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Subsystem Testing
The first thing we'll check is the audio. We downloaded and installed to test its CPU utilization.
Like the IC7's Realtek solution, CPU utilization was fairly high thoughout the DirectSound3D tests. CPU utilization never got to 10%, but it did average in the 5% - 7% range, which is a lot higher than the <2% averages we've seen with the nForce 2. It's not the end of the world, given that the slowest CPU you would ideally be using with the IC7 is a 2.4GHz "C", but we would have liked to have seen lower numbers. This is a synthetic benchmark though, and since I know all of you enjoy a game or two, let's see how the sound will affect UT 2003 performance.
The [H]ardocp Tool has an option to enable and disable sound during testing. Tests will be done with the same hardware configuration as the rest of the benchmarks, except we'll only be displaying the Pentium 4 2.4GHz "C" numbers.
UT 2003, Minimum Detail, 640x480 Resolution
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Frames per Second
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| IS7 - Sound On |
227.31
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| IS7 - Sound Off |
247.62
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It's plain to see that the CPU takes quite a hit when enabling the onboard sound. Keep in mind though that the settings used are not going to be ideal if eye candy is important to you. What happens when we up the resolution and detail level to settings most people would play with a similar setup?
UT 2003, Maximum Detail, 1280x1024 Resolution
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Frames per Second
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| IS7 - Sound On |
92.198029
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| IS7 - Sound Off |
92.191826
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When it comes down to it, at high resolution and detail levels, the onboard sound's CPU utilization will not be a factor at all. For those of you who can spot a 0.006203FPS difference, my hats off to you, though eye doctors will wish you dead for your lack of business.
In terms of sound quality, I found gaming to be very acceptable, and ever since Scott posted in our forums how much he enjoyed Evanescence - Fallen, I've been listening to that quite a bit as well. The music is a mix of calm and fast paced rock, and the singer's haunting vocals played out quite well through my Logitech THX Z-560's.
Ed. Note: A reader pointed me in the where there seems to be some issues with the mic. I'm no singer, so I didn't test it, but it may be worth checking out. There is also some discussion about sound quality issues, but I have not experienced those myself.
Hard Drive Performance
I apologize for not having any SATA drives to properly test the SATA performance. Hopefully we'll remedy this situation in the near future.
ATA Performance (Regular IDE)
Performance is in line with the last Intel ICH5 we've tested. CPU utilization is 0.5% higher, but there are fewer spikes than the last time.
Network Performance
We used to test the networking speed, and Windows Task Manager for CPU usage. We copied a variety of install files, varying in size of 300kb to as much as 150MB per file from the IC7 machine, to our IS7 box.
Download speeds averaged about 8.76MB/sec, which is about the average with the type of files used in previous tests. CPU utilization averaged about 9%, with 7% being the low mark, and 11% being the high. If you recall in our IC7 review, I slammed the 3Com PCI NIC pretty hard for it's 30% utilization, so it was nice to get back to the <10% range.
Next Page - Overclocking Results & Final Words
Previous Page - Game Benchmarks
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ABIT IS7 Max II Advance Motherboard: We take a look at the ABIT IS7 Springdale today, and if our benchmarks are any indication, this mainstream board demonstrates that the Canterwood is not the only game in town.
