headhead 22 headhead TWO TECHNOLOGIES ENTER. ONE TECHNOLOGY LEAVESTWO TECHNOLOGIES ENTER, ONE TECHNOLOGY LEAVES
The Showdown
Intel 955X vs. nVidia nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition
T
o test the chipsets we selected a set of benchmarks that
would stress the overall graphics implementation, the RAM
subsystem, and the hard drive I/O. Older benchmarks, such as
3DMark2001 SE and Quake III stress the memory controller and
CPU instead of the videocard, so they’re far better for judging a
chipset’s performance. We also used the new PCMark05 to judge
other system components such as RAM and hard drives. Serious
Magic’s 3D load test slams data to the videocard as fast as pos-
sible, stressing the PCI-E bus in the process. The faster the video-
card interface, the higher its scores will be.
In Pentium 4 chipsets, performance is all about the memory
controller. The faster the memory interface, the better the overallperformance. Intel has a lot of experience building fast memory
controllers, but nVidia also has a lot of experience building fast
memory controllers for its graphics chips.
In the majority of the tests we used, the nForce4 SLI Intel
Edition was a tick faster than the Intel 955X. When we say “tick”
we don’t mean 3 or 4 percent, we really mean one tick—1 per-
cent or less. In most cases, we’d label it a tie because the differ-
ence is within the margin of error for the benchmark. However,
the nForce4 has a very consistent, albeit tiny edge over the
955X. That’s no small accomplishment when you consider Intel’s
speedy-chipset chops. When we factor in SLI, the scales tip fur-
ther to nForce4 in all the graphics-intensive tests.And the Winner Is...
D
espite our misgivings about nForce4’s spotty dual-core sup-
port, we’re going to recommend the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition
and cross our fingers that the chipset will work with the next dual-
core CPU from Intel. Even if it doesn’t, you can run the fastest P4EEavailable today or the Pentium D 840 for dual-core support. And you
know you can at least run SLI. That’s far better than hoping that SLI
and CrossFire support appears on the 955X at some indeterminate
time in the future.BENCHMARKS
INTEL 955X NVIDIA NFORCE4 SLI IE3DMark03 overall 16,649 16,
3DMark03 CPU 1,085 1,
3DMark2001 SE overall 26,419 26,3DMark05 overall 7,526 7,
3DMark05 CPU 5,848 5,
Quake III 513fps 509fpsSiSoft Sandra 05 RAM bandwidth 6,596MB/s 6,697MB/s
PCMark2005 overall 4,953 5,PCMark2005 memory 4,997 5,
PCMark2005 graphics 6,176 6,
PCMark2005 hard drive 5,017 5,AquaMark graphics 12,618 12,
AquaMark cpu 11,329 11,
AquaMark overall 81,051 82,3DD Load PCI-E performance 1,208MB/s 1,296MB/s
* Best scores are bolded, except where difference between chipsets is within the margin of error.18 MA XIMUMPC OCTOBER 2005