Test notes
We were able to spend a little bit of quality time with a K8T800 Pro reference board, and we have a quick set of benchmarks for you. This was a Socket 940 board, so we're able to compare it to a K8T800 and to an nForce3 150. We had hoped to compare the K8T800 Pro to NVIDIA's recently unveiled nForce3 250GB chipset (which we just reviewed) but we couldn't locate a Socket 940-based nForce3 250Gb mobo just yet. Seems everyone's waiting for Socket 939.

Additionally, time limits and some limitations of the VIA reference board prevented us from conducting the full range of chipset tests we generally like to perform. Reference boards don't always have all the features one might wish for implemented and ready for testing, and such was the case with this board. As a result, we've just run through our standard CPU test suite to get a look at the K8T800 Pro's basic system performance. The VT8237 south bridge is nothing new, anyhow, and you can get a sense of its performance by reading our other recent chipset articles, like our nForce3 250Gb review.

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:

Chipset VIA K8T800 Pro VIA K8T800 NVIDIA nForce3 Pro 150
Processor AMD Athlon 64 FX-51 2.2GHz AMD Athlon 64 FX-51 2.2GHz Athlon 64 FX-51 2.2GHz
Front-side bus HT 16-bit/1000MHz downstream
HT 16-bit/1000MHz upstream		 HT 16-bit/800MHz downstream
HT 16-bit/800MHz upstream		 HT 16-bit/600MHz downstream
HT 8-bit/600MHz upstream
Motherboard VIA reference MSI 9130 Asus SK8N
BIOS revision Beta 1.1 1004
North bridge K8T800 Pro K8T800 nForce3 Pro 150
South bridge VT8237 VT8237 nForce3 Pro 150
Chipset drivers 4-in-1 v.4.51
ATA 5.1.2600.220		 4-in-1 v.4.51
ATA 5.1.2600.220		 ForceWare 3.13
Memory size 1GB (2 DIMMs) 1GB (2 DIMMs) 1GB (2 DIMMs)
Memory type Corsair CMX512RE-3200LL PC3200 registered ECC DDR SDRAM at 400MHz Corsair CMX512RE-3200LL PC3200 registered ECC DDR SDRAM at 400MHz Corsair CMX512RE-3200LL PC3200 registered ECC DDR SDRAM at 400MHz
Hard drive Seagate Barracuda V 120GB SATA 150 Seagate Barracuda V 120GB SATA 150 Seagate Barracuda V 120GB ATA/100
Audio Creative SoundBlaster Live!
Graphics Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB with CATALYST 4.1 drivers
OS Microsoft Windows XP Professional
OS updates Service Pack 1, DirectX 9.0b

Thanks to Corsair for providing us with 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.

The test systems' Windows desktops were set at 1152x864 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:

The tests and methods we employ are generally publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.