Our testing methods
As ever, we did our best to deliver clean benchmark numbers. Tests were run at least twice, and the results were averaged.

Our test systems were configured like so:

nForce2 KT400 KT400A
Processor Athlon XP 'Barton' 3000+ 2.166GHz Athlon XP 'Barton' 3000+ 2.166GHz Athlon XP 'Barton' 3000+ 2.166GHz
Front-side bus 333MHz (166MHz DDR) 333MHz (166MHz DDR) 333MHz (166MHz DDR)
Motherboard Asus A7N8X Deluxe Soyo SY-KT400 Dragon Ultra VIA reference board
Chipset NVIDIA nForce2 VIA KT400 VIA KT400A
North bridge nForce2 SPP KT400 KT400A
South bridge nForce2 MCP-T VT8235 VT8235
Chipset drivers 2.03 VIA AGP, IDE, and INF v. 4.45 VIA AGP, IDE, and INF v. 4.45
Memory size 512MB (2 DIMMs) 512MB (1 DIMM) 512MB (1 DIMM)
Memory type Corsair XMS3200 PC2700 DDR SDRAM
(333MHz, 400MHz)		 Corsair XMS3200 PC2700 DDR SDRAM
(333MHz)		 Corsair XMS3200 PC2700 DDR SDRAM
(333MHz)
Graphics ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB (Catalyst 7.81.021218 drivers)
Sound Creative SoundBlaster Live!
Storage Maxtor DiamondMax Plus D740X 7200RPM ATA/100 hard drive
OS Microsoft Windows XP Professional
OS updates Service Pack 1, DirectX 9

Thanks to Corsair for providing us with DDR333 memory for our testing. If you're looking to tweak out your system to the max and maybe overclock it a little, Corsair's RAM is definitely worth considering. Using it makes life easier for us as we're dealing with brand-new chipsets and motherboards, because we don't have to worry so much about stability and compatibility.

The test systems' Windows desktops were set at 1024x768 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.