50%!!! That is the advantage nforce2 has over nforce1. Incredible, isn't it? And that is at 1600*1200 with AA and AF! Also nforce2 kills KT266A at the same resolution with a 24% better results! It is clear that by changing the motherboard to an nforce2 ultra one a massive leap in performance will be obtained that otherwise would not be possible with, for example, a better graphics card.

Next game to be tested is Half life 2 where a balanced CPU, RAM and GPU on a good motherboard are required to get good results. I used Fraps 3.4.7 because HardwareOC bench tool refused to work. I am sorry for the lack of screenshots - Fraps outputs the results to Excel.

41. resolution: 1024*768
Min: 15
Max: 46
Avg: 33.200

42 resolution: 1280*1024
Min: 13
Max: 45
Avg: 27.933

43. resolution: 1600*1200
Min: 9
Max: 41
Avg: 27.750

Half life 2 has been a weak point for NVidia since the beginning of the tests where Abit KW7 equipped with the KT880 chipset and a Realtek codec managed to outperform nforce2 ultra with sound storm. This time is no difference: nforce2 improves over nforce1 with 15% even at 1600*1200 max details however VIA KT266A outscores nforce2 ultra being 10% better at the same resolution and settings!
Half life 2 is VIA territory as KT266A wins in this game.

The last game to be tested is Doom 3. It is an exceptionally GPU bound game so, as always, I disabled AA.
44. 1024*768 ultra quality, advanced settings: all on, v sync disabled.
45. 1280*1024 ultra quality, advanced settings: all on, v sync disabled.
46. 1600*1200 ultra quality, advanced settings: all on, v sync disabled.

Despite being heavily limited by the graphics card nforce2 ultra manages to improve the frame rate over nforce1 by 18% even at 1600*1200. However there is no victory for Nvidia this time as VIA KT266A is only 3% behind it and that is within the margin of error.

The second to last test is Super PI. In this test nforce2 is no better than nforce1 and both are beaten by KT266A.
Please be aware that a shorter time to calculate 1 million decimals constitutes a better result!

We have arrived at the final test: Cine bench 2003. The CPU scores between nforce1, nforce2 and KT266A are so close that we can't establish a winner here.

Time to compare the results. Nforce1 with integrated sound is awarded a 100% score and the rest of the systems are compared to it. Note that the results obtained on Abit KT7A-raid, KG7-raid, despite not being shown again, are directly comparable with those obtained using Abit AN7!
1. ABIT AN7/nforce2 ultra: 119.27%
2. ABIT KR7A – 133R/KT266A: 113.57%
3. ABIT KG7 – RAID/AMD760: 109.18%
4. ABIT NV7 – 133R/NFORCE1 + CREATIVE LIVE: 101.87%
5. ABIT NV7 – 133R/NFORCE1 + SOUND STORM: 100%
6. ABIT KT7A – RAID/KT133A: 96.31%

Nforce2 ultra further improves the Athlon XP 2000 performance being 5.7% faster than KT266A! This proves beyond any doubt that nforce2 ultra is the best possible chipset for Athlon XP 2000. Nforce1 and nforce2 are in different classes as Abit AN7 provides the best performance for the 266 Mhz Athlon. Nforce2 may be related to nforce1 but as a very distant relative as nforce1 is the worst performing DDR chipset while nforce2 is the best!

Before anyone asking I will answer some possible questions:
1. How about faster Athlon XP with a 266 Mhz FSB?
I also tested Athlon XP 2400 Thoroughbred B on Abit KR7A-133R and AN7 and nforce2 is 5.6% better than the VIA board! Please note that Athlon XP 2600 part number AXDA2600DKV3C - the fastest 266 Mhz Athlon - is not compatible with KR7A-133R. I am not going to put up the screenshots but nforce2 is clearly faster with any 266 MHz FSB Athlon.
2. How about Thoroughbred with a 333 Mhz FSB?
I do not have any of them but I think I can extrapolate and state that they are also faster on nforce2. Also I do not own any Thorton chips but the same rules applies: nforce2 is the fastest chipset.
3. How about Barton?
Barton 3200 has already been tested on Abit AN7; KW7; KV7 and performs best on nforce2. All screenshots can be seen in this topic. Barton 2800 with part number AXDA2800DKV4D has already been tested on Abit KD7A, AT7-MAX2, AT7-MAX and the screenshots are also available in this topic (where I tested the 333 MHz chipsets). I also tested Barton 2800 on AN7 and i am not going to put up the screenshots but nforce2 is 5.5% faster than any VIA chipset.

Overall the best performing chipset for any Athlon XP - any generation: Palomino, Thoroughbred, Thorton, Barton - is NFORCE2 ULTRA.

