Hi everybody,
I've had several nFroce2 mobos during the last few months (Epox 8RDA3+ rev.2.1, Abit NF7 v.2.0, Epox 8RDA3+ PRO rev.1.2), using the same clean system - Win2k SP4. After having done some tests with the current one just a few days ago I marked a real low memory bandwidth /efficiency in comparison with my old (now unfortunately dead) motherboards. I also had a possibility to test two 8RDA+ PRO rev.1.2 for a short period of time and the results were the same - disappointing.
That made me read some Epox 8RDA3+ (PRO) and Epox 8RDA6+ PRO reviews, in which the same issue had been discovered. Since 6+ PRO and 3+ PRO are actually the same mobos, with the exception of the additional SATA controller on the latter, sharing the same bios, I assume they also unfortunately share the same issue. Even more - all of the mentioned "PRO" mobos use exactly the same PCB (well, at least in this 1.2 revision), so I think this is common for all of them.
From my personal experience this afflicts the SiSoft Sandra 2004 memory bandwidth benchmark, both read and write tests in Aida32 /Everest Home, 3DMark 2001SE and SuperPI - these are only examples to show everyone, that the discovered low bandwidth is true and has certainly got some bad influence on the overall system performance, resulting with worse FPS in games and worse benchmarks' results.
Some facts :
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2004/epox/8rda6+pro/b2.htm http://www.ocworkbench.com/2004/epox/8rda6+pro/b4.htm http://www.ocworkbench.com/2004/epox/8rda6+pro/b7.htm "In the tests, we checked out the performance in comparison with older NF2 and other chipsets. Despite being a new chipset that bundles lots of good features, it it slightly slower than its predecessor. The first thing that comes into my mind would be the integrated firewall and dedicated Gigabit Ethernet and SATA that has taken a portion of that bandwidth. We experimented it by turning them off and not installing drivers. We tested with a couple of new BIOS but it still remains the same."
The same goes for me - I've already tried 3 different bioses, changed alfa timings with TicTac's nForce2 Tweaker, turned everything useless off in the bios, checked everything almost hundred times - without any improvement. Sandra's 2004 results with 2x512MB 2-3-3-11 running in dual DDR mode are 100-200 MB/s worse than with 1x512MB 2.5-3-3-11 on my old 8RDA3+ rev.2.1.
400-500 less in 3DMark 2001SE (observed after many runs) - I used the same nForce unified drivers and the same ATI Catalyst 4.8 drivers to make the comparison as objective as I could.
Have a look at my SuperPI 16M calculation's time :
Abit NF7 v2.0
On my current Epox :
11.5x225 - 17m 25s
12x218 - 17m 22s
Some more reviews :
http://www.legionhardware.com/html/doc.php?id=325 http://www.amdzone.com/modules.php?o...rtid=58&page=6 http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.c...id=1623&page=5 http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.c...id=1623&page=6
Exactly the same issue could be discovered in some of the oldest and the newest revisions of 8RDA3+ :
http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/...ds/1254_4.html http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=58&type=expert http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid...e=expert&pid=9
My dead, unforgotten 8RDA3+ rev.2.1 equaled in memory performance with the best nFroce2 mobos like DFI Lan Party /Infinity and Abit NF7 v.2.0 (I used D24 original bios, D26 Discovery CPC on by Merlin, D26 Black Mantaray CPC On by TicTac).
.... and don't get me wrong, 'cause I'm moaning all the time - apart from that really irritating low memory bandwidth I'm satisfied with my mobo. I only want to know, if this can be fixed with some bios tweaks and new bios release or this is connected with the PCB and nothing can help to boost the memory performance.
Any suggestions?
