AlexZ wrote on 2025-10-15, 07:28:

nd22 wrote on 2025-10-06, 07:30:

6. Storage devices: as much as I would liked to use SSD half of the boards refused outright to run with a SSD connected! In fact only 2 out of 4 accepted a SSD. On VIA K8T800 PRO with the VT8237 there is a known problem when only SATA 150 drives are accepted or SATA 300 that can be jumpered to SATA 1.5 speed. On nforce3 despite trying multiple brands no SSD worked. Unfortunately I do not have a Sand force based SSD so I could not trick the boards into accepting flash based storage!

I did some testing with s754 nForce3 250 that someone ended up purchasing. I found out that Intel SSD 480GB is detected by BIOS correctly and can "sometimes" boot into Windows XP. There seems to be a timing issue on boot - everything proceeds normally until the Windows XP progress screen is meant to appear. It freezes there on 1st attempt. After reboot, Windows detects a problem and offers safe mode. I select standard boot and it boots. Once it boots, everything works fine. But the first boot always freezes. Maybe newer NVidia SATA driver would help. I used one from manufacturer's website which is often not the latest. Magnetic SATA drive didn't exhibit this problem. Parallel ATA also works fine as expected. So on nForce3 250 and VIA, a fast magnetic drive is probably the best choice.

During my testing I also found out that 2 out of my 3 GeForce 7600 GT are unstable. They must have degraded over time. One was previously used in s754 AGP build and worked fine in January this year. Probably old ball grid array issue as I did cool them properly. It must manifested after a few years.

Unfortunately my problem is more serious: with a SSD the system freezes on startup without letting me into the BIOS. So I can't do anything, change any setting as long as the SSD is installed.

I don't know if this is important for you or no but KV8 PRO, NV8, KU8 are smaller than standard ATX but not micro ATX! The only full ATX board is the NF8 PRO. Also: only 2 DIMMS -I do not consider it a negative but some people might need 3 GB of RAM!
You can clearly see the same Winbond monitoring chip present on earlier motherboards; original Rubycon capacitors; VIA VT6122 gigabit lan controller and the ICS clock generator; debug display.

KV8 PRO is the only board out of 4 that has the guru chip! The kind of control over temperatures, voltages and fans is unmatched in any other socket 754 board!

The RAM are again set to AUTO; for those interested the option DBI output for AGP transient has to do with the signal noise over the AGP bus and power consumption. It is highly recommended to let it on AUTO!

The most interesting options are in the advanced chipset menu on the LDT & PCI bus control page:
LDT (lightning data transport) is the original name of the hypertransport! The width of the bus is 16 bit in both directions - on previous pages you can see screenshots from KU8 and NF8 where it is 16 bits upstream and 8 bits downstream!

As KV8 PRO is a very popular board I will put only the screenshots from Everest; you can clearly see that command rate 1T is not a problem with the CO revision of the Athlon 64:

I see the base clock seems to be 204 Mhz for some reason. I would suggest to set it to 200-201, not more to be fair. This would also fix slightly OCed memory. Unless the board generates 204Mhz when 200 is selected in BIOS which will be the lowest value. In KV8 PRO Guru screenshot we can see that BIOS reports 204 base clock as well.

After presenting the hardware it is time for the software side:
As you have already seen in the screenshots I chose as the operating system Windows XP SP3. I am aware that for many a high end socket 754 Windows 98 SYSTEM is a dream come true and they are right. I consider that for the target period XP is a good choice as 98 would be. Also XP allowed me to test NV8 with PCI-express graphics (I am sure there are many enthusiasts on the forum who would manage to install 98 on nforce4).
I have not encountered a single benchmark or game from the 2000 - 2004 period that refused to run under XP.
All the screenshots that you have seen have been captured with Irfan view. MSI afterburner 4.30 and fraps 3.4.7 that works on processors without SSE2 instruction set (this is very important in part 2) have been used to monitor all tests. You will see the afterburner overlay in the screenshots; also fraps was recording the framerates in the background. This will lead to a performance penalty on all 3d tests! Because I consider critical to check the fraps log for inconsistencies and msi afterburner for outliers I let them on at all times.
When I actually played some Farcry I played with afterburner and fraps disabled. So please take into account that.
Page file was disabled at all times and so was the indexing service in XP.

