS setting at the slightest hint of instability. A top overclocker, true, but getting there is too much work.
Other strengths, such as its all-business look, serviceable chipset cooler, reinforced backplate, and low price make this board a particularly excellent choice for system integrators. (As a testament to this board's overall quality, it seems that at least one major graphics manufacturer is thought to be marketing a re-branded version -- at double the price.)
Also handy for business use, both "Cool and Quiet" and "Automatic Fan Control" are enabled by default.
Pros:
Good overall performance
Full nForce4 Ultra feature set
Great stability, even at high bus speeds
Reasonable software kit
Excellent price
Serviceable chipset cooler
Quality appearance
Cons:
No IEEE1394 FireWire option
Minor but numerous layout issues
Cumbersome Overclocking
Mediocre Capacitor Quality
The Verdict: Great for system integrators and budget-minded enthusiasts alike, the Chaintech VNF4 Ultra Zenith VE provides the highest possible value in the Performance-Mainstream market.
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