Is duel channel on the Nforce 2 a joke and a marketing ploy?

[tec699]

So guys I'm thinking about trading in my Gigabyte Kt400 that I got last year for a Gigabyte (Ultra) Nforce 2 board. I like the thought of duel channel, as I could always use the extra bandwith in memory. I play games that require a ton of memory bandwith, but I'm wondering if duel channel will actually make a difference over my single channel mobo? I mean.. will I really notice the difference?

Also.. I've been reading from Nforce 2 mobo owners that a lot of people are complaining about their boards.

For instance I've read this (owner has a Asus Nforce 2 board):

but why do i hate it, you ask. well sir, i have a 40gb WD drive, 7200 rpm, 8mb cache. nice drive, works well. but this nforce only gives me 20mb/s transfer rates. 20! i should be getting TWICE that. my old kt266a was 40mb/s! why isnt this?

when i got this mobo, i had old 2700 ram that worked 100% fine in my 266a. this hog? no way. random reboots. i knew it was the ram because upping the ram voltage would "prolong" the amount of time it worked. got new ram, works great now. no crashes. so why am i mad? why should i have to get new ram!!!!!!!!! whats wrong wiht my older, perfectly good ram that i already had! damn n00bs! learn how to make a damn memory controller that is COMPATIBLE WITH RAM! kingston hyperx 2700 series? wont work. thats good ram! not cheap! and this POS wont work with it! whats that!?

so obviously there are problems. i cant play a game with WINAMP open! i can have open UED, max5, any number of other programs that are absolute HOGS and the thing is FINE. but WINAMP causes it problems!

ide drivers. woo, now theres an innovation there! first time they were installed on my system, 2.03, b0rked my cdrw. couldnt burn a cd! the 2.41 fixed that, sure. but now theyre completely removed. i wouldnt touch them with a 10 foot pole.

check nforcershq.com. THOUSANDS of people having stutter problems. and theyre RANDOM. id venture to guess that nvidias top notch quality control is letting out some POS boards, or not attaching a heatsink right, or something stupid.

not to mention people having SATA problems. its been almost 10 months since this scrap of junk was released, and they STILL dont have sata working. via doesnt have any, ANY, of these problems.

another bug. i cant install NORTON on this junk. i can install it on my 266, my friends 333, my moms 440bx, any other computer on the planet, but this pos. nope. ive formatted, defragged, gone through nortons tech help, tried hundreds of different times. norton will NOT go in. junk.

Is this user just crying wolf?


😕

 

[buleyb]

I would say that the Athlons don't benifit as much with dual channel as P4s do...

and although I have heard of many issues with nforce2 boards, this guy just seems to be the pinnicle of problems, and a bias source...

 

[tec699]

Originally posted by: buleyb
I would say that the Athlons don't benifit as much with dual channel as P4s do...

and although I have heard of many issues with nforce2 boards, this guy just seems to be the pinnicle of problems, and a bias source...

Thxs for bringing up the Athlons and their FSB. Isn't it true that the AMD XP's front side bus is hampered because it can only go so high? So basically the AMD XP processors can't use the extra memory bandwith that the Nforce 2 (duel channel) boards might supply because of the restrictions on the AMD's FSB.

If someone can clarify that I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[MDE]

1) His IDE issue: a very well documented problem, new driver in two weeks
2)memory issue: nothing's perfect, should have stuck with the kt266a POS
3)winamp issue: thats a possible bug in winamp, motherboard has nothing to do with that, and I haven't seen this issue before, or experienced it on my board
4)IDE drivers: yeah, they're buggy, deal with it and see #1
5)stuttering issue: i'm assuming this is sound, again, haven't experienced it but heard of issues. nvidia can't control everyone's product. don't buy a cheap (EDIT: non-SoundStorm) board.
6)sata issue: this usually comes when people use two different model drives in a raid array, not a good idea with ide raid either, also it's a Silicon Image controller\driver issue, not nvidia.
7)norton issue: buy an actual copy and install that. pirated copies aren't guaranteed to work.

All in all, some people just can't take the bad with the immense good. NForce2 is simply the best AthlonXP chipset out there. One bad experience doesn't mean you'll have one too. Go NForce and you shouldn't regret it.

 

[MDE]

Also, dual channel on an Athlon is virtually useless unless there's integrated graphics in the equation. Dual channel when using the NForce IGP is almost a must, greatly improves performance as the onboard video sucks memory bandwidth like crazy.

 

[tec699]

Originally posted by: MonkeyDriveExpress
Also, dual channel on an Athlon is virtually useless unless there's integrated graphics in the equation. Dual channel when using the NForce IGP is almost a must, greatly improves performance as the onboard video sucks memory bandwidth like crazy.

