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Benchmarks
and
Comparisons Continued |
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Content Creation 2002 & Business Winstone 2001 |
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Business Winstone 2002:
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 2002
rating are:
-
Lotus
Notes® R5
-
Microsoft® FrontPage® 2002 SP-1
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Microsoft® PowerPoint® 2002 SP-1
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Microsoft® Excel 2002 SP-1
-
Microsoft® Access 2002 SP-1
-
Microsoft® Word 2002 SP-1
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Microsoft® Project 2000
-
WinZip®
8.0
-
Norton
AntiVirusTM from Symantec
-
Netscape® 6.2.1
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With Business
Winstone 2002, the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe was the top