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 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 , 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