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Contemporary Socket A Chipsets: NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400, NVIDIA nForce2 400, SiS748 and VIA KT600 (page 2)

Category: Chipsets

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 07/08/2003 | 01:26 PM ]

Closer Look: NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400

The new chipset from NVIDIA can not be called “new” in the full meaning of this word. NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 is in fact none other but a new revision of the regular NVIDIA nForce2. What NVIDIA really introduced in the product to make it new is the improved stability when the chipset works with 200MHz FSB and reduced heat dissipation of the chipset North Bridge. Therefore, NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 boasts absolutely the same features set as the regular NVIDIA nForce2, plus officially supports Athlon XP with 400MHz bus and DDR400 SDRAM.

I would like to point out that NVIDIA nForce2 appeared a very successful and popular product. This statement is proven by the fact that NVIDIA nForce2 based mainboards occupy a stable No. 1 position among all Socket A products available in the today’s market, according to the regular sales reports for the past few months. Besides, NVIDIA also deserves all our praise for the fact that their chipset managed to stay in the market for almost a year already without any changes made to it and to compete with the rivals pretty successfully throughout all this time, while VIA and SiS have already launched a few new products within this period. What I am trying to say is that the lifetime of NVIDIA nForce2 appeared very long, which will definitely please those of you who are lucky to own a mainboard based on this chipset, as they are still very up-to-date.

At the same time, it is not very good that NVIDIA hasn’t yet improved the chipset features in any way; they haven’t even designed any new South Bridge versions. So, from some viewpoints NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 yields to its competitors. No, NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 is still the only dual-channel chipset for Socket A platform. It is the unbeaten leader in terms of peak bandwidth of the memory subsystem. However, the South Bridge of this chipset, even its most advanced MCP-T version, doesn’t support SerialATA hard disk drives, and this is a really necessary feature already. That is why most mainboards based on NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 are usually equipped with an onboard SerialATA controller, which definitely affects their price.

For more details on the features of the NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset, please, see our previous article called Contemporary Socket A Chipsets Comparison: NVIDIA nForce2 vs. VIA KT400.

ABIT NF7 2.0 is one of the best mainboards
on NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400.