SiSoft Sandra Memory

Despite the fact that DDR333 is supported by the SS51, performance lagged behind the MSI 845E. For the record, no memory tweaks were done to either motherboards, other than allowing them to run as fast as their supported speed.

Tweaking the ram wasn't terribly difficult, though I'm certain the 2 sticks of Crucial ram was the culprit. I set the ram timings to Fast, CAS2.5, and 1T, and crashed the system. However, these timings worked with only one DIMM installed. I read about this at another review, so it seems this problem still exists. With one stick, and the above timings (the best I could manage), Ram Int. improved to 2013, and Ram Float improved to 2009.

SiSoft Sandra CPU Arithmetic

SiSoft Sandra CPU Multimedia

CPU performance is very close for both platforms, though MSI continues to hold a slight edge in performance. Still, considering the mindset of most enthusiasts, where bigger is faster, the SS51 does very well to hold up on its own.

PC Mark 2002

Released by , we've decided to incorporate PC Mark 2002 into our motherboard and CPU testing for future reviews. It provides tests that benchmarks a PC for typical SOHO use. Here's a snip from their site:

PCMark"2002 is a completely new, multipurpose benchmark, suited for benchmarking all kinds of PCs, from laptops to workstations, as well as across multiple Windows® operating systems. This easy-to-use benchmark makes professional strength benchmarking software available even to novice users. PCMark2002 consists of a series of tests that represent common tasks in home and office programs. PCMark2002 also covers many additional areas outside the scope of other MadOnion.com benchmarks.

Continuing the trend we saw with SiSoft, the scores are close, but the overall winner goes to the 845E once again, with the exception of the memory score. Unlike the SiSoft memory results, the SS51 wins by a small margin. This was not a fluke, as I was able to reproduce the same results with subsequent tests.

Now, let's face it. There's an AGP slot, which means everyone is going to want to know the gaming performance...

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