Best Overclocking Yet!
Written: Jan 04 '04 (Updated Jan 23 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Overclocks, DPS 2, 12 hard drives support, Intel CSA Gigabit network, Intel SATA
Cons: Built-in RealTek sound not so great (line-in)
The Bottom Line: No contest.
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| nad_masters's Full Review: Gigabyte GA-8KNXP Motherboard |
No. I don't care if you read my other reviews. Sure, the Athlon Bartons are great overclockers, but their end results still didn't impress me as much as... well, let's talk about that later. And there is the nForce2 chipset for the Athlons that does dual channel memory and runs at DDR400 speeds. But the fact is the Athlons did not take advantage of the dual channel (as they were designed with a single 32-bit data path to the memory in the first place).
The Pentium 4 took a very long time before it actually overtook AMD's stronghold on performance. The first pathetic 1.4 GHz P4 was laughed at for the poor performance, and high price. Even their Pentium III 1.0 GHz CPU was beating it in most tests, while the Athlons were out-right beating them. Ah, but what a long way Intel has come.
The P4 was well known for being memory-bandwidth starved. RAMBUS memory helped out, but it was just too expensive compared to DRAM because it was a licenced technology. And most P4s were paired up with DDR memory. Now, Intel has the i875 chipset that runs DDR400 memory, and with the quad-pumped FSB, the FSB is actually running at 800 MHz! Still bandwidth-starved, what is Intel to do? Well, to follow nVidia's footstep, of course! Dual Channel allows 2 DDR400 memory sticks to be accessed at the same time, giving an effective 800 MHz of data stream. This matches the new generations of P4C's FSB! And all was well.
But enough with this history crap. Let's talk about the Gigabyte GA-8KNXP motherboard. There is also an "Ultra" version that lacks FireWire, but gains an Adaptec SCSI controller, but most will not need this feature. I went ahead and grabbed the non-Ultra.
For $205 at NewEgg, it is still a pricy piece of hardware. But when the box came, it was known that this was a $205 piece of hardware! The box was not the usual form factor - it was much thicker, and was definately heavier than most motherboard packages. Upon opening it up, there were manuals, a cornacopia of cables, and a very large board. Little nick nacks such as the Dual Power System 2 (DPS 2) module (allowing for a better electrical signal), brackets for the built-in sound (more connections), and USB/FireWire brackets adorn the inards of the box as well.
The motherboard was a colorful work of art, even still. If you have a case with a window, this is the motherboard for you. Even so sinice the DPS 2 module lights up blue during use.
A boring list of features from Gigabyte's marketing team:
Supports 800MHz FSB PentiumŪ 4 Processor with HT Technology
Supports Dual Channel DDR400 architecture with ECC
AGP 8x with AGP Pro interface for excellent graphics performance
Gigabyte patented technology Dual Power System 2 (DPS 2) design
Integrated Serial-ATA interface for RAID 0 function
Integrated IntelŪ PRO/1000 CT network connection
Integrated T.I IEEE1394 interface
Integrated GigaRAID IDE RAID Interface
Features Performance Acceleration Technology (PAT)
Not so boring when you realize there is much more to it than marketing terminoligy and mumbo jumbo. Some of the biggest highlights were the Intel Gigabit networking, the DPS 2, and all those IDE/SATA connections.
Configuration
As tested:
Intel Pentium 4 3.0C
Intel Stock Heatsink/Fan
Gigabyte GA-8KNXP rev 2.0 (Bios ver FE)
2x Corsair 256 MB DDR433 RAM (SPD reports 400 MHz) CL2
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128 MB
Western Digital 250 GB /w 8 MB cache
Western Digital 120 GB /w 2MB cache
Western Digital 80 GB /w 2 MB cache (C:)
Plextor 8x DVD /-RW drive
Lite-On 52x24x52x CD-RW drive
Windows XP Professional SP1
I've set it up at stock speeds (15x 200) for the usual speed of 3.0 GHz to install Windows XP Pro, and to get everything ready for testing. Once I made sure everything was stable with Prime 95 and Sandra Burn-in tests, I went overclocking!
At stock memory voltage (2.5v), I was able to get 216 MHz out of them. The CPU was just over 3.2 GHz at this speed (3240 MHz). Prime 95 and Sandra Burn-in test went flawlessly overnight.
After bumping the memory voltage to 2.6v, I was able to muster 220 MHz out of it. The CPU was at an even 3.3 GHz, and ran stable overnight.
