Review: Chaintech Summit SK8T800 Motherboard - Mainboard - HEXUS.net

System setup and notes

Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.

Chaintech SK8T800 VIA K8T800 chipset based motherboard (13/02/2004 BIOS)
Chaintech Zenith ZNF3-250 NVIDIA nForce3 250 chipset-based motherboard (16/1/2004 BIOS)
EPoX 8KDA3+ NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb chipset-based motherboard (07/04/2004 BIOS)
EPoX 8HDA3+ VIAK8T800 chipset-based motherboard (24/03/2004 BIOS)

Other components

AMD Athlon 64 Model 3400+ CPU (2.2GHz)
ASUS Radeon 9800 XT (412/730)
2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3500C2, run at 2-2-2-6
Pioneer 105 DVD-RW
Western Digital 160GB (WD1600) 8MB cache hard drive
Western Digital 36GB Raptor SATA hard drive
Dell P991 19" monitor

Software

Windows XP Professional SP1
DirectX 9.0b
NVIDIA nForce3 Platform Driver
VIA Hyperion 4.51 driver set
ATI CATALYST 4.4 drivers and control panel
Pifast v4.1 to 10m places
Lame v3.92 MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end using U2's Pop album
HEXUS XviD encoding test
KribiBench 1.1
ScienceMark 2.0
Realstorm Raytracing benchmark 320x180x32
3DMark 2001SE v330
UT2003 Retail (Build 2225)
X2: The Threat - Rolling Demo
Comanche 4 benchmark
Quake 3 v1.30 HQ

Call of Duty - HEXUS Custom Test

Notes

No problems to report during installation and testing. One strange fact did present itself:

We've seen manufacturers try to get the better of one another by inflating their respective boards' FSB speeds. ASUS, in particular, is guilty of this charge. Chaintech goes the other way with the SK8T800. 20MHz below default and 30MHz behind most boards makes it slower already. Another strange clock decision.

The running speed of tested boards was as follows:

2210.9MHz - AMD Athlon 64 Model 3400+ / EPoX 8KDA3+ (nForce3 250Gb - 2-2-2-6)

2210.9MHz - AMD Athlon 64 Model 3400+ / EPoX 8HDA3+ (K8T800 - 2-2-2-6)

2210.0MHz - AMD Athlon 64 Model 3400 / Chaintech Zenith ZNF3-250 (nForce3 250 - 2-2-2-6)

2178.0MHz - AMD Athlon 64 Model 3400+ / Chaintech SK8T800 (VIA K8T800 - 2-2-2-6)

Overclocking

No voltage adjustment and a lack of multiplier support don't bode well for pushing past rated specifications. We only managed to hit 214MHz driven clock with any kind of stability. The main cause has to be the lack of CPU headroom at stock volts.