With nforce3 ultra out of the picture we got 4 platforms to test: 2 from socket 754 and 2 from socket 939. The processor of choice is the Athlon 64 3200 - socket 754; Athlon 64 3500 socket 939 with the Venice revision.
On socket 754 Venice is the very last Athlon 64 revision that you can get. It is also the one with the lowest TDP: only 59W! That means that even with the stock aluminum cooler from AMD you are going to get a very cool and practically noiseless system! On socket 939 Venice 3500 has a 67W TDP, still on the low side and you can get by with the cheapest cooler you can get your hands on and still have a silent system!
The cooler I used is the stock cooler that AMD distributed with its socket AM2 dual core processors: copper with heat pipes. It is thermal controlled by the BIOS and I do not hear it! The only noise coming from all 4 systems is the fan of the Radeon x1950 pro.
To people wandering why I did not used the Newcastle 3800 on socket 939 against Newcastle 3400 on socket 754: I order it but I did not arrived in time - and still did not arrived when I started this topic. Also I got a good reason for using Athlon 64 3500: this model is available for all revisions and I got them all: 3500 Clawhammer; 3500 Newcastle; 3500 Winchester; 3500 Venice; 3500 San Diego.

nd22 wrote on 2026-03-11, 07:17:

With nforce3 ultra out of the picture we got 4 platforms to test: 2 from socket 754 and 2 from socket 939. The processor of choice is the Athlon 64 3200 - socket 754; Athlon 64 3500 socket 939 with the Venice revision.
On socket 754 Venice is the very last Athlon 64 revision that you can get. It is also the one with the lowest TDP: only 59W! That means that even with the stock aluminum cooler from AMD you are going to get a very cool and practically noiseless system! On socket 939 Venice 3500 has a 67W TDP, still on the low side and you can get by with the cheapest cooler you can get your hands on and still have a silent system!

nd22, thank you for starting this series. Really looking forward to seeing the results.

Would it not be better to use…

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.4 GHz (socket 754 / Clawhammer)
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ 2.4 GHz (socket 939 / Clawhammer)

zuldan wrote on 2026-03-11, 11:05:

nd22, thank you for starting this series. Really looking forward to seeing the results. […]
Show full quote

nd22 wrote on 2026-03-11, 07:17:

With nforce3 ultra out of the picture we got 4 platforms to test: 2 from socket 754 and 2 from socket 939. The processor of choice is the Athlon 64 3200 - socket 754; Athlon 64 3500 socket 939 with the Venice revision.
On socket 754 Venice is the very last Athlon 64 revision that you can get. It is also the one with the lowest TDP: only 59W! That means that even with the stock aluminum cooler from AMD you are going to get a very cool and practically noiseless system! On socket 939 Venice 3500 has a 67W TDP, still on the low side and you can get by with the cheapest cooler you can get your hands on and still have a silent system!

nd22, thank you for starting this series. Really looking forward to seeing the results.

Would it not be better to use…

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.4 GHz (socket 754 / Clawhammer)
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ 2.4 GHz (socket 939 / Clawhammer)

Thank you sir!
Unfortunately I do not have the 3700 for socket 754! Also a big downside of that is that there are no PR corresponding Athlon 64 to that San Diego for the other revisions! Example: there are no Winchester 4000, no Venice 4000, but there are Clawhammer, Newcastle, Winchester, Venice, San diego 3500! Taking into account that we are talking about thousands of tests I consider imperatively to try to limit them to a sensible number.

The memory used across all 4 systems is Corsair: 2 sticks of 1gb each for a total of 2gb running at DDR-400. It is absolutely crucial on all socket A, 754, 939 to have the DDR memory run in sync with the CPU!
The video card used - or better still video cards - is the Radeon X1950 PRO 512mb; because it is so powerful it will ensure there is no GPU bottleneck . The "match" for the Radeon would be the Athlon 64 4000 or better still some Athlon FX model which I do not have. To those saying you need core 2 duo to unleash the full potential of the X1950: one game - Doom 3 - is so tough on the card that I had to disable AA in order to test it; but yes - Athlon 64 3500 will limit its performance!

Now the systems to be tested: the first one is based on the socket 754 Abit KV8 PRO motherboard with the VIA KT8T800 PRO chipset. A common board, very popular back in the day and easy to find; it has only what the chipset offers and nothing else! I already said everything about it in the old topic about socket 754: Re: Battle of the platforms: socket 754! when I presented all 4 socket 754 boards that I used -everyone can read it.
Now only a short summary - of course, being shameless, i will copy from the old topic:
Positives:
- excellent position of the main ATX connector and the P4 connector right at the edge;
- passive cooling in the form of a heatsink on the north bridge; the board barely warms during operation;
- debug post code display!! - i like it a lot;
- command rate 1T with CO revision of the Clawhammer;
- excellent memory compatibility: any module I thrown in worked without any problem.
Negatives
- does not work with SSD!; this is a major downside;
- does not work with SATA DVD;
- main ATX connector with 20 pins so I hope you got you a PSU with detachable 4 pins or an adapter.

BIOS settings are - at a glance, if you want full details read here: Re: Battle of the platforms: socket 754!. AGP aperture size has been set to 256mb for all 4 boards. LDT (lightning data transport) is the original name of the hypertransport! The width of the bus is 16 bit in both directions - on following pages you will see screenshots from KU8 where it is 16 bits upstream and 8 bits downstream!

