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Benchmarks
and Comparisons |
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Getting A Feel for the Big Picture |
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Quake 3:
One of the simplest, and more
familiar ways to gauge a motherboard's CPU and memory
performance is by
running the Quake 3 Timedemo "DEMO001." We configured the test to run at 640x480x16 and lowered all other settings
to eliminate any effects the video card may have on the
score.
At stock speeds and 64-Bit DDR,
the system pushed out 226 FPS. Although this is
nowhere near the highest score we've seen before, it is
still pretty good and 15 FPS better than what the MSI KT4
Ultra was capable of. Just for fun, we ran the
overclocked scores at both 64 and 128-Bit to see the affects
of overclocking and DualDDR. Right off the top, the
system added 50 FPS to its score at 64-Bit while 4 more
frames were tacked on at 128-Bit. Not a huge gain, but
we have more scores ahead!
MadOnion's
PCMark2002Pro:
Another good way to assess a
system's overall performance is by giving the system a run at MadOnion's PCMark2002 Pro. This application stresses
the three most important components of a system; CPU,
Memory, and Hard Drive. We ran the test at both 64 and 128-Bit DDR, at
stock and overclocked speeds, and threw in a stock score for
the MSI KT4 Ultra as a reference point.
The first thing we see is the
CPU performance was superior to the MSI KT4 in all aspects
of the test. With the DDR running at 64-Bit, the
system exceeded the MSI board by roughly 75 points and jumped an
additional 5 points with 128-Bit enabled. The scores soared with the system overclocked,
increasing close to 700 points. At both 64 and
128-Bit, the scores were almost equal, within 3 points of
one another.
With the Memory test, we were
anxious to see a more definitive assessment of DualDDR
compared to standard 64-Bit DDR. What we found was a
nice increase in score with 128-Bit mode enabled, although it was
nothing astronomical. What did get us excited
was the gains found when we overclocked the board.
Normally when we overclock an Athlon based system, we see a
nice gain of 500-700 points (shooting from the hip), but the
nForce2 board took off. We topped our memory scores an
additional 1000+ points, exceeding the 5000 mark.
When it comes to memory performance, the nForce2 put up a
great showing.
DirectX, OpenGL, and a Dash
of Winstone
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