915P Chipset Roundup: ABIT AG8, ASUS P5GD2 Premium, and Foxconn 915A01-P

Using the same CAS memory settings, disabling all automatic overclocking, and normalizing ASUS' optimized PCI Express graphics link, the ASUS P5GD2 Premium continues to dominate the benchmarks. In Unreal Tournament 2004, it's a few percentage points above its nearest competitor, the ABIT AG8, though the difference certainly wouldn't be perceptible to a gamer in the heat of action. And that's at 1,024 x 768, too. Keep in mind that as the resolution continues to increase, the actual performance difference between motherboards will shrink, as well.

Like the Unreal Tournament 2004 demo, our Far Cry test is a custom recording that doesn't include live action but renders the luscious environment and existing characters all the same.

And again, ASUS ends up on top with little more advantage than the Hyper Path 2 memory optimization and whatever board-level improvements ASUS' engineers made to the 915P platform. Foxconn and ABIT are in close contention, as well; the former pulls a small victory, besting the latter by little more than a frame.

The Doom 3 test is id's generic Demo1, pre-cached to minimize hard drive influence. And, for a final time, the ASUS board peaks in first place, followed by Foxconn's 915A01-P and ABIT's AG8 a scant .2 frames per second behind.