ECS NFORCE 570 SLIT-A NF 570 SLI Intel Edition Conroe Mainboard Review Benchmarks 2/10
Bluetooth 30 Aug 2006

Pricing of ECS NFORCE >>>

Benchmarks

CPU FSB is still a valid and important criteria when judging systems performance. We measured the CPU FSB and documented it as below in 3 different boards and noticed the CPU CLK. As it is a Conroe X6800, the default FSB is rated at 266MHz. Some of the boards runs at 266.7 while some are slightly lower. Will this impact the results? For completeness, we haev included a benchmark of a AM2 4000+ o/c to 2.8G for comparative benchmarks.

*AM2 comparative benchmarks are included. The 4000+ is o/c to 2.81GHz at 10x281MHz on the Foxconn C51XEM2AA-8EKRS2H running memory at CAS 3, 3-3-8,1T cmd with DDR2 running at 1:1 ratio. (DDR2-560).

In this review, we will compare the NF 570 SLI Intel edition board against the other boards based on Intel, VIA chipsets. The ECS board doesn't seem to work well with DDR2-800, it ended up messing up the HDD and BSOD. Raising the voltage won't help. To resolve this, we ran the board at CAS 3, 3-3-3-8, 1T at DDR2-533. In fact, this is all within spec since the chipset does not officially support DDR2-800. Interestingly, we did not have issue with the JETWAY's version. The ASUS 975X and Gigabyte 965P runs at ASync DDR2-800 CAS 5, 5-5-18, 2T.

The rest of the boards runs at run it at DDR2-533 is because the memory is running at 1:1 ratio, that is to say in SYNC with the CPU. Although one might get a slightly higher score in this benchmark if you choose to run in ASync mode say DDR2-667, there isn't much difference in the performance, in fact, it might get a bit slower in some benchmarks.

From the chart below, we ran the board with a single ASUS EN7900 TOP graphics card and in SLI mode, we threw in 2 pcs of 7600GT. Below are the memory benchmark scores under the two difference scenarios.

It wouldn't be difficult to see that the ECS NFORCE 570 SLIT-A has some difficulty maximising its bandwidth. It seems to me a BIOS bug that is deterring it or a possible incompatibility with our Corsair DDR2-800 memory running at CAS 3, 3-3-8 ,1T

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