Finally, the max memory voltage of 2.7v allowed me to wring out a staggering 229 MHz! This is DDR458! This is a Pentium 4 running at 3435 MHz! This is over 3.4 GHz! Again, ran stable (in fact, using it tonight for this epinions).
What is amazing is that the CPU core voltage was never raised, and remained at the stock 1.53v. Yummy! If only I had better RAM. ;)
Even during the tests, the CPU never went over 60*C (using the Gigabyte software EasyTuning for realtime measurement). With better RAM, heatsink/fan, and a slight bump in core voltage, who knows how far I can push this processor?
The impressive gains in clocking made me suspicious that the DPS 2 is actually doing what it is suppose to: clean up the power for better and more even current and voltage (less dips and surges). Marketing hype? Probably not, as now I am a believer.
One thing I loved about the GA-8KNXP is that it uses all of what Intel offers in their i875 chipset. From the SATA, CSA Gigabit networking, and the PAT technologies, to other additions to extend what Intels wanted to originally offered. Two more SATA connectors from Silicon Image's own chips, and GigaRAID gives even more hard drive connections. This goes along with the built-in main ATA controllers. So how many hard drives can this thing support out of the box?
2x PATA (main) (4 hard drives)
2x GigaRAID PATA (4 hard drives)
2x SATA (Intel) (2 hard drives)
2x SATA (Sillicon Image) (2 hard drives)
With a total support of 12 hard drives, you may want to get a full tower for this bad boy, and turn it into a server! Thankfully, Gigabyte also have a bracket for two of the SATAs so you can connect external SATA devices. A tip, though - since the Sillicon Image chipset is the only SATA connectors that support hotswaping, you will want to connect the external bracket to it, since you will not want to turn off your PC everytime you want to install a hard drive externally.
The built-in sound is provided by RealTek, and supports 5.1 speaker systems. It comes with a bracket that connects to digital audio devices via coax or optical, as well as support subwoofer and center channels. Awesome features for a built-in sound card, but it is no nVidia nForce Soundstorm. No realtime Digital Dolby 5.1 encoding here. :( But then again, neither does the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZX from Creative Labs. There is a couple of problems I have ran into with the RealTek:
1) The line-in echos if you do not mute it in the Record section of the Sound Control Panel. Also, line-in audio sounds muffled.
2) The automatic detection of devices connected to the "universal" jacks gets confused sometimes, choosing the wrong function for the wrong device. (Mic/sub-center, line-in/rear, etc.).
Testing
Now it's time for the fun part: Benchmarking!
SiSoft Sandra 2004 - CPU Arithmetic
Dhrystone ALU 10163 MIPS
Whetstone FPU/SSE2 4138/7269 MFLOPS
The fastest baseline Sandra have listed is a P4C 3.2 GHz dual CPU at 9858 MIPs, and 4062/7139 MFLOPS. Just simply, WOW.
SiSoft Sandra 2004 - Multi-Media
Integer iSSE2 25515 it/s
Float iSSE 36733 it/s
Again, the fastest baseline (dual P4C 3.2 GHz) ran a 24581 it/s, and 34368 it/s respectively. Almost a 1000 and 2000 it/s difference respectively!
SiSoft Sandra 2004 - Memory Bandwidth
RAM Bandwidth Int Buffered iSSE2 4504 Mb/s
RAM Bandwidth Float Buffered iSSE2 4467 Mb/s
A very impressive showing at 4.5 GB/sec! My previous record was around 3 GB/sec with the nForce2 and the same memory. The fastest baseline is recorded at 5615 MB/s and 5617 MB/s respectively. I do not understand why the huge difference.
UPDATE: I finally played with the memory timing (must hit CTRL-F1 in the BIOS main menu to access advanced settings), and found that 2-3-3-6 timing (normal "tight" settings) yielded better results! I was able to attain 5042 and 5001 MB/sec respectively! The "highest" base was stated above, but that was with PC4000 CL3 memory. The base for the i875 with PC3200 CL2 memory is 5007 and 5005 MB/sec respectively. As you can see, mine is more like PC3664 at 299 MHz, so the benchmark results make much more sense.
Bottom Line
Expensive motherboard, but rightfully so. It can overclock with the best of them (Asus's own high end i875 solution), and have the most ATA device support in ANY motherboard. Blah blah blah, and so forth - no contest. Why kid yourself with any other motherboard?
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 205
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