nforce3 vs VIA K8T800 Chipsets?

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Soldato
Joined
20 Apr 2004
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Bit of an old question.

I've got two socket 939 motherboards, one with the nforce 3 chipset and the other based on the VIA K8T800 chipset and am trying to decide which one to use for my main system.

So far as I can remember I think that in benchmarks the nforce 3 was slightly the better/faster chipset but there was very little difference between them.

If anyone can confirm this for me that would be great.

Thanks :)
 
Personaly i would go with the Nforce3, my bro had that via chipset, i never much liked the drivers you got. neforce3 (my oldy comp) seemed a lot more... professionaly done.

If that makes any sence
 
Id recommend the nForce as well always been a good performer and well ranked where as VIA are usually used on more budget boards where performance isnt as much of an issue
 
This is going back a good few years now, but I think some of the K8T800 boards also lacked PCI/AGP locks which is a bit of a bummer if you were overclocking.
 
K8T800 Pro (with AGP/PCI lock) or plain K8T800?

Which 2 mobos in particular are these?
 
well, if memory serves the nf3 only has 8bit ht link in 1 direction that can hamper performance in certain aplications. the nf3 will oc better for the most part however.

tbh the via drivers are not problematic in the least, download the 4in1 hyperion drivrs. 1 file 1 install done. something i only ever do the 1 time - after windows install.

if you have the time, why not setup 1 see how it goes, then set up the other and see how it is. and pick the better performer/one you most liked.
 
There is Remixes of Nvidia drivers for peeps with NF2/3 for Vista, and its common knowledge you skip the crap Nvidia Firewall install and you wont get issues.
 
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Recently intalled Vista64 on an K8N Neo2 Platinum NF3.

No problems what so ever. Not sure if it was all NF3 boards, but this board could only lock SATA ports 1&2, ports 3&4 would be linked and would corrupt when overclcoking.

Another NF3 vote
 
Tetras said:
The nvidia drivers certainly are, nForce firewall anyone? Corrupt downloads, BSODs, Yey!
Click to expand...

hehe -
i had one of the better NF2's (~238mhz without volt mods/cooling mods) and hated it. drivers anoyed me and it always felt a bit... drunk :P KT400 before it, and KT600 after it. so OP should be aware ihave a via bias (Kt890 now) but i strongly say, jsut try both boards out and see which you prefer. since your gonna use1 main pc and 1 spare, its not like you hve to choose now and never can go back to the other.
i also dont recall seing much of any difference in the performance of different chipsets (in games) on amd K8 systems when you keep the rest of setting identical, different chipsets have more of an effect on features offered and stability/performance of those features. but i am willing to stand corrected. the nf3 will pretty much without doubt hit a higher fsb when you oc but has the sata port corruption issues. kt880 pci locks arent 100% reliable, but the via VT8237 southbridge is suprisingly resiliant to high pci speeds (ive run 44mhz by accident and just got hanging on soundcard/network useage/gfx output but no hdd corruption)
 
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