VIA K8T890 vs. NVIDIA nForce4 chipset

[Ubermacher]

O.K. this will be interesting. I'm doing a MAJOR upgrade of my kids confuser; MoBo, Proc, RAM, and Videocard. We've settled on Socket 939 and PCI-E so we're looking for one of the new boards. There is one issue; my son would prefer the Radeon X800 XT videocard.

It looks like the nFOrce4 equipped boards will be on the market first; the issue is....Is there any compatability or performance issue when putting a Radeon videocard into a VIA driven MoBo?

We could wait for the Abit AX8 ( uses the VIA K8T890 chipset ), we could wait the the ATI dual videocard solution, we could wait for the non-SLI version of the nForce4, we could wait........frankly, we're tired of waiting.

Will a single Radeon videocard perform at maximum levels in the nForce4 chipset MoBo?

Thanks

 

[Dethfrumbelo]

There's also the ATI Xpress mobo, which not surprisingly also isn't out yet.

Benchmarks have shown that, yes, ATI video cards will perform slightly better in the ATI Xpress than in nForce4 mobos and vice versa for nVidia video cards. You're talking 2-3% difference maybe.

As for the K8T890, no idea, since they haven't even released a reference board for review.

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

When the K8T890 was announced some sites released reviews of a reference board from VIA, though AnandTech didn't get to try it.

Recentely VIA made a newer reference board with the VT8237R southbridge and a review appeared here:
http://www.hkepc.com/hwdb/k8t890-1.htm

Use babelfish to translate, or just skip to the benchmarks page.

Bottom line is: there's no problem using ATI/nVidia video cards on ATI/nVidia/VIA/ALI/SiS chipsets. One may be optimized to a certain chipset, but you can't tell the difference in real use.

 

[arswihart]

crazy, i was just thinking about posting a new thread with this same question

I just read a Hot Hardware review of the A8N-SLI, they apparently resorted to an ATI mobo to run the ATI cards (being compared to nvidia cards in SLI mode) because the ATI cards ran sooo poorly in the A8N-SLI, better hope for some driver fixes somewhere or the nforce4 may end up being avoided for lack of support for ATI video cards

 

[exdeath]

The nVidia chipset is tuned by nVidia for optimal performance with nVidia cards.

ATI cards do not perform poorly in nForce4 boards, rather the nVidia cards just perform that much better on a 'native' nVidia platform.

 

[arswihart]

we have yet to see that, bub, show me a k8t890 review using nvidia cards...there are none because there are no mobo's out yet, all that has been seen so far is that ati cards' performance is significantly worse than nvidia cards on the nforce4

I'm surprised so many people jump to the conclusion that nvidia has tuned their mobo's to work really well with nvidia cards. As much sense as that would make, it could also be the case that they just don't work very well with ATI or other cards. If you have any links to prove your point, please post them, cause I'm interested, thanks

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

Originally posted by: arswihart
we have yet to see that, bub, show me a k8t890 review using nvidia cards...

http://www.hkepc.com/hwdb/k8t890-4.htm

They use the old PCX5750 card, but the VIA chipset is faster than nForce4 on all 3D apps benchmarks.

 

[arswihart]

CDGNR - sry i didn't look at your link before

well, i have no idea anything about the reputability of site you link to, and besides that, it would be much more useful to see a 6600gt or 6800(any varient) than this basically obsolete FX5700/PCX5750...

to the point, i guess you are disproving exdeath? Interesting evidence you provided that nvidia chipsets actually run their own cards worse than VIA, and I thought it was just limited to ATI cards!!

a lot of people continue to underestimate the quality of via's products

 

[exdeath]

Yeah but I will still take those numbers with a grain of salt.

Because when I see sites showing for example, 6800 Ultra vs X800 XT PE, and showing one card getting whooped by the other... I have to say that my stock 6800 Ultra scores are usually higher than either their Ultra or XT PE scores ... so... there you have it with review sites.