.. and
C. KV8

10. Same resolution but at maximum details including sound this time:
A. NF8
B. KU8

.. and KV8 again last:

Small lead by KV8 - that is nothing to write home about!
11. We increase the resolution to 1280*1024 - very popular among retro enthusiasts, I got 2 19 inch LCD's with that resolution:
A. NF8
B. KU8

C. KV8

And for the first time we got a winner, actually 2: both KV8 and KU8 manage to distance themselves from the nforce3 system by 6 %!

12. Same resolution and details but with sound this time around:
A. NF8
B. KU8

C. KV8 - and again VIA and ULI sprint forward leaving NVIDIA behind! That must be a fluke.. let's continue!

13. The last resolution to be tested is 1600*1200; again geforce 7800gs is the limiting factor:
A. NF8
B. KU8

C. KV8 - both K8T800 and M1689 fight each other while leaving nforce3 in the dust by 9%!

14. The final and most demanding settings: 1600*1200 max details including sound:
A. NF8
B. KU8

C. KV8

Contradicting all period correct reviews nforce3 looses in Aquamark to K8T800 and M1689! Something is fishy here!
Again sound impact is small - do not be fooled by the large difference at 1024*768 resolution as the first results without sound are also without AA and low AF!

https://soggi.org/motherboards/abit.htm#S754
What BIOS versions do you use on your DUTs?
Because 6% for C754 is a bit too much, in my opinion.
Moreover, only for one motherboard.

Yeah someting is fishy here. I would check if all systems have the same CPU clock. On my nForce4 board I do not use the latest BIOS as NVidia had to disable PCI prefetch. Not sure if other settings were affected.

You would typically be playing at 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 so those are the most important resolutions. 7800GS is probably not powerful enough for 1600x1200 as you want the average to be about 50 fps.

All boards have the latest BIOS version!
Abit KU8: it is absolutely required that you have version 16 otherwise Radeon cards with the Rialto bridge will NOT work!! Also setting the AGP latency timer correctly is required but not enough - you need latest BIOS version! Both of my KU8 exhibit the exact same behavior with bridged Radeons.

Abit NF8 PRO: bios 19 used - in fact on the screenshots withe the boards you can see the BIOS version used - Everest shows it clearly. Altough compatibility is not an issue with nforce3, performance is! Latest BIOS 19 has the best performance! With the first release - version 10 - you loose 3-4% across all tests!

Abit KV8 PRO: version 26 used. This is the latest version however the board is compatible with all processors and video cards even with the first version. Performance is practically the same - at most 1-2% lower with version 10. Tested 3 different BIOS versions: first, one release in the "middle" and the latest.

15. We switch to Mad onion tests and the first is 3dmark 2000, the only DirectX7 benchmark in the entire suite:
Again we start at 1024*768 default settings: 16 bit color depth, 16 bit textures
A. NF8
B. KU8
C. KV8

16. Nothing to see so we go to 1280*1024 max details:
A. NF8
B. KU8
C. KV8