System number 2 is based on the little known Abit KU8 with the ULI M1689 chipset, an exceedingly rare board. It combines the northbridge and the southbridge to make a single chip solution just like nforce3! Again the board has only what the chipset offers and nothing else! I made a mini review of it here: Re: Battle of the platforms: socket 754!
Short summary of positives and negatives:
positives:
- accepts SATA SSD
- accepts SATA DVD drive
- runs very cool
- 24 pin main ATX connector
- command rate 1T with CO revision of the Clawhammer
negatives:
- main & aux ATX power connectors in the middle of the board!
- horrendous memory compatibility!

BIOS has many options specific to the ULI chipset so I highly recommend to read about them in the old topic: Re: Battle of the platforms: socket 754!
Here are the 2 screens with the "exotic" options that are of interest: I only mention the M1689 HTT (hypertransport) tristate one that should be enabled at all times!

The third system is based around Abit AV8 with VIA K8T800 PRO chipset, the first socket 939 board to be featured in this comparative. Abit AV8 is a very well known board with plenty of reviews back in the day and still used by many retro enthusiasts today! I will say a few things, both good and bad about it. It is practically the socket 939 equivalent of the KV8 PRO.
Motley assortment of AV8's from my collection:

The main ATX connector is of the 20 PIN variety and together with the P4 connector is between the back panel and the CPU socket, one of the worst possible locations! Good bye cable management!
You can clearly see the winbond monitoring chip, the ICS clock generator and my favorite: debug post code display:

A downside is the VIA VT6122 gigabit LAN controller which sits on the PCI bus! Also an even bigger problem is the VIA VT8237R south bridge that has tremendous problems with SATA3 drives. You need a SATA1 or a SATA2 drive that can be jumpered to SATA1 in order to use it! This rules out all SSD's - a serious drawback!
The board has a single extra controller: a firewire chip from VIA - Vt6306 -that nobody is going to use!
This is one of the first Abit boards that uses the earliest incarnation of the uGURU chip that allows unparalleled control over the temperatures, voltages and fans for a board of this era! The second generation is simply awesome - you will see it when we get to nforce4!
Unique to Abit is the black box-like page that shows exactly how many hours/reset button usage/many other data your PC has:

BIOS: all the "juicy" options are found on the uGURU utility page. It is interesting that the board does an automatic overclocking by 2% so you are left with a 2244 MHz processor! The system is completely stable at that FSB, however for testing I manually set the FSB to 200 in order to have a fair game!

You can control up to 3 fans using temperature and voltage based criteria. The only other options of interest are found under the advanced chipset features: all 4 systems have a 256mb aperture size and in the case of both KV8 pro and AV8 the option DBI output for AGP transient should be always enabled - it has to do with the integrity of the signals and power consumption of the AGP bus. The hypertransport tristate option should be set to driven on AV8- contrary to some forum posts this option actually enhances the stability of the system.
I am sorry for the quality of the pictures - I used my phone!

Because of the VIA VT8237R I had to use a mechanical drive; I chosen the WD raptor 74gb which performs roughly the same as the 150gb - the fastest SATA1 drive ever manufactured. Capacity is indeed small and I had to be very selective about which software to install; also IDE DVD is the only option with VIA chipsets!

To summarize the strengths and weaknesses of Abit AV8:
+ even if I used Corsair it accepts any memory modules.
+ debug post code display!! - today manufacturers charge a huge premium for such a feature.
+ passive cooling in the form of a heatsink on the north bridge; the board barely warms during operation.
- does not work with SSD!; this is a major downside.
- does not work with SATA DVD.
- main and auxiliary power connectors in the middle of the board! Also main ATX connector requires a cable with a detachable 4 PIN or an adapter!
It seems that VIA does not have lots of things going for it; we shall see hot it stands in the tests!

This is the system info with all the details; for testing I disabled cool and quiet and everything not needed such as parallel and serial port in the BIOS; I used the same 74gb raptor for both KV8 pro and AV8 as we are talking about the same platform:

The fourth and last system is based on the exceedingly rare Abit UL8, the socket 939 equivalent of KU8, based on the ULI M1689 chipset.
Because there are no reviews of this board on the net I will try my best to make a concise mini review of it.

UL8 is the only Abit board with a ULI chipset for socket 939; it is less wide than the ATX standard however it is not micro-ATX. Everything that you get comes only from the M1689 chipset, there are no extra controllers.
The main ATX connector is of the 24 pin variety which makes the board easy to use with modern power supplies. It is ideally positioned at the right edge of the board; unfortunately the P4 connector is right in the middle of the board.
You get 2 SATA 150 connectors that are fully compatible with SSD's and optical drives - a huge advantage! Because I used a WD raptor in the VIA system I also used one in this system for all drive-related tests.
The chipset hides under the blue heatsink and barely gets a little warm!

The same Winbond monitoring chip found in all socket 754 & 939 Abit boards can be seen here together with the same ICS clock generator; the network controller is from IC+ and is just a 100mb chip.
A particular problem with this board and its socket 754 sister is the poor memory compatibility, or rather incompatibility: despite using the same Athlon 64 3500 Venice the board works only with the Corsair ram shown in the picture at 2.5V. If you set the voltage to AUTO in the BIOS than you can throw any Corsair module - I tried multiple versions and revisions and they all work, I did not tried modules from any other manufacturers.

BIOS: just like AV8 this board also automatically overclocks the Athlon 64 by 2% and I had to manually set the FSB to 200 for the tests; SSD and SATA DVD work just fine: