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ZDBench Winstones |
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Put away
those games, and do some work! |
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Content
Creation Winstone 2002:
Content Creation Winstone is a
system-level, application-based benchmark that measures a
PC's overall performance when running top, Windows-based,
32-bit, multimedia content creation applications.
Following the lead of real users, Content Creation Winstone
2002 keeps multiple applications open at once and switches
among those applications. Content Creation Winstone 2002 is
a single large test that runs the above applications through
a series of scripted activities and returns a single score.
Below is a list
of applications that Content Creation Winstone 2002 uses to
come up with its rating:
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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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Business Winstone 2002:
Business Winstone 2002, which
was released in August 2002, has the sleek lines of new
application versions, backed by the power of updated
workloads under the hood. Highlights include the Business
Winstone debut of Office XP applications, as well as larger
workloads to make the benchmark hot spots--those times when
you're likely to see an hourglass or a progress bar--even
hotter. All of this ensures that Business Winstone
2002 remains strictly up to date and will provide meaningful
test scores for the latest crop of desktop PCs.
Some of
the programs it runs to determine a Business Winstone 2002
rating are:
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Lotus
Notes® R5
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Microsoft® FrontPage® 2002 SP-1
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Microsoft® PowerPoint® 2002 SP-1
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Microsoft® Excel 2002 SP-1
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Microsoft® Access 2002 SP-1
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Microsoft® Word 2002 SP-1
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Microsoft® Project 2000
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WinZip®
8.0
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Norton
AntiVirusTM from Symantec
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Netscape® 6.2.1
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As we have seen
in past review, the VIA P4PB is not well suited to the
Winstones, and falls far behind the rest of the pack.
The Abit BH7 put up a great showing, coming in second in the
CCWS and tied for first with the MSI 655 Max in the BWS
benchmark. Both scores moved up appreciably when the system
was overclocked, ranging from a 10-15% increase. All
in all, it is evident that the BH7 stands its ground in both
the gaming and business application realms.
The Abit BH7 had
a lot of history and hype to live up to, and it certainly
satisfied. While not as groundbreaking as the BH6 was
in its day, the BH7 does provide a powerful yet stable
platform to build upon, and we were able to overclock it
without any major issues. Some may find fault in the
sparse contents of the provided bundle, but we felt that in
this case, builders will be looking more for the board itself
than any extra brackets or assorted goodies. Keeping
the extras to a minimum allows the BH7 to be found for as
cheap as $90 on most search engines, a great price for a
capable board. The only real detriment that we found
with the Abit BH7 was the odd implementation of the Serial
ATA channel, which effectively knocked out the second IDE
port. It might have been best to simply not travel
down that road, and rather looked into providing ATA RAID support
instead. Nevertheless, this was a stable board that performed
well, and came with features such as on-board audio and LAN.
It's safe to say the "BH" tradition is alive and well.
We give the Abit
BH7 a 9 on the HotHardware
Heat Meter...
Have you checked out the HotHardware Forum lately?
You mean you haven't? Click here
to get in on the action!
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