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Benchmarks
and Comparisons Continued |
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Content Creation 2002 &
Business Winstone 2001 |
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Content
Creation Winstone 2002: Content
Creation Winstone 2002 is a benchmarking program that
measures a PC's overall performance when running multimedia
intensive programs. Some of the applications it uses
to determine a Content Creation 2002 rating are:
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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)
With Content Creation Winstone
2002, the Abit SR7-8X and the Shuttle AS45GT/R matched each
other's score point for point. With the Abit system
running at 400MHz. DDR., we saw an increase of barely a
point over the 333MHz score. Once again we are seeing
minimal differences in score with a boost in memory speeds.
In the real world, these differences would not be detectable
to the user.
Now let's take a look and see if
this tides turn when we take a stab at Business Winstone
2001.
Business Winstone 2001:
Business Winstone is a benchmark that
measures a PC's overall performance when running
applications that are commonly found in the everyday
workstation environment. Some of the programs it runs
to determine a Business WInstone 2001 rating are:
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Five Microsoft
Office 2000 applications (Access, Excel, FrontPage,
PowerPoint, and Word)
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Microsoft
Project 98
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Lotus Notes R5
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NicoMak WinZip
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Norton
Antivirus
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Netscape
Communicator
As with Content Creation 2002,
both motherboards turned in virtually identical performance,
although this time the Abit board was able to squeeze out an
additional 1.2 points at 400MHz DDR. As with the other
tests though, we were left wondering where the benefits of
running the memory at 400MHz. went. With Business
Winstone 2001 we saw a mere gain of 2% with the increase
memory bandwidth.
As we bring this review to a
close, we find ourselves both pleased and disappointed at
the same time. The SR7-8X is a well-rounded
motherboard that proves to be a solid value with a lot of
features. The system put up great scores when we ran a
number of common benchmarks. Never once did we report
on any stability issues or miscellaneous errors while running
the system at stock speeds. Even after we increased
the memory speeds to 400MHz. DDR, the system remained stable
through out testing. On the flip-side, we saw no real
benefits to increasing the system's memory speed an
additional 67MHz. In each test, we saw minimal
increases in performance. The overclocking of this system was one of the
poorest experiences in recent memory for this reviewer.
It is one thing when a system will not overclock too high
and we just need to settle for a low overclock, but when we
consistently encountered data corruption, this becomes a
little more troubling. After seeing various reports of
poor overclocking with this system on various hardware
sites, we tend to think the problem lies with the
motherboard rather than the hardware used during the
benchmarking process. There are rumors
that there are revisions coming that should improve the overclocking of this and other SiS 648 based motherboards
and we look forward to seeing if things improve in the
future.
If you are looking to get a
quality Pentium 4 based system that has a good collection of
features and great all-around performance, the SR7-8X is a
reasonable choice (Roughly $100).
However, if you are a tweaker that is looking for a system
with great features and overclockability, we recommend that
you steer clear of the SR7-8X until we see an updated model
that corrects the issues we have reported.
In the end, we give the Abit
SR7-8X motherboard a HotHardware Heat Meter Rating of a 7.5...
HotHardware's PC Hardware Forum is all the rage! Are
you in?
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