Test Setup
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service
Pack 2
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3500+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.2GHz
Memory: 2048MB Corsair XMS3500 RAM
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
Card name: All-in-Wonder X1800XL
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6599
Comparison Motherboards: Soltek SL-K890Pro-939, MSI K8N Neo4
Diamond SLI
Going up against the ASUS A8N32-SLI Premium will be the Soltek
SL-K890Pro-939 K8T890 board, and the K8N Neo4 Diamond. The setups
all share the same peripheral components, except later on we'll
be demonstrating some SLI gaming performance between the MSI and
ASUS boards using two 7800 GTX cards.
Test Software is as follows:
SiSoft Sandra 2005 Memory - Our standard synthetic memory
benchmark. While it doesn't provide real-world information, it
does give us an idea of memory performance.
SYSMark 2004 Office and Content Creation - A scripted
benchmark using real-world applications. Higher numbers are better.
PiFast - A
good indicator of CPU/Motherboard performance is PiFast
version 4.2, by Xavier Gourdon. We used a computation of 10000000
digits of Pi, Chudnovsky method, 1024 K FFT, and no disk memory.
Note that lower scores are better, and times are in seconds.
TMPGEnc
2.521 - We used an Animatrix file, titled The
Second Renaissance Part 1, and a WAV created from VirtualDub.
The movie was then converted it into a DVD compliant MPEG-2 file
with a bitrate of 5000. Times are in minutes:seconds, and lower
is better.
CDex Audio Conversion Wav to MP3 - CDex
was used to convert a 414MB Wav file to a 320kbs MP3. Times
are in minutes:seconds, and lower is better.
DVD
Shrink - We ripped the War of the Worlds bonus feature off
the disk at 100% and compressed the file from the hard drive to
70%. Times are in minutes:seconds, and lower is better.
Doom 3, Far Cry, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Half-Life 2 @
640x480, HQ Settings - While higher resolutions tax the video
card, lower resolutions rely on CPU and subsystem speed. Higher
scores are better.
3DMark06 @ 640 - HQ settings were used with every supported
test selected. Higher scores are better.
All benchmarks will be run a total of three times with the average
scores being displayed. Any system tweaks and ram timings were
configured to the best possible for each platform.
SiSoft Sandra 2005 Memory
Given that AMD integrated the memory controller
on the CPU die, there are minimal differences in the memory benchmarks.
The nForce boards do hold a small lead though, but overall not
much difference between them.
SYSMark 2004 Office and Content Creation
The A8N32-SLI has a leg up in the Internet Content
Creation test and has an even bigger lead in the Office Productivity
tests. The K8T890 is struggling a bit in the Office tests here
compared to the SLI boards.
PiFast
The two nForce boards here are more or less neck
and neck, both holding about a 2 second lead over the VIA based
board.
CDeX
The ASUS A8N32-SLI is slightly quicker than the
MSI and a solid 5 seconds faster than the Soltek.
TMPGEnc
Both SLI boards are even, though the K8N Neo4 is
one second faster. Both are MSI and ASUS are significantly faster
than Soltek.
DVD Shrink
Not much separation between the three here. Soltek
make a bit of a comeback, finishing second to ASUS.
NEXT
