NVIDIA® Nforce Chipset Memory Debate (No longer)..

[Loba]

http://www.amdworld.co.uk/nfmemup.htm

and end to all who doubted the performance of the Nforce chipset..

 

[Funky303]

Cool.. gotta update right now. I have done SiSoft Sandra Benchmarks before the Update to 2.2 using Nvidia Drivers Ver. 27.10

Here are

CPU Bench

Memory Bench

Multimedia Bench

With 3DMark 2001 I had these 2 results using driver ver.

23.11 : 5194

27.10 : 5168

Now I'm gonne update BIOS & post the results in Sandra & 3D Mark 2k1 with BIOS ver. 2.2 soon

 

[jfunk]

Hmm, this is strange.

MSI has told people that asked them that the 5 bank limit is still in effect, (max of two double sided + 1 single sided), even with the new BIOS.

At least that is what I saw on MSI's forum.


j

 

[Loba]

nothing strange abt it ,im using all three with double sided modules with bios 2.2 .

768mb at last

 

[Funky303]

here we are again

CPU Bench bios 2.2

Memory Bench bios 2.2

Multimedia Bench bios 2.2

Fot those not willing to see the pics, here a comparison between my stats with Bios ver. 2.1 to 2.2 without units:

BIOS 2.1 :

CPU :
Dhrystone 3840
Whetstone 1909

Memory:
Int : 1760
Float : 1757

Multimedia:
Integer : 7541
FP : 8680

BIOS 2.2 :

CPU :
Dhrystone 3846
Whetstone 1905

Memory:
Int : 1785
Float : 1788

Multimedia:
Integer : 7540
FP : 8685



To sum up, no really noticable performance Increase or Decrease from BIOS 2.1 to 2.2

But I did not make any measure between 2 or 3 memory modules.

Does anybody know if it is possible to have different memory modules ?

I bought my Samsung memory modules some time ago, but my vendor does not have them anymore. Has anybody tried to mix twice the same module and one of different Manufacturor ??

 

[Gstanfor]

<< I bought my Samsung memory modules some time ago, but my vendor does not have them anymore. Has anybody tried to mix twice the same module and one of different Manufacturor ?? >>


Your situation is not as optimal as having all dimms matched, but, so long as all modules are supported by the chipset and the motherboard manufacturer you should not experience problems.

Greg

 

[Loba]

To sum up, no really noticable performance Increase or Decrease from BIOS 2.1 to 2.2

r u using all three modules ????

or only two ,if u r using two modules you wont see any gains apart from the odd increase or decrease in small amounts.

its when you use all three modules you no longer get stuck in the so called "superstability" i.e running lower memory clock speeds.

the updates major gain is the ability to populate all three dimms and not sacrifice anything!!

cu

brian

 

[AGodspeed]

Awesome, I'm letting my brother know right now that he can stick in his 256MB DDR Crucial stick right now.

 

[Funky303]

I was pretty sure about that situation Greg but I hoped that somebody has already done that or has been in the same situation as I am now.

To Loba:

I used just 2 memory modules. But I had a really great memory & CPU & system speed increase from BIOS 2.0 to 2.1. So i made the tests with 2.2 also. I had rather expected to get lower scores bec. it is not choosable via a menu entry to enable or disable the superstability mode. So I wondered what wolud happen if I changed settings manually. So I did some tests.

Results above

But hey, I don't need more Ram @ the moment, my XP is happy with 512

 

[Gstanfor]

<< I had rather expected to get lower scores bec. it is not choosable via a menu entry to enable or disable the superstability mode. >>

Actually, it is possible to enable/disable Superstability with BIOS 2.2.

To disable, load the High Performance Defaults, then tweak. To enable, load the BIOS Setup defaults instead.

Greg

 

[Loba]

Gstanfor has answered your question on enable / disable

 

[Funky303]

thanx, I knew already how to enable/disable Superstability mode. But i do not have a result where I can see it, like an separate option in the menu comparable to

System BIOS Cachable : YES / NO

Thats what I wanted to say above.

After loading the High Performance Defaults i started tweaking the other settings & then made the benchmark above.

This feature of finally adding 1 more Memory Module is worth a recommandation for MSI compared to the ASUS nforce420D Board.