Nforce2 wins big time against nforce1 demonstrating how much better is the nforce1 successor and how NVIdia worked hard to make up for the shortcomings in the original nforce chipset!
However, in what looks like something impossible, across all resolutions and settings KT266A beats nforce2 by large amounts: for example at 1600*1200 maxed out settings including sound it is 8% faster! This is absolutely surreal and surely no one was expecting it!

We go back now to DirectX7 with 3dmark 2000. Nforce2 ultra at 1024*768, 1280*1024 and 1600*1200 with the Athlon XP 2000.

Finally nforce2 ultra wins by a clear margin! Across all resolutions it provides a minimum 25% lead over nforce1!! Incredible how a change of motherboards with different chipsets can have such a large effect on the scores!
Also nforce2 ultra clearly defeats KT266A with at least 14% lead!

We have arrived at the de facto standard benchmark for socket 462: 3d mark 2001.
Again 3 resolutions are tested: 1024*768, 1280*1024 and 1600*1200.

Nforce gets its revenge after the losses in Code creatures pro and Aquamark 3 by defeating KT266A in 3dmark 2001. Even at 1600*1200 resolution the advantage it has over nforce1 is huge: 18%! However even more important is the 5% lead over KT266A at this resolution!

3d mark 2003 is next at the same 4:3 resolutions:

At the default 1024*768 resolution and settings nforce2 has a convincing lead over nforce1: 8%. However against KT266A the lead is only 3%.
Contrary to what you might believe as the resolution and level of detail increase the lead nforce2 has also increase! At the mighty 1600*1200 resolution with all details maxed out nforce2 commands a 11% lead over nforce1 and 8% over KT266A!
Unfortunately the nforce2 APU does not manage to win against Creative live and the scores of the tests with NO SOUND and 24 sounds are really, really close. Nfroce2 ultra APU is the only one that can do the 60 sounds test but as the other systems can't it is not taken into account.
It seems that I forgot to take the screenshot with the results from the sound tests!

We reached the final 3d mark: 2005. In this test all the results are bunched up closely together because the video card is the limiting factor.

No winner in 3dmark 2005. I think that this benchmark is too much for any AGP video card. You really need something a lot more powerful to get beyond the video card bottleneck.

nd22 wrote on 2024-07-04, 07:12:

It seems that I forgot to take the screenshot with the results from the sound tests!

Here is the screenshot with the results in the sound tests of 3dmark 2003 after assembling last night the system again:

We are finished with 3dmark where nforce2 managed to claim the victory in all the versions and we are switching to PC mark:
30 & 31. Version 2002 is first:

The processor score is too close to nforce1 and KT266A to make a difference however the memory scores are worlds apart: already VIA is 14% better than nforce1 but nforce2 is 31% better than the first nforce making a huge difference. Dual channel nforce2 is clearly better than single channel KT266A in this test with a 17% lead over it!

32 & 33 & 34. Next is PC mark 2004 which includes a GPU score:

CPU score: both KT266A and nforce2 are leading nforce1 with 6% and no clear advantage between either of them.
RAM score: nforce2 superior memory controller gives it a 26% lead over nforce1 and 9% over KT266A - you can clearly see the advantages of dual channel here.
GPU score: both nforce chipsets have a 4%, respectively 10% lead over KT266A. AGP implementation is much better on nvidia chipsets than on VIA!

35 & 36 & 37. The final PC mark is the 2005 version:

CPU scores are again too close to declare a winner.
RAM score: with a 22% advantage over nforce1 and 6% over KT266A nforce2 wins this test.
GPU score: again far better AGP implementations on both nforce1 and nforce2 enables both of them to score better than VIA KT266A by large margins: 7% for nforce1 and 20% (!!!) for nforce2.
In all PC mark versions nforce2 scores again a clear victory.

The only GUI test in the whole suite is Tom2d. Both nforce1 and nforce2 have a colossal advantage over VIA KT266A. This has been a weak spot for all VIA chipsets since the very beginning.

We have reached the games tests and the first is Far cry 1. I used HardwareOC bench tool to provide accurate and repeatable testing conditions. Because the results are in HTML format I do not have screenshots saved but I will put all of them in one archive for anyone interested.
38. 1024*768 resolution with all details maxed out.

Far Cry Benchmark

The benchmark started at 28.03.2024 06:41:32

System Information
Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP
System memory: 2,0 GB
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2000+
CPU speed: 1666 MHz
Sound system: : NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) Audio
VGA Information
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
Memory: 256.0 MB
Current GPU speed: 560 MHz
Current memory speed: 700 MHz
Driver version: 6.14.0010.9371 (English)

Resolution: 1024×768
Ultra quality option, Direct3D renderer
Level: Volcano, demo: hocvolcano.tmd
Pixel shader: default model
Antialising: 8×
Anisotropic filtering: 16×
HDR: disabled
Geometry Instancing: disabled
Normal-maps compression: disabled

Score = 49,20 FPS (Run 1)
Score = 48,30 FPS (Run 2)
Score = 48,82 FPS (Run 3)
Average score = 48,77 FPS

Copyright 2002 - 2006 Zoltan Nemeth - Roadside

39. 1280*1024 resolution with max settings:

The benchmark started at 28.03.2024 06:51:16

System Information
Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP
System memory: 2,0 GB
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2000+
CPU speed: 1666 MHz
Sound system: : NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) Audio
VGA Information
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
Memory: 256.0 MB
Current GPU speed: 560 MHz
Current memory speed: 700 MHz
Driver version: 6.14.0010.9371 (English)

Resolution: 1280×1024
Ultra quality option, Direct3D renderer
Level: Volcano, demo: hocvolcano.tmd
Pixel shader: default model
Antialising: 8×
Anisotropic filtering: 16×
HDR: disabled
Geometry Instancing: disabled
Normal-maps compression: disabled

Score = 49,85 FPS (Run 1)
Score = 48,78 FPS (Run 2)
Score = 49,40 FPS (Run 3)
Average score = 49,34 FPS

40. Far cry 1 at 1600*1200 max details:

The benchmark started at 28.03.2024 06:59:52

System Information
Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP
System memory: 2,0 GB
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2000+
CPU speed: 1666 MHz
Sound system: : NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) Audio
VGA Information
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
Memory: 256.0 MB
Current GPU speed: 560 MHz
Current memory speed: 700 MHz
Driver version: 6.14.0010.9371 (English)

Resolution: 1600×1200
Ultra quality option, Direct3D renderer
Level: Volcano, demo: hocvolcano.tmd
Pixel shader: default model
Antialising: 8×
Anisotropic filtering: 16×
HDR: disabled
Geometry Instancing: disabled
Normal-maps compression: disabled

Score = 49,08 FPS (Run 1)
Score = 47,91 FPS (Run 2)
Score = 48,64 FPS (Run 3)
Average score = 48,54 FPS