Test Setup
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service
Pack 2
Processor: Genuine Intel(R) CPU 3.73GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 1024MB RAM
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
Card name: All-in-Wonder X1800XL
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6599
Comparison Motherboards: ASUS P5WD2, MSI P4N Diamond SLI
Going up against the ASUS P5N32-SLI Deluxe will be the 955X based
ASUS P5WD2 board, and the nForce 4 SLI (Intel) MSI P4N 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 6800 GT 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
The 955X has a slight advantage over the nForce
SLI boards but we can see the marked improvement with the SLI
X16 board. The results are still very close though, so we'll need
to see if real world results are impacted.
SYSMark 2004 Office and Content Creation
The P5N32-SLI has a leg up in the Internet Content
Creation test and has an even bigger lead in the Office Productivity
tests when compared to the MSI SLI X8 board. The P5N32-SLI almost
bridges the gap between the nForce SLI and Intel 955X, but still
falls a little short.
PiFast
The MSI P4N and ASUS P5WD2 boards here are more
or less neck and neck, but the ASUS P5N32-SLI holds just over
a one second lead over both.
CDeX
Deadlocked here. The hard drives were hooked up
to the default motherboard controllers, and as we can see the
NVIDIA and Intel controllers are fairly equal.
TMPGEnc
Only two seconds separate the slowest from the fastest
board, and the P5N32-SLI falls in between.
DVD Shrink
Dead even between the P5N32-SLI and P5WD2. The P4N
brings up the rear, lagging behind by 3 seconds.
NEXT
