Aopen EZ65 vs. Biostar iDEQ 200T

HOW WE CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEM:

We configured the Biostar and AOpen SFF PCs as similarly as possible.  The video cards, memory, hard drives, driver versions (where applicable) and OS configurations were identical.  Before we started benchmarking these machines, we entered their system BIOSes and set each board to their "Optimized Defaults".  We then configured the RAM to run at 200MHz (DDR400), with the timings set by the SPD.  The hard drives were then formatted, and Windows XP Professional (SP1) was installed.  When the installation was complete, we hit the Windows Update site and downloaded all of the available updates, with the exceptions of the ones related to Windows Messenger and Media Player 9.  Then we installed all of the necessary drivers, and removed Windows Messenger from the system altogether.  Auto-Updating and System Restore were disabled as well, and we set up a 768MB permanent page file on the same partition as the Windows installation.  Lastly, we set Windows XP's Visual Effects to "best performance", installed all of our benchmarking software, defragged the hard drives and ran all of the tests.

The HotHardware Test Systems It's Not The Size Of The Enclosure...

PCMark2002 Benchmarks Some Synthetic Scores

In our first batch of tests, we used Futuremark's PCMark2002 benchmarking suite.  Like other synthetic benchmarks, it's difficult to translate PCMark2002 scores into "real world" performance.  However, because it is very easy to run, and produces repeatable, comparable results, PCMark2002 has become a staple here in the lab.  We ran PCMark2002's "CPU" and "Memory" performance modules on both of these systems.  We'll also be comparing these machines to two Shuttle XPCs we've recently reviewed, the P4 powered SB65G2 and the Athlon 64 powered SN85G4.  For your reference, the CPU module incorporates the following tests:

CPU Test:

• JPEG decompression

• Zlib compression & decompression

• Text search

• MP3 Audio Conversion

• 3D Vector Calculation

The Shuttle SB65G2, AOpen EZ65 and Biostar iDEQ 200T are all based on the same chipset, and were tested using the same CPU and RAM, which is why the above results are so similar.  It's also evident that PCMark2002's CPU benchmark obviously favors the high clock speed of the Pentium 4, which is why the SN85G4 with it's Athlon 64 3200+ (2GHz Clock Speed) falls short of the other machines tested.

Memory Test Technical details: (Quoted 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.

The performance deltas between the i865 based machines were a bit more pronounced with PCMark2002's memory performance module, but the differences were not drastic.  The Biostar iDEQ 200T pulled off a narrow victory in this test, followed by Shuttle's SB65G2 and then the AOpen EZ65.  The nForce 3 powered SN85G4 brought up the rear.

Video Encoding Benchmarks With The AOpen & Biostar's SFF Systems Hollywood, Here We Come!

We also did some video encoding with the AOpen EZ65 and Biostar iDEQ 200T.  To get the scores listed below, we took a 24MB, standard MPEG 2 format video clip and converted it to the DivX format, using v5.1 of the CODEC, with XMPEG v5.02.  The results reported below are in Minutes:Seconds, lower numbers equal better performance.

The iDEQ 200T slightly outpaced the competition in this test as well.  2 seconds separated the iDEQ 200T from the SB65G2, which led the AOpen EZ65 by 5 seconds.  This is another test that favors the Pentium 4's architecture, which is evident by the 21 second spread between the first place finisher, the Biostar iDEQ 200T, and the last place finisher, the SN85G4.

A Few More Tests & The Ratings