Posted:2006-06-16 By chipset review Number of View:275988
NVIDIA NFORCE 500 VS ATI
CROSSFIRE 3200 CHIPSET REVIEW
By :chipset review
Posted:2006-06-16
xtreview is your : Video card - cpu - memory - Hard drive - power supply unit source
Although the new platform of AMD can make perfectly well with the older chipset solutions , ATI and Nvidia released new sets with current support of SLI. and crossfire.Today we will check the performance of borth mobo with new amd am2 platform.nvidia and ati still leading the market alwais to first ones to build new mobos.other chipset manuficulter will come maybe later as uli.
the chipset of the mobo play big role those day. ecpecially for overclocker and gamer. the motherboard overclocking limition has been reduced especially with nforce 3 mobo . the performance of nvidia and ati motherboard has been also improved with addition of nvidia sli and cross fire technologie. mobo those day defere a lot due to the future that come with them .
the nvidia chipset has the lead in the chipset market since nforce 2 mobo.with k8 amd architecture nvidia chipset has got better boost it has owned the market with about 50%. the nvidia chipset was know as reliable stable fast overclocker chipset
It is quite clear that nvdia starting owning the markeet since 2004. the via chipset is going down this can be explained with many reason.
1) the price the nvidia chipset motherboard have pretyy same price as via one
2)future in nvidia board are better than the one in via chipset based mobo
3)overclocking capability and performance are in the nvidia side
4)sli technologie that require nvidia based chipset
lets start now with crossfire xpress 3200 chipset from ati:
ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 review
first to all I would like to notice that the new chipset solutin from borth side ati and nvidia do not include any future over the old nforce 4 and crossfire one. the amd am2 still using the same bus . the only deference should be the new implementation of ddr 2 support.old nforce 4 could handle well the am2 cpu (check our news section with abit mobo.builded in old nforce chipset with addition of ddr2 memory )
the new ati chipset is called ati xpress 3200. this chipset are very smilar in structure language to the one used in intel lga.the networking support function has been removed from the south bridge, ati has also reduced the number of pata connection .only 2 are availble .the south north bridge connection are made via a link xpress2 this connection speed is about 2gb/s.and this somehow could limit the motherboard performance especially when using two pci- e card.
Nvidia nForce 500 review
The new nvidia chipset is called nforce 500 .it should go in serie nvidia 5xx chipset.
nvidia chipet strucure is new here . There is two :
1)-MCP chip :Media and Communications Processor
2)-SPP chip :System Performance Processor
The spp one add support for additional x16 bus used in sli configuration.
the new nvidia chipset come rich with future.the nvidia nforce 590 sli is dual chip.the spp one was inserted between cpu and mcp and connection is made via hypertransport bus.The support of additional graphics bus is the only role of the SPP
chip. All other functions are implemented in the MCP chip that can also
be used as a chipset controller without any additional companion-chips
if the platform doesn’t have to support a pair of PCI Express x16
graphics interfaces.
there is a second gigabyte network controler plus high definition audio(azalia)
he network controller built into the new Nvidia chipset (its driver, to be more exact) supports another technology called FirstPacket
. It allows assigning high priority to network packets generated by
certain applications. It serves to reduce the network delays during
online gaming with nForce500 based platforms as well as to ensure
flawless VoIP operation.
