VIA KT266A:

Conclusions after testing Aquamark3:
nforce1 is again last! Another thing to note is that a 3 year old Creative live is clearly better in this test than the much vaunted sound storm!
Incredible as it may seems but KT133A manages to outscore nforce1 with APU and only with the help of Creative can nforce1 reach the same performance level despite using dual channel DDR while KT7A is handicapped by the much slower SDRAM!
AMD760 easily surpasses both nforce1 and KT133A by at least 10% at all resolutions and settings even at 1600*1200!
KT266A crushes the competition in AM3! Leading by large margins in every single resolution with or without sound KR7A is the winner of Aquamark3!

15. After a disastrous start maybe 3dmark will mark a comeback for nforce1! We start with 3dmark 2000 - a DirectX 7 benchmark that does not use any audio effects however I tested both with NVidia APU and Creative live. We start at 1024*768 resolution default settings - that is 16 bit color depth in 3dmark 2000:
The order is the same:
1. nforce1: NV7-133R + sound storm
2. nforce1: NV7-133R + creative live
3. KT133A: KT7A-raid
4.AMD760: KG7-raid
5. KT266A: KR7A-133R

16. We increase the resolution to 1280*1024 max details:

17. And now the highest possible settings: 1600*1200 max details

Conclusion after 3dMARK 2000 tests:
The situation is pretty grim for nforce1, again is at the bottom of the charts together with VIA KT133A. There is no difference between APU and Live, but that is to be expected! KT7A-raid shares the the last places with Nvidia but that is also to be expected as SDRAM is strongly limiting the performance of the Athlon XP. I long pondered if I should include this platform in the tests and I concluded that is better to test it than to not test it in order to see how much PC-133 RAM is bottlenecking the processor and if Windows XP is a feasible option on such a system.
KG7-raid and KR7A-raid are battling for supremacy in 3dmark 2000 with both platforms having scores too close to declare a winner but with VIA edging out AMD by a small margin.
You can clearly see how huge is the bottleneck on geforce 7600GT as the scores do not decrease as the resolution increases!

18. And now the benchmark that is the golden standard for all socket 462 systems: 3dmark 2001! Perfectly representing the era in which socket A was all the rage it balances very well all the components in a system by requiring a good CPU, strong GPU, high memory bandwidth and a good chipset onto which all of the above should be installed in perfect harmony.
First up is 1024*768 resolution default settings:
Same order:
1. nforce1: NV7-133R + sound storm
2. nforce1: NV7-133R + creative live
3. KT133A: KT7A-raid
4.AMD760: KG7-raid
5. KT266A: KR7A-133R

No nForce 2 the pinnacle of socket A?

19. 3dmark 2001 at 1280*1024 resolution max details:

Matchstick wrote on 2024-06-07, 05:57:

No nForce 2 the pinnacle of socket A?

nForce2 has already been tested! You can read this very topic from the beginning and see that I went through all socket 462 chipsets step by step. I started with nforce2 and KT880, I added KT600 later; I tested KT400A, KT400, KT333. We are now testing ONLY chipsets supporting 266MHz FSB! The goal is to cover the whole socket A platform from a performance point of view and to clearly identify which platform is better at each "stage": for 400MHz I already put up the numbers and nforce2 is the winner!

20. 3dmark 2001 - 1600*1200 max settings:

3dmark 2001 makes any kind of doubt vanish: nforce1 can no longer hope to win the battle for the best 266 MHz chipset as it is again last! Nforce2 is such a great performer that the difference between the 2 must be enormous!
If we look only at the default 3dmark 2001 result at 1024*768 resolution even KT133A is better by 2.5% than nforce1 and maintains that margin at every single resolution! Surely 2.5% is within the margin of error but what strikes me is the consistency of the results: every single resolution and nforce1 is last and VIA KT133A is in front despite PC-133 strangling that poor CPU.
AMD760 is 6.8% better than nforce1 at the same 1024*768 default settings and that is noticeable.
VIA KT266A is on another level as it obliterates nforce1 by a 17.5% lead!! It also far ahead of AMD760 with a 10% lead and it is the undisputed champion of 3dmark 2001!

21. We left the 2001 version of 3dmark behind as we switch to 3dmark 2003: 1024*768 resolution, default settings
Same order as before:
1. nforce1: NV7-133R + sound storm
2. nforce1: NV7-133R + creative live
3. KT133A: KT7A-raid + creative live
4.AMD760: KG7-raid + creative live
5. KT266A: KR7A-133R + creative live

22. We increase the resolution to 1280*1024, max details:

23. We increase one more time the resolution to the final one: 1600*1200:

24. 3dmark 2003 also has tests that include audio; it is the only version of 3dmark to do sound test and display the frame rate. The results will not differ between resolutions - maybe 2-3% of most. Creative live can not do the 60s sounds test and neither NVidia sound storm but we got results with no sound and 24 sounds.
Let's go over the frame rate as it is reported in the 1024*768 resolution - default settings - NO SOUND results:
nforce1 with APU: 21.2 fps
nforce1 with Live: 20.2 fps
KT133A with Live: 18.1 fps
AMD760 with Live: 21.3fps
KT266A with Live: 25.0 fps
It is obvious that VIA KT133A suffers a large performance hit as it is 15% slower than nforce1 in this test.
Nforce1 with either its own APU or with the Live card and AMD 760 are grouped closely together.
On the other hand VIA KT266A is the leader again being faster than everyone else by a large margin again!

25. 3dmark 2003 again but now we look at 24 sounds test results:
nforce1 with APU: 14.4 fps
nforce1 with Live: 15.2 fps
KT133A with Live: 10.5 fps
AMD760 with Live: 13.1 fps
KT266A with Live: 16.2 fps
This time KT133A suffers an ever bigger hit: 27% slower than nforce1 with APU! Clearly this platform has problems with Creative live cards!
AMD760 also suffers a 10% hit relative to nforce1 with APU. It is for the first time in this comparative where this platform exhibits such a big performance loss!
KT266A is the winner again; despite the fact that numbers seem quite close it is actually 12.50% faster than nforce1 with APU!

26. We arrived at the final 3dmark: 2005. We start again with 1024*768 resolution default settings and in the same order:
1. nforce1: NV7-133R + sound storm
2. nforce1: NV7-133R + creative live
3. KT133A: KT7A-raid
4.AMD760: KG7-raid
5. KT266A: KR7A-133R

27. 1280*1024 resolution:

28. And finally 1600*1200 resolution: