Intro/Packaging/Layout
nVidia certainly chose the right path by re-introducing SLI in a PCI-E platform with their nForce4 chipset. We say this because it seems as though other chipset manufacturers are going to be jumping on the “multi video cards” bandwagon soon. However, nVidia was the first with it on the AMD platform and they’re first with it on the Intel platform as well as we look at the P4N Diamond from SLI. If you remember correctly, MSI was also the first one to send us their AMD based SLI board.
Packaging
The P4N Diamond comes in a shiny black box almost identical to the AMD version. The front side flips open to reveal some of the features supported by the board as well as some of MSI’s proprietary features. The back of the board has an actual board shot and lists all the cables and headers included.
Inside the package, you find most of the things that are included with MSI boards such as rounded IDE cables and plenty of SATA cables. MSI also includes backplates for USB, Firewire , DLED as well as one SATA port, however, unlike the one we see with ASUS boards, there’s no power connector included in the SATA backplate and you will have to find an alternative way of powering your drive
Layout
MSI does a reasonable job with the layout of the P4N Diamond however, it could’ve been better. Starting off, the Northbridge sits very close to the CPU socket and as you can see from the picture, fitting anything larger than the stock HSF unit might be a problem. The Northbridge is actively cooled and this is needed as it got real hot during our tests. Even the Southbridge got very hot and you can see that MSI has used a copper core in the center to help things.
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The memory sockets as well as the floppy and IDE connectors are present next to the CPU- where we like them. The main power connecter is also present here while MSI places the four-pin connector between the back panel and CPU socket and on the top of the board which allows you to reduce cable clutter. The board comes with two PCI-E x 16 slots, one PCI-E x1 slot and two standard PCI slots. This is the first nForce4 board we’ve received that has no card between the PCI x16 slots that you need to flip to enable/disable SLI and this is a very good thing.
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MSI places six SATA connectors in a row which certainly looks cool but will probably create a jungle of cables if you plan on using all the connectors. Right above these connectors MSI places their clearing CMOS button and instead of switching jumper position to clear the CMOS, you simply press that button- certainly very convenient for us but not for the small group of people that wire the clearing CMOS jumper to the front or back of their system so they can clear the CMOS even with the case closed.
Features/BIOS/Stability
Features
Based on the nForce4 SLI chipset, the MSI P4N Diamond brings with itself all the features that the chipset supports like SLI, Dual channel DDR2, 3.0GB/s SATA ports with RAID as well as nVidia’s Active Armor firewall technology. On top of that, MSI adds Creative’s 5.1 SB Live! Audio solution as well as Silicon Image’s RAID controller that runs off the PCI-Express bus.
A secondary Gigabit Network card is also added alognw tih Firewire to make you wired and connected. However, MSI doesn’t offer the WiFi/Bluetooth card that they bundled with the K8N and thus if you plan on adding any sort of wireless connectivity, be prepared to buy the card separately.
BIOS
Plenty of tinkering options will make the P4N Diamond a good board for tweakers. Starting off, you can adjust memory timings and frequency to your memory modules’s liking. What we rally liked about this board is that the memory isn’t set as a divider of your FSB- instead you can set the memory and FSB independent of each other to any speed that the board allows.
Dynamic overclocking is also supported for the casual overclocker and not only does MSI allow your CPU to be overclocked, but the core for your ATI or nVidia based graphics card can also be dynamically overclocked. People with nVidia cards can also have the video card’s memory dynamically overclocked. We think that this is a pretty option for people who like to run their setups at stock speed but need a bit of a kick when playing demanding games.
MSI also allows you to adjust overclocking options manually and they give you a reasonable range to play with. Starting off, you can adjust the CPU multiplier if your CPU is unlocked while FSB speeds range between 400MHz to 1400MHz. As we mentioned earlier, you can adjust the memory speed independently of the FSB and MSI allows you to select anything between 400MHz to 900MHz.
Voltage options are also present for CPU, memory and Northbrdige with MSI allowing upto 1.55V for the CPU, 1.8V to 2.4V for your DDR2 memory modules and upto 1.7V for the Northbridge. We were able to take our 3.46GHz EE CPU from 533MHz to almost 140MHz by reducing the multiplier from 13 to 12.