there is also new serial ata 2 controler it can support now up to six sata connection with bandwidth of 3gbit/s.nvidia like ati new chipset has also reduced the number of pata connection.note that nvidia allow creating raid array 0,1,0+1 from sata and pata
This was full list support of deferent nvidia 5xx chipset serie
ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 vs NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI
ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200
NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI
Processor interface
16-bit/1GHz HyperTransport
16-bit/1GHz HyperTransport
Chipset (bridge chips)
North Bridge: RD580 South Bridge: SB600
MCP: MCP55XE SPP: C51XE
Internal bus between chips
A-Link Xpress II (PCI Express x4)
16-bit/1GHz HyperTransport
PCI Express lines
36 (2 x 16, 4 x 1)
46 (2 x 16, 8, 6 x 1)
Multi-GPU support
CrossFire
SLI
Serial ATA ports
4
6
Serial ATA 2.0
Yes
Yes
RAID support
RAID 0, 1, 0+1
RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5
Parallel ATA channels
1
1
Integrated sound
High Definition Audio
High Definition Audio
USB 2.0 ports
10
10
Integrated network
None
Dual Gigabit Ethernet
Supported PCI devices
6
5
Integrated hardware monitoring
Yes
None
However, despite everything we have just mentioned, Nvidia nForce 590
SLI seems to be a more functional solution with richer features set. It
means that in order to design a mainboard with the comparable set of
features, the mainboard developer who has selected an ATI chipset will
have to integrate more onboard controllers. But it shouldn’t affect the
final price of the product. ATI offers its CrossFire Xpress 3200 at a
slightly lower cost than Nvidia nForce 590 SLI, so the end-price of the
ready solutions levels out. Both mainboards will be selling for over
$150, and the price will mostly depend on the manufacturer’s ambitions
and accessories bundle.
ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 Based Mainboard
NVIDIA nForce 590 Based Mainboard
ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 and NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI Overclock
Those two mobo sweem to be more tha ready for overclocking.. high overclocking capability also mean the high quality of those product they can handle well stock and even overclocked setting
borth mobo have enough setting bios setting volatge and memory tweak to get the cpu as high as possible. the chipset cooling was also excellent
take a look to the two cpu z screen
340 and 338 for nvidia and ati mobo is already high they was borth capable to max out the cpu.When we set the HyperTransport frequency multiplier to 3x, the maximum
clock generator frequency without losing the system stability reached
338MHz for ATI chipset and 340MHz for nvdia chipset. It should
be more than enough for successful overclocking of any Socket AM2 CPU
out there.
Note that when Nvidia mentions special overclocking friendly functions
they also imply their LinkBoost technology and SLI-Ready Memory with
EPP. However, these technologies cannot really improve overclocking by
themselves, and they can only make it easier. The first technology
mentioned above offers to automatically increase the performance of the
bus between the chipset bridges and the PCI Express x16 bus, while the
second technology sets the most optimal memory timings (from the
manufacturers standpoint) for the installed memory. So, these
opportunities should be of primary interest to commencing overclockers,
while real enthusiasts will definitely prefer to adjust all the
settings on their own.
amd am2 chipset review ati vs nvidia
To test the performance of the new Socket AM2 chipsets we used the following hardware:
the chipset performance is very similar. nvidia is taking the lead in overall benchmark but the defrence is small. note is case of amd 64 based core the chipset is not playing large role in overall system performance . the memory controler is integreted with the cpu .
Serial ATA 2.0 Controller Performance
the hard drive used on this test is one of the top end availble those day (raptor x). u can clealy see that nvidia have better overall driver performance .it sweem like the caching algoritme in nvidia driver case is better than the one used with ati
Network Controller Performance
The performance of the gigabit network controller integrated into
Nvidia nForce 590 SLI chipset is almost identical to that of the
Marvell Yukon controller on ATI Sturgeon mainboard.borth mobo are showing good performance u can also notice a minimal cpu usage with nvidia chipset . the driver optimizsation at the networking level still somehow better with nvidia chipset.
Power Consumption
a very inresing point with power usage . it is clear that the nvidia chipset is more power hugry than ati .we can state that Nvidia nForce 590 SLI chipset is considerably less
economical than ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200. and if you are looking for
the quiet and cool system, the Nvidia chipset may not be the right
choice to make
Conclusion of the am2 chipset review
borth mobo are providing smilar performance . nvidia has usually been the leader in all benchmark test.
The question about which chipset is the best one is appropriate only if
you are not going to use SLI or CrossFire graphics configurations and
do not even consider the possible upgrade in this direction in the
future. However, even in this case it is really hard to give any
recommendations about the best chipset choice, because ATI CrossFire
Xpress 3200 and Nvidia nForce 590 SLI have different strengths and
drawbacks, which we have already discussed in great detail today.
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