Kudos to you for doing such a vast amount of testing. I have yet to go through the entire topic but it seems like you went all out on the testing here. Thanks for the results.

Thank you very much!
I have started investigating the first generation Athlon for socket 462: Thunderbird. There are 2 variants of Thunderbird: the first one with 200 MHz FSB and the improved version with 266 MHz FSB. I have the best model: Athlon 1400 part number A1400AMS3C. Unfortunately the model with 200 MHz FSB is incredible rare so that will have to wait.
For ease of work and to make the comparison easier Thunderbird with 200 MHz FSB will be named generation 1.0 and Thunderbird with 266 MHz FSB will be named generation 1.5.
I did not made up my mind yet but I will test the Athlon 1400 1.5 in the Anit AN7 - nforce2 ultra is the best socket 462 platform until now and KR7A - 133R - the very first DDR chipset for Athlon. I am still considering if I should I include KT7a-raid as the very first chipset supporting 266 MHz FSB but I think SDRAM will severly bottleneck the CPU - unlike period correct reviews, KT133A limits performance a lot as seen on the results of the 266 MHz chipsets comparison.

nd22, how does KT266A compare with KT333/400/400A/600 while using a 266 proc and 266 memory?

That remains to be tested. I tested Athlon XP 2000 Thoroughbred B on Abit KW7/VIA KT880 and performance wise it is slower than nforce2 by exactly 5.2% - this is the same amount by which nforce2 won the first tests, where I tested all 400 MHz chipsets!
I am now busy testing Thunderbird 1400C on Abit AN7.
An update on the situation: while the 1400C has a 266 MHz FSB and the CPU is installed and running without a hitch on AN7 I could not make the board to work with 1000B - part number A1000DMT3B - that one has a 200 MHz FSB and AN7 & NF7-S 2.0 refuse to run with it!

Half of year later I come back with the tests done with the very first generation of Athlon: Thunderbird! I am not taking into account Argon and Pluto as they are solely for Slot A! I am testing only socket A/462.
Despite searching for both the 266 MHz and 200 MHz models running at 1400 MHz I could only found the 1400C, part number A1400AMS3C, the last and most powerful Thunderbird. It seems that the 1400B, part number A1400AMS3B, is very rare as I could not find it.
Despite having the 1400C model and having done all 48 tests with it on 7 different motherboards with 7 different chipsets I chose to not put up the results with it but instead to publish the results with different models with the same frequency but different FSB.

So I bought the 1200 MHz models – both the 200 MHz and 266 MHz FSB, part number A1200AMS3B and part number A1200AMS3C; it would have been really nice to have both 1400 MHz models to see the advantages that come with increased FSB with the very last and best Thunderbirds, but in the end I tested what I could find.
I will start with the 266 MHz model, named from now on 1200C. The 200 MHz model will be named from now on 1200B. I tested it on 7 different boards with 7 different chipsets; in order to keep the topic clean and easy to watch I will put the pictures with only 3 different motherboards.

Motherboards tested with 1200C – in bold those whose results will appear with screenshots, data and everything else:
1. Abit KT7A – raid with VIA KT133A chipset
2. Abit KR7A – raid with VIA KT266A chipset
3. Abit AT7 – MAX with VIA KT333 chipset
4. Abit AT7 – MAX2 with VIA KT400 chipset
5. Abit KV7 with VIA KT600 chipset
6. Abit NV7 – 133 RAID with nforce 415 – D chipset
7. Abit AN7 with NVIDIA nforce2 ultra 400 chipset

The reasons for selecting the 3 platforms to present the results are:
1. VIA KT133A is the very first platform for socket A/462 supporting 266 MHz FSB, with SDRAM PC – 133 – we shall see if SDRAM is still bottlenecking the Thunderbird as it was the case with Thoroughbred and Palomino. The Southbridge integrated in this chipset is the 686B supporting UDMA 100. This should be the lowest performing chipset for the Athlon Thnuderbird with a 266 MHz FSB.
2. VIA KT266A is the very first DDR platform for Athlon and we shall see if DDRAM improves upon SDRAM when using a Thunderbird with such a low frequency or SDRAM is all you need to unleash its full potential.
3. NVIDIA nforce2 ultra is the best chipset for Athlon XP; let’s see if NVIDIA can still hold to number one place with the Thunderbird!

Let’s start with the presentation of the systems used: the pictures with the KT7A – raid; KR7A – raid and AN7 can be seen in the previous pages, I will not put them up again; I simply dropped the 1200C in each system and I started testing. Please note that AN7 does not recognize 1200C and does not even start with it unless you reset the BIOS – and that was NOT all it was needed to use the 1200C! I had to enter the BIOS and manually set the multiplier to 9 and the FSB to 266 MHz in order to get the CPU to work correctly.