Test Setup

MSI MEGA 651 PC: Pentium 4 2.4B, 2 x 256MB Corsair TWINX PC3200 Ram, AiW ATi Radeon 9700 Pro, 80GB Western Digital, Windows XP SP1, ATi Catalyst 3.5.

Shuttle XPC SS51G: Pentium 4 2.4B, 2 x 256MB Corsair TWINX PC3200 Ram, AiW ATi Radeon 9700 Pro, 80GB Western Digital, Windows XP SP1, ATi Catalyst 3.5.

ABIT IC7: Pentium 4 2.4B, 2 x 256MB Corsair TWINX PC3200 Ram, AiW ATi Radeon 9700 Pro, 80GB Western Digital, Windows XP SP1, ATi Catalyst 3.5.

Test software will be:

AVI-to-MPG Encoding
Unreal Tournament 2003
Quake 3: Arena
Jedi Knight 2
Splinter Cell

We'll be comparing the MEGA 651 against the Shuttle XPC SS51, which uses a similar SiS651 based motherboard. We are also throwing an ABIT IC7 Canterwood into the mix to illustrate the performance against a modern day chipset. We will be using a 533FSB 2.4B though, and not a 2.4C, since we already know how well that combo performs.

 

SiSoftware Sandra 2003

Although a synthetic benchmark, it's a popular one, freely available if you wish to make comparison benchmarks. We will be testing the CPU, MMX, and memory speeds.

SiSoft CPU Arithmetic Benchmark

SiSoft CPU Multimedia Benchmark

It's going to be looking very clear that even on a 533FSB, the Canterwood based ABIT IC7 is going to be winning the speed crown, but keep in mind that it is an ATX board, and is not in the same market segment as the SFF PC. Other than that, the MSI MEGA 651 is doing pretty good for itself using a one year old motherboard technology. In SiSoft's CPU tests, the MEGA 651 comes out on top of the Shuttle XPC SS51G, which uses the same chipset.

SiSoft Memory Benchmark

The MEGA 651 wins the Single Channel performance, but is no match for the Dual Channel Canterwood.

PC Mark 2002

In another synthetic benchmark, we can see the MEGA 651 continue its roll, edging out the XPC. No surprises when matched against the 875P though.

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 minutes:seconds.

Lower scores are better

Pretty close here. PiFast will stress the CPU and memory subsystem, so a fast setup will be optimal. The MEGA 651 outpaces the XPC by about 2 seconds. Play with larger numbers, and that time will add up.

TMPGEnc MPEG Encoding

Video editing is a taxing chore, and we'll be testing the Mega PC 651 using TMPGEnc v2.512 to encode a 7.78MB, 1:30 movie trailer to a 24FPS MPG file. Note that lower scores are better, and times are in seconds.

Neither board comes even close to the Canterwood, but the MEGA 651 holds an easy three second lead here. Like PiFast, use a larger video file, and that time will add up.

Unreal Tournament 2003

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.

I was quite impressed with the MEGA 651's performance here, as it performs a full 12FPS faster than the XPC.

Quake 3 Arena, 640x480

It's getting old, I know, but Quake 3 Engine games are still a useful resource to benchmark almost anything. For motherboards and CPUs, we run at the lowest settings and fire away. For Q3, the game was patched to the latest version, and demo four was run.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein, 640x480

For RtCW, the game was patched to the latest version, and demo checkpoint was run.

Jedi Knight 2, 640x480

We ran into a strange problem where the 1.04 patch didn't like our timedemo, so we ran v1.03. We used the demo ffa for testing.

We're seeing the same trend with the Q3 Engine games here, although in Jedi Knight II, there is a larger gap in performance when compared with Quake 3: Arena, and return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Splinter Cell, 640x480

New to our test bench is UbiSoft's 3rd person action game, Splinter Cell. We used the , and I edited the settings to stress CPU performance more so than video.

Splinter Cell can be pretty tough on video cards, but you're going to want a CPU to back it up. The MEGA 651 holds a 6FPS lead over the XPC at 640x480.