As the test system arrived complete I didn't require any setup to run the benchmarks for this article. However, to test compatibility and provide a reference point for performance, I did swap out an ATI 9700 Pro to test AGP 8x and a 3200+ Athlon 64 to compare the system against our standard test rig but otherwise the system was tested with what came with it.
The BIOS options on the reference nForce3 250 Gb are rather limited for overclocking potential. This is typical of a reference board. No voltage adjustments are possible with the nForce3 250 Gb reference board. The CPU FSB is adjustable in 1 MHz increments from 200 MHz standard to 250 MHz. Of course manufacturers will provide their own options when they make their boards.
Test Setup
- 3400+ Athlon 64
- 3200+ Athlon 64
- GEFORCE FX 5950 Ultra running 53.03 drivers
- Seagate 80GB PATA HDD
- nForce3 250 Gb reference board
- Soyo CK8 Dragon Plus
- 16x DVD-ROM
- 512 MB Corsair XMS 3200 DDR memory
- Windows XP with SP1
Benchmarks
- Sysmark 2004
- SpecViewPerf 7.1.1
- 3DMark 2001 Build 330
- 3DMark 2003 Build 340
- UT2003
- PCMark 2004
- Quake3
I decided to run the standard Athlon 64 benchmarks that we use for Motherboards.org with a couple of differences. Sysmark 2004 is BAPCO's latest system benchmark utility. When the tests were originally done on the Athlon 64 platform for Motherboards.org, this benchmark had not been released.
With the controversy surrounding NVIDIA and Futuremark, a word should be stated about the drivers used. I seriously debated the use of which driver to use in this review. NVIDIA provided a complete test system for this article outfitted with 53.03 drivers. As I'm comparing two almost identical systems (save for the HDD), with the same video card, I decided not to revert the drivers to the approved ones. Take the 3DMark 2003 scores as a comparison between two motherboards, not as a comparison between two video cards.
