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PC Mark 2002 |
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Synthetic CPU and Memory Bandwidth Testing |
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The difference between this
processor benchmark and the Sandra 2004 tests is roughly
the same. Three percentage points separate VIA's
brand new PT880 from Intel's high-end 875P. Meanwhile,
the more mainstream 865PE trails 875P just slightly,
demonstrating the value to be had in buying hardware one
notch below the flagship level.
Memory Test Technical
details: (Quote Taken From Futuremark)
Raw read, write, and read-modify-write operations are
performed starting from a 3072 kilobytes array decreasing
in size to 1536 KB, 384 KB, 48 KB and finally 6 KB. Each
size of block is tested two second and the amount of
accessed data is given as result. In the STL container
test a list of 116 byte elements is constructed and sorted
by an integer pseudo-random key. The list is then iterated
through as many times as possible for 2 seconds and the
total size of the accessed elements is given as result.
There are 6 runs of this test, with 24576 items in the
largest run corresponding to a total data amount of 1536
KB, decreasing in size to 12288 items (768 KB), 6144 items
(384 KB), 1536 items (96 KB), 768 items (48 KB) and 96
items in the smallest run corresponding to 6 KB of total
data.
Contrary to our Sandra 2004
results, PC Mark 2002 favors the875P by about a single
percentage point. VIA's PT800, with its dual-channel
memory architecture, takes a close second place. The
865PE chipset places third by a small margin.
It'd appear that the modifications VIA made to its memory
controller (other than the extra 64-bit channel of memory)
are paying off as PT880 readily contends with the
PAT-enabled 875P.
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Business & Content Creation Winstones |
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Simulated Application Performance |
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The processor
and memory metrics we've just run are relatively worthless
without some sort of tangible result behind them. A
combination of PC Magazine's Content Creation 2003 and Business Winstone 2002 benchmark suites gives us a score that adds
meaning to purely synthetic memory bandwidth and
processing tests.
Business Winstone
Applications:
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Five
Microsoft Office 2002 applications
(Access, Excel, FrontPage, PowerPoint, and Word)
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Microsoft Project 2000
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Lotus
Notes
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WinZip 8.0
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Norton Antivirus
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Netscape Communicator
Content Creation
Winstone Applications:
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Adobe
Photoshop 6.0.1
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Adobe
Premiere 6.0
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Macromedia Director 8.5
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Macromedia Dreamweaver UltraDev 4
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Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 7.01.00.3055
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Netscape Navigator 6/6.01
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Sonic
Foundry Sound Forge 5.0c (build 184)
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More so than any of the tests
run thus far, both Winstone benchmarks give a pseudo
real-world indication of performance with some of the more
popular content creation and office productivity
applications. Keep in mind that a few of those
programs are very dependant on user input and won't really
benefit from a platform that scores within a percent or
two of its competition. Others, however, are very
sensitive to computing power and memory bandwidth.
Sensitivity or not, it's pretty remarkable to see a
motherboard that VIA anticipates will cost around $80
outperforming Intel's best chipset that commands nearly
twice the price for comparable features. Similarly
interesting is the miniscule performance delta between the
875P and 865PE boards, which are nearly equivalent on both
benchmarks.
Gaming and 3DMark
Benchmarks
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