TMPGEnc MPEG Encoding

Video editing is a taxing chore, and we'll be testing the IC7-MAX3 using TMPGEnc 2.512 to encode a 7.78MB, 1:30 movie trailer to a 24FPS MPG file. Note that lower scores are better.

Lower is Better

Dead even between the boards, though this is likely more the result of us using a small MPG file. We'll be looking into updating this test in the near future.

Unreal Tournament 2003 @ 640

UT2K3 s a real system killer, and can bring many systems to its knees. We used the , which are excellent tools in testing various resolutions and detail levels. We selected the CPU test, which uses the dm-inferno map.

The IC7 boards simply blow the P4C800-E away here. It appears that the Game Accelerator optimizations seem to be the deciding factor here.

Splinter Cell @ 640

New to our test bench is UbiSoft's 3rd person action game, Splinter Cell. We used the Beyond3D demo, and ran the demo at 640x480 at the lowest detail levels.

A bit closer in Splinter Cell than it was with UT2003, but the ASUS board trails nonetheless by a couple frames per second. Unlike in UT2003, the Game Accelerator on the IC7 is less of a factor.

Subsystem Testing

The first thing we'll check is the audio. We downloaded and installed to test its CPU utilization.

Unlike the past Realtek solutions, CPU utilization was quite a bit lower thoughout the DirectSound3D tests. CPU utilization never got to 10%, but it did average in the 3% - 9% range. Keep in mind though that this still doesn't compare to the nForce 2 (which is an AMD only platform) and its <2% averages. 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 ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe's numbers @ 2.4GHz.

UT 2003, Minimum Detail, 640x480 Resolution

With sound enabled, the P4C800-E Deluxe takes a nasty 16 frames per second hit. This is an improvement compared to times whenever we test the onboard Realtek solution. I doubt most of you play at these settings, so let's look at something more realistic.

UT 2003, Maximum Detail, 1280x1024 Resolution

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. I for one won't be able to spot a 0.0002 difference, so if you're going to game with the onboard sound, you should be fine.

In terms of sound quality, I found gaming to be very acceptable, as was the case with movie and MP3 playback. I didn't hear any distortion, even when moving files around the hard disk.

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