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On nForce2 Performance

by Anna Filatova
07/24/2002 | 02:07 AM

NVIDIA revealed the official results concerning the performance of the new nForce2 chipset for AMD platform, which we have already mentioned in our news several times lately.

Let’s dwell on the actual numbers:

In professional SPEC Viewperf benchmarks at 1280x1024 the new chipset managed to prove 10-20% faster than the classical KT333.
In Quake3 (1024x768) the advantage over the rivals made around 10%.
As for SYSmark2002 and PCmark2002 tests, nForce2 appeared 8% ahead of the rivals in the first one and 10% ahead in the second one. During the tests they used PC2700 DDR SDRAM.

They have also tested the integrated graphics core of the nForce2, which is known to be a modification of GeForce4 MX. Of course, the performance of the newcomer is 1.5-2 times higher than that of the predecessor used in nForce 420D and much higher than that of all other integrated solutions tested. If we compare the performance of the integrated nForce2 graphics with that of some external add-on graphics card, GeForce4 MX420 will be the closest of all, as it falls behind the newcomer just a little bit because of the slow SDRAM memory.<%BANNER[article]%>

All in all, the advantages of the new solution over the KT333 chipset is not that tiny, we should say, which is a really pleasing factor, though we don’t know yet how fast the new VIA KT400 will turn out. The new graphics core also proved worthy and acceptable even for gaming.

Due to the support granted by NVIDIA’s partners, the mainboard makers, and supposedly due to relatively low price the new chipset may appear very popular. And bearing in mind good relations between NVIDIA and the PC makers, active promotion of the new solution may push the latter to use AMD CPUs. Which is what they need.

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