The newer chipsets from nVidia do not feature support for onboard video. Even the earlier version of nForce3 lacked onboard video and came with an AGP slot. The motherboards based on the nForce4 chipset were the Gigabyte (the GA K8NE) and the two WinFast boards, the NF4K8MC and NF4K8AB.
After a long sabbatical, ULi (earlier ALi) has come back with a brand new chipset for AMD boards (remember how, earlier, ALi and Aladdin were the chipsets AMD users swore by? Those guys are back!~ the ULi M1689. The board is AGP based, and does not have onboard video, which makes us think that Ali is a little behind the times here (PCIe is here, guys!).
Moving on and coming to their graphics performances, the first test we used was Serious Sam First Encounter.
The highest scores here were recorded by the WinFast NF4K8MC. This nForce4 based
board logged a whopping 185 fps at the lowest settings and 145.2 at 800 x 600.
The second highest scores were by a WinFast board again, the NF4K8AB at 170.2 and 135.2 respectively. To compare these scores to those of boards with onboard graphics is not entirely correct. These scores are slightly deceiving as these boards were tested with an external graphics card which bumped up the scores.
The Gigabyte GA K8NE came in second and logged 157.4 and 138.8 respectively, and hence marginally beat the NF4K8AB at the more demanding resolution settings. The rear was brought up by the nForce3 based Asus K8N. This board logged a measly 44 and 35.6 in our tests, and was indeed the worst performer in our tests despite having a 6200 (AGP 8X) to help it out! You must, however, note that even though it scored the lowest in our tests, it still gave a more than playable frame rate, and hence must not be discounted entirely.
All boards did a bit too well in our Quake 3 Arena test. The WinFast NF4K8MC raced ahead with a score of 400 and 296.6 for the same resolutions as, above. The gaming performance of the nForce4 based motherboards could also be high due to our using an nVidia based motherboard wit
h an nVidia based graphics card.
The second position was
taken up by another WinFast
motherboard, the
NF4K8AB. It scored
375.6 and 235.5,
and easily beat
the Gigabyte GAK8NE, which scored
335.2 and 209.4.
The final graphics
benchmark was 3DMark 2001 SE. The story here was the same the NF4K8MC came first, but not by a long margin. It scored 9350 where the NF4K8AB scored a close 9146 and came in second, just edging out the Gigabyte GA K8NE, which scored 9125. This was pretty much a tie, as this difference in scores is really insignificant.
The ASRock did a commendable job and logged 7610 despite being an AGP board. Other AGP boards crashed out: 5849 for the AU RS480 based Elite Group RS480 M, while the Asus K8N was our worst performer once again, scoring just 4939 3DMarks.
The board, while not being too high on performance, was a mark above the others in terms of features, as it had five PCI slots and eight channel onboard audio.
