nVidia 6800 Ultra PCIe: nVidia nForce4 vs. ATI Bullhead

With both ATI Bullhead and nVidia nForce4 sporting PCI Express, we also looked at the performance of the nVidia 6800 Ultra PCIe on both boards.

nVidia 6800 Ultra (PCIe), nVidia nForce4 vs. ATI Bullhead
FX55, 2X512MB, 2-2-2-10 DDR
Benchmark nVidia nForce4 ATI Bullhead
ATI RX480
% Change
nF4 to ATI
Halo 122.7 119.0 -3.0%
UT2004 - High Quality 75.1 75.2 +0.1%
Doom3 - High Quality 106.0 103.9 -2%
Far Cry 1.1 136.6 144.2 +5.6%
RTCW - Enemy Territory Radar 121.1 119.0 -1.7%
PCMark 2004 5234 5214 -0.4%
Aquamark 3 73177 71008 -3.0%

As you can see, the Halo score for nVidia on nVidia is about the same as our past tests of ATI on ATI. nVidia on ATI is about 3% slower than the nVidia on nF4. Far Cry continues the pattern of best performance on an ATI chipset and/or an ATI graphics card. Doom 3 and Aquamark 3 are also very slightly slower on nVidia/ATI than nVidia/nVidia, but the % change of 2% to 3% is hardly significant.

The ATI Bullhead is equivalent to slightly slower with an nVidia PCIe card than an nVidia nForce4 chipset running the same nVidia card. nVidia has claimed that nVidia on nVidia is a faster combination than ATI on nVidia, but we can only conclude that these performance differences are not very significant. ATI/ATI and nVidia/nVidia are the fastest combinations in our comparisons, but the differences are so tiny that they really don't matter. You can run any of these in combination with each other without any concern that you have to match Athlon 64 chipset to Graphics chipset.

The most revealing fact in these comparisons is that no matter how you look at the new ATI RX480 chipset, it is completely competitive with the best Athlon 64 chipsets that we have tested.

ATI X800 XT PCIe: nVidia nForce4 vs. ATI Bullhead ATI Bullhead: General Performance and Encoding
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  • kogase - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    Eh... I don't think the boards are kicking Intel's ass. A64 is.
  • fuzzynavel - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    I didn't realise that the nforce4 and ATI mobos...kicked intels ass so badly!! Not bad for a first attempt....just avoid the integrated graphics and it all looks sweet
  • Denial - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    This is nice and all, but I'm not uprading until dual cores are out. The difference between my home PC (P4 2.8) and office workstation (dual 2.66 xeons) is night and day. It's at the point that my home PC drives me nuts when one process brings everything else to a halt (all the more frustrating when it's something like explorer running amok). I've absolutely had it with single CPU's, no more!
  • VaultDweller - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    The tables on pages 10 and 11 both list Halo as the first benchmark, but the review text on page 10 refers to a 14.4% gain in 'Quake 3.' According to the table, that 14.4% was for Halo.
  • MAME - Monday, November 8, 2004 - link

    sweet

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