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PiFast
New to our testbed, but 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.
Lower is Better
According to the team at , PiFast is fairly memory intensive, so the DualDDR is probably helping out the 8RDA+ with its overall performance here. The KT400 lags a little behind the nForce2 at both 133FSB, as well as at 166FSB.
3D Mark 2001SE, 1024x768 - Default
3D Mark is one of those benchmark apps that will eat up as much processing power as it can. Benchmarks were run at default 1024x768, as I felt 640x480 is getting to be fairly pointless.
The 8RDA+ scores another victory, but not by too much. Overclocking the 8RDA+ is going to make for some impressive 3D Mark scores, though the days of 15 000+ scores are nearing an end as Futuremark is prepping their latest version of 3D Mark.
Unreal Tournament 2003
I've been playing around with the retail version of UT2K3 for quite sometime now, and have been pretty impressed with the graphics. It's a real system killer, and can bring many pre-2002 killer rigs to its knees. We used the scripts written by , which are excellent tools in testing various resolutions and detail levels. We selected the CPU test, which uses the dm-inferno map.
Oddly enough, the KT400 wins this round. Although we run benchmarks at least 5 times here, I ran it an extra 3 times to make sure I wasn't imagining it. The KT400 is only beaten by the 8RDA+ when it's overclocked, so I'd imagine an overclocked KT400 would still lead for this test.
Quake 3 Arena, 640x480 - Fastest
It's getting old, I know, but Quake 3 is still a decent benchmark for almost anything. For motherboards and CPUs, we run at the lowest settings and fire away.
Despite its win in UT2003, the KT400 succumbs to the nForce2 again. It isn't really close here, but if you can spot the difference with your own eyes in actual gameplay, hats off to you.
Jedi Knight 2, 640x480 - Fastest
Jedi Knight is still a Quake 3 engine game, so the nForce2 keeps its lead over the KT400. As we increase the FSB, we can see that the added bandwidth increases performance accordingly.
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Epox 8RDA+: Although they are no strangers to motherboards, the 8RDA+ marks the first time Epox have worked with nVidia. With the nForce2 getting a lot of good press, we take a look at Epox's nForce2 solution, and determine if this motherboard is worth consideration.