AlexZ wrote on 2025-10-16, 10:32:

I see the base clock seems to be 204 Mhz for some reason. I would suggest to set it to 200-201, not more to be fair. This would also fix slightly OCed memory. Unless the board generates 204Mhz when 200 is selected in BIOS which will be the lowest value. In KV8 PRO Guru screenshot we can see that BIOS reports 204 base clock as well.

Good catch! The first time I tested the 4 systems I let the BIOS set the FSB; the second time when I tested the "reserves" - that is a second identical KV8PRO with 3400 with another raptor and everything installed all over I manually set the FSB to 200 on all the boards. By the way only NV8 sets the FSB to 200, all the rest to 204 - including the KU8 - you can see the screenshot on the previous page.

Now the tests!
I consider that anyone building a socket 754 system will most likely be gaming on it so there is a very heavy focus on 3d performance!
I took myself as an example and I tested at resolutions and settings that I use.
So I tested at 3 resolutions:
1. 1024*768 standard resolution of the CRT era
2. 1280*1024 default resolution of 17 and 19 inch LCD monitors that you can find today for cheap, I got 3 of them and 2 for free. While not 4:3 - it is 5:4 actually - it is still retro friendly
3. 1600-1200 this one I selected because I wanted to brag about my Eizo 21.3 inch monitor 😀 ! This is the retro equivalent of the 4k of today.
There are synthetic benchmarks and games. All synthetic tests have been done first at the default setting - 3dmark 2001 sets a resolution of 1024*768 with no AA for example - and max settings in all subsequent tests. All games have been tested at max settings.

10 of the tests will include sound. A legitimate question would be: but there is no more sound storm; all got AC97 codec so they are equal!
I chose to do a few tests with sound to see how big of a impact it has over the results; AC97 use the CPU unlike a Creative audigy for example so I think that it is something that should be investigated. Also in part 2 this is necessary!

So now the tests: all are from the 2000 - 2004 period.

Synthetic tests:
DirectX7: 3dmark 2000
DirectX8: Code creatures pro, 3dmark 2001,
DirectX9: 3dmark 2003, Aquamark3,
GUI test: Tom 2D - this will be highly controversial!
CPU tests: Super pi, Cinebench 2003
System tests: Pcmark 2002 & 2004 & 2005

Games:
DirectX8: unreal tournament 2004
DirectX9: Farcry, Half life 2
OpengGl: Doom 3

In all there are 51 tests across multiple resolutions and LOD.

It would be great if you could include FEAR (2005) and Quake 4 (2005). FEAR includes a benchmark and for Quake 4 you can get the benchmark from guru3d without needing the full game. Top GPUs can handle these games on Athlon 64 3400+ with max details. Together with Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005) they are the last games that work fine on socket 754.

Quake 4 added to the test suite. I don't know what to say about Fear. I recall being a very demanding game; will install and test.

Athlon 64 3400+ with GeForce GTX 275 in F.E.A.R. First Encounter Assault Recon (2005) in 1600x1200 it reaches 96 fps average with maximum details except for FSAA which was off. With FSAA set to 2x, average fps drops to 84. With FSAA set to 4x, average fps drops to 76.

That is fine, however I am using a radeon x1950 pro. I don't think there is a gtx 275 in AGP format 😀 !

No need to freak out over that GTX 275. Athlon 64 3400+ is severely underpowered for it so it will be sitting idle most of the time. Quake 4 and FEAR should challenge the x1950 pro. Year 2004 games should be easy for it to handle. Maybe we will come to conclusion that Quake 4 and FEAR are out of reach for period correct GPUs.

It would also be great to include an ABIT nforce2 board with 2.2Ghz Athlon XP with x1950 pro for comparison.