So basically if i'm using say a ATI Raedon 9800, I will not notice that my system is running in duel channel mode? It only works with intergrated graphics?!

thxs... :frown:

 

[MDE]

It will work, you just won't get much of a boost from dual channel.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: tec699

Originally posted by: buleyb
I would say that the Athlons don't benifit as much with dual channel as P4s do...

and although I have heard of many issues with nforce2 boards, this guy just seems to be the pinnicle of problems, and a bias source...

Thxs for bringing up the Athlons and their FSB. Isn't it true that the AMD XP's front side bus is hampered because it can only go so high? So basically the AMD XP processors can't use the extra memory bandwith that the Nforce 2 (duel channel) boards might supply because of the restrictions on the AMD's FSB.

Yes. With sunc'd FSB, the Athlon can use all of it, though usually doesn't. Dual channel helps out in that it will allow the CPU and other devices enough bandwidth so that they don't compete with one another, giving the benefits in benchmarks.

If someone can clarify that I would greatly appreciate it.

using RAM in dual channel mode won't seriously increase performance, but it does to some extent, and since 1GB of RAM is currently cheaper as 2 512MB sticks, why not? 🙂

On the various issues quoted in the first post:
Epox 8RDA+
3000+
2x512MB Kingston HyperX PC2700
80GB WD JB
Win2k Pro

Winamp 1.91: fine.
SATA: No clue.
HDD: Nice and speedy. In Sandra it beats their reference by a little bit. Feels very quick, too.
Sound: great
Norton AV: Worked fine.

The only issue was that it would hang every 3rd or so boot-up detecting the CDROM. Disabled IDE auto-detection in the BIOS and it's fine.

 

[buleyb]

maybe a side question...

Aside from the CPU and integrated video, is DMA from any device the only other thing taking up that memory bandwidth?

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: buleyb
maybe a side question...

Aside from the CPU and integrated video, is DMA from any device the only other thing taking up that memory bandwidth?

Discrete video 🙂

 

[Budmantom]

I don't think it's worth changing, especially if you consider the time and money involved. You might gain 5% in some areas.

If you were building a rig from scratch buy the nforce2.

 

[Dug]

4 of those complaints come from Nvidia's IDE drivers.
Very simple- don't install them. This is very well known and MS's drivers work fine.

I find that almost all complaints come from two things-
user error (not knowing how to set up machine, software, etc.)
Incompatible hardware (ram, video card, etc.) which is true for any motherboard.

 

[tec699]

Originally posted by: Budmantom
I don't think it's worth changing, especially if you consider the time and money involved. You might gain 5% in some areas.

If you were building a rig from scratch buy the nforce2.

Yea.. maybe I should go with a faster processor instead. I'm running a AMD XP 2000. If i go with the AMD XP 3000 (333 fsb) I'll probably see better performance then if I just went with a Nforce 2 board.

Also.. I can use the saved money and buy more ram. I'm curently running 1 512mb Corsair 3200 XPS and would love to get another 1 512mb stcik of Corsair.

 

[Budmantom]

Originally posted by: tec699

Originally posted by: Budmantom
I don't think it's worth changing, especially if you consider the time and money involved. You might gain 5% in some areas.

If you were building a rig from scratch buy the nforce2.

Yea.. maybe I should go with a faster processor instead. I'm running a AMD XP 2000. If i go with the AMD XP 3000 (333 fsb) I'll probably see better performance then if I just went with a Nforce 2 board.

Also.. I can use the saved money and buy more ram. I'm curently running 1 512mb Corsair 3200 XPS and would love to get another 1 512mb stcik of Corsair.

Go for the "most bang for the buck" cpu and I think that is a 2700 (if your not ocing) you will save $100+.

Do you really need 1gb of ram, I have a gig in mine and I can't see a difference (but I only paid $90 for a gig).

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: Dug
4 of those complaints come from Nvidia's IDE drivers.
Very simple- don't install them. This is very well known and MS's drivers work fine.

I find that almost all complaints come from two things-
user error (not knowing how to set up machine, software, etc.)
Incompatible hardware (ram, video card, etc.) which is true for any motherboard.

Well said! and if he installed the high CPU utilization patch once he got a clue and stopped using the SW IDE drivers the HDD performance would increase significantly.

BTW, the 5% performance difference between the NF2 and KT400 was true last November but the Ultra400 widens that lead, it easily outperforms the KT600 even in single-channel mode and the KT600 is definitely a more capable chipset than the KT400. Start overclocking and the Ultra400's results will put a KT400's to serious shame. And if you think DC-DDR is useless without the IGP take a look at the SPECviewperf scores in that chipset comparison and you'll see a different picture emerging, and the KT400 would be further behind than the KT600 is.