Stability
While we didn’t face any stability problems, there was a weird problem with SLI not being recognized when a second card was inserted. However, a BIOS update from MSI solved this issue. Besides that, we didn’t face any compatibility or stability problems with the memory modules and video cards that we used to test the board.
Testbed
| CPU: |
Intel Pentium4 3.46GHz EE |
| Memory: |
2 x 512MB OCZ DDR667 Memory Modules |
| VGA Card: |
nVidia GeForce 6800GT |
| Optical/Hard Drives: |
ASUS 52X CDRW, Western Digital 10,000RPM 36GB Raptor Serial-ATA |
| Monitor: |
Relisys 19" Monitor |
| Operating System: |
Windows XP Professional SP2 |
| Motherboard Drivers: |
nVidia nForce 6.31 |
| VGA Drivers: |
nVidia Forceware 71.84 |
For comparison, we've chosen the nForce4 SLI based Epox 9NPA+ SLI with the AMD Athlon64 3500+ CPU and the ASUS 925XE chipset based P5NDA2-E board. We've compared all the boards in a non-SLI mode. The following applications were used for testing
| CPI/Memory/HD: |
PC Mark '04 CPU, Memory, Graphics and Hard Drive. Sandra 05 Memory Benchmarks |
| Graphics Benchmarks: |
3D Mark 2001SE, 3D MArk 2003, 3D Mark 2005 and Aquamark3- Default Settings. |
| Full Games: |
Doom3, UT2004, Far Cry, Counter Strike: Source at 1024x768 resolution |
| Audio/Video Encoding: |
WorldBench: Jukebox, AutoGK with Pirates of Carribian DVD, WB: 3D Studio Max |
| General Applications: |
WorldBench: Adobe Photoshop, Ahead Nero, Microsoft Office, Mozilla and Winzip |
| 3D Workstation: |
Cinibench 2003, WB: 3D Studio Max (OpenGL and Direct-X) |
If you would like for us to add any additional benchmarking software, please email us at suggestions@tbreak.com
PC Mark/Sandra
| PC Mark 04: CPU |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| ASUS P5DA2-E |
5,319 |
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+1% |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
5,262 |
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| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
4,219 |
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-20% | |
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| PC Mark 04: Memory |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
6,215 |
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| ASUS P5DA2-E |
5,803 |
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-7% |
| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
5,425 |
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-13% | |
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| PC Mark 04: Graphics |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
6,852 |
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+1% |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
6,796 |
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| ASUS P5DA2-E |
6,355 |
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-6% | |
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| PC Mark 04: Hard Disk |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
4,442 |
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+10% |
| ASUS P5DA2-E |
4,166 |
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+3% |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
4,038 |
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| Sandra 04: RAM Integer |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
6,000 |
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+6% |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
5,677 |
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| ASUS P5DA2-E |
5,397 |
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-5% | |
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| Sandra 04: RAM Floating |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
5,939 |
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+5% |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
5,673 |
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| ASUS P5DA2-E |
5,392 |
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-5% | |
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The P4N Diamond does well in memory benchmarks compared to the 925XE based ASUS board however, its disk performance falls a bit below than both the other boards.
3D Marks/Aquamark
| 3D Mark 2001SE |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
23,404 |
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| ASUS P5DA2-E |
23,112 |
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-1% |
| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
22,885 |
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-2% | |
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| 3D Mark 2003 |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| ASUS P5DA2-E |
11,752 |
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0% |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
11,735 |
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| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
11,399 |
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-3% | |
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| 3D Mark 2005 |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
4,906 |
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| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
4,863 |
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-1% |
| ASUS P5DA2-E |
4,695 |
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-4% | |
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| Aquamark 3 |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
65,214 |
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| ASUS P5DA2-E |
64,657 |
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-1% |
| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
63,621 |
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-2% | |
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3D Marks tend to show the P4 as the best, however that is usually not the case when you take actual gaming benchmarks which is why we dont necesarrily recommend these benchmarks. But its an easy to get benchmark and lots of people like comparing their 3D Mark scores which is why you see them here.
