PCI bandwidth by chipset

[Dr Mordrid]

First off because of an NDA I cannot attribute these results.

Just trust me that this is from a good source and is related to testing the chipsets with the need for a sustained high PCI bandwidth in mind.

No numbers, just relative pecking order. Lots more testing to do, and very preliminary, but also VERY interesting in so far as AMD chipsets go.

PCI bandwidth by chipset (decreasing order of performance):

AMD Athlon

SiS 735
AMD 760 MP
VIA KT266

Intel P4 (no competition here yet)

845DDR

Jerry Jones should be doing backflips about now

Dr. Mordrid

[Wombat]

Hey Doc, is this with Via's patch which is supposed to improve throughput?

[Dr Mordrid]

AFAIK this is with all recent updates.

Quite suprising at first, but then most chipsets are gearted towards memory to CPU and not PCI. Looks like SiS chose the latter course.

Dr. Mordrid

[KvHagedorn]

Re: PCI bandwidth by chipset

Originally posted by Dr Mordrid
Jerry Jones should be doing backflips about now

Dr. Mordrid

What the heck does that horsedick who owns the Dallas Cowboys have to do with anything? Do you mean AMD CEO Jerry Sanders?

[Technoid]

KvHagedorn,

You never reads the Video editing forum?

[KvHagedorn]

Originally posted by Technoid
KvHagedorn,

You never reads the Video editing forum?

Too rarely, it seems

Sorry bout that..

[Nuno]

Nothing really unexpected.

SiS 735 is one of the best chipsets out there for a long time ago. Cheap, fast (between a AMD 760 and a KT266A and miles away from a ALI Magik1 or KT266) and more important than everything else - BUG FREE. You still have to hear a report about video card X our Sound Card Y or Memory Z or USB devices not working with this chipset.

It´s a shame it has been boicotted by Intel-like measures from Via (namely threats about chipset shortage) and only ECS, PCchips and Leadtek had boards with this chipset.

It seems that 745 will be more vastly adopted (Abit, Asus, MSI), but it´s a little too little, too late, as it´s only a 735 with DDR333 support with no feature or performance advantages over the 735.

The 735 was really one of the greatest missed oportunities on the chipset industry.

[bsdgeek]

What about the nForce? Wasn't it made with bandwidth in mind?

[Wombat]

Supposedly. The problem is, the nForce supports a chip that wasn't bandwidth limited by the rest of the computer. Why put in a bigger fuel line if the engine can't burn it?

[bsdgeek]

Damn that was fast!

[Nuno]

Why put in a bigger fuel line if the engine can't burn it?

Of course. Like KX/KT 133, KT 333, what a waste of fast memory.

[Wombat]

No, that's very different,mostly. Until recently, the memory controllers were trying to catch up and satiate the CPU. They're all done catching up for the moment.

1. SDRAM didn't fill the Athlon FSB, DDR did.

2. Upping the FSB will improve data throughput.

Right now, an Athlon at 266 FSB has a peak data throughput of 2.1GB/s. One bank of DDR at 133MHz provides that 2.1GB/s. Adding a second bank (like the nForce) increases the RAM thoughput to 4.2GB/s, but it doesn't have anywhere to go. No second processor, nothing. Almost useless, unless you're using the onboard video card.

Now, the KT333, it isn't doing much better than the 266A. Why? Because the Athlon's FSB is still at 133, and AMD hasn't released a 166MHz version yet.

Up the FSB, and everybody wins. Double the width of the pipe to a processor that can't use it, and there's not much else but waste.

[Nuno]

Yes, diferent in the way it increases bandwidth (using twin memory banks rather than assyncronous memory bus) but similar in the way the extra memory bandwidth gets almost unused because the fsb is the bottleneck. That´s was the point I was trying to make, sorry for not being more specific

And you´re right once again, I´ll take my 147/147 settings over a 133/166 any day.

And just to complete the beauty about the SiS 735 (I forgot in the earlier posts) ECS releasing a bios supporting "upcoming .13u AMD processors" just made my day a few days ago

[Dr Mordrid]

Word must be spreading about the ECS/SiS boards.

I recently attended a computer sale at the new Dearborn (MI) Ford Community & Performing Arts Center. Intel and more expensive AMD boards were moving so-so, but the ECS K7S5A and K7S6A were selling like hotcakes at every single hardware vendor. That they were bundling the board with various AthlonXP's and a nice cooler helped I'm sure

Dr. Mordrid

[Nuno]

You really can´t beat them on price/performance/quality ratio. It doesn´t have any overclocking features (you can set 133/138/143/147/150/166 with cpufsb), few tweaking options (you need a third party utility chfsb to set memory to 2-2-2, otherwise you can´t get timings lower than 2-2-3 within the bios), no raid, and so on and so on, but for the price and if you aren´t looking into serious overclocking (I do run my XP1600+ at XP1800+ speeds - 1540Mhz), you really can´t beat it.