nForce4 for Budget AM2: ECS NFORCE4M-A Review- Page 4/5
July 19, 2006
By
Thomas Soderstrom
Performance
We compared the bottom-budget ECS NFORCE4M-A V1.1 against the top-budget Foxconn C51XEM2AA-8EKRS2H, a high-performance solution based on nVidia’s nForce 590 SLI reference design. The lowest NFORCE4M-A base clock setting of 200MHz results in an actual bus speed of 201MHz, while the C51XEM2AA-8EKRS2H defaults to 200.9MHz, a fairly good match. Can the NFORCE4M-A prove its value in the performance arena?
Sandra 2005 measures basic system performance. To keep things fair, benchmarking used the same default memory timings (4-4-4-15, 1T) at DDR2-667.
Yes, the high-end board stomps the budget part here, and we can’t put too much blame on the older chipset since AMD’s memory controller is on the processor.
Similar disk performance hands a slight lead to the newer disk controller of the C51XEM2AA.
Sandra Arithmetic Benchmark shows no negative effects for the older chipset, and instead reflects the NFORCE4M-A’s 0.1MHz higher reference clock speed by handing it the win.
NFORCE4M-A again beats the high-end competition in Sandra’s Multimedia benchmark, and this time by a bit more than its 0.05 percent higher clock.
The budget-priced NFORCE4M-A takes small losses in Direct3D benchmarks, with those losses strangely climbing with the age of the benchmark.
Results show the NFORCE4M-A losing again in all but one OpenGL viewset, but not by enough to make it obvious as a low-cost design.
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