Gaming Benchmarks
| Doom 3 |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
96.60 |
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+2% |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
95.10 |
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| ASUS P5DA2-E |
88.20 |
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-7% | |
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| Far Cry |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
74.93 |
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| ASUS P5DA2-E |
72.68 |
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-3% |
| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
72.37 |
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-3% | |
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| Unreal Tournament 2004 |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
180.92 |
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+2% |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
177.94 |
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| ASUS P5DA2-E |
169.41 |
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-5% | |
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Now these are certainly impressive numbers. With the 925XE, we saw the P4 3.46EE losing to the Athlon64 3500+ by a reasonable margin, however, the nForce4 platform makes this CPU perform almost as well as the Athlon64 which is certainly saying something. Compared to the 925XE, we see a 3-7% increase in performance.
Photoshop/Office/Nero/Mozilla/Winzip
| WB: Adobe Photoshop |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
330 |
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| ASUS P5DA2-E |
331 |
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0% |
| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
340 |
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-3% | |
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| WB: Ahead Nero |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
493 |
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+3% |
| ASUS P5DA2-E |
497 |
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+2% |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
507 |
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| WB: Microsoft Office |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
518 |
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| ASUS P5DA2-E |
526 |
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-2% |
| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
528 |
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-2% | |
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| WB: Mozilla |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
365 |
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+16% |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
434 |
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| ASUS P5DA2-E |
437 |
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-1% | |
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| WB: Winzip |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| ASUS P5DA2-E |
363 |
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+6% |
| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
384 |
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+1% |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
386 |
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Except for Mozilla, we see expected results with the other tests where the nForce4 leads a couple and falls below in the rest, however, the difference isnt by much.
Audio/Video Encoding
| WB: MusicMatch Jukebox |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| ASUS P5DA2-E |
407 |
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0% |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
409 |
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| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
483 |
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-18% | |
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| AutoGK: Divx Encoding |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
37.62 |
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| ASUS P5DA2-E |
37.13 |
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-1% |
| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
33.17 |
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-12% | |
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| WB: Adobe Premiere |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
395 |
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+22% |
| ASUS P5DA2-E |
494 |
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+2% |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
505 |
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| WB: Microsoft Windows Media Encoder |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| ASUS P5DA2-E |
349 |
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+1% |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
351 |
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| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
391 |
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-11% | |
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Again, we see the nForce4 platform performing almost identical to the 925XE platform with encoding
3D Workstation Performance
| Cinebench |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| ASUS P5DA2-E |
419 |
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0% |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
418 |
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| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
313 |
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-25% | |
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| WB: Discreet 3D Studio MAX (Direct X) |
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| WB: Discreet 3D Studio MAX (OpenGL) |
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| Product |
Score |
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Difference |
| MSI P4N Diamond |
378 |
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| ASUS P5DA2-E |
378 |
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0% |
| Epox 9NPA+ SLI |
380 |
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-1% | |
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No surprises here either as both the 925X and nForce4 post almost identical results
Conclusion
nVidia’s entry into the P4 chipset segment is certainly impressive. The P4N Diamond manages to post scores which are as good as Intel’s 925XE in most benchmarks and better in gaming bringing it a bit closer to the Athlon64 dominated category. nVidia also provides better built-in features such as support for ten USB 2.0 ports, four IDE drives along with four SATA drives than can be mixed to create RAID and their Active Armor Firewall technology.
One of the main advantages that nForce4 brings is SLI technology which will be looked upon in an upcoming article where we’ll compare AMD to Intel in high-end SLI gaming. We do like the fact that you dont have to use the SLI card to switch between SLI and non-SLI mode and kudos to MSI for that.
We think that MSI has done a good job with the P4N Diamond. It’s full of features- although wireless connectivity would’ve been a plus, is pretty stable and delivers good performance and overclocking options. The price of this board will be close to $250 (approximately AED 920/-) which is certainly a bit on the higher side, however, all SLI boards are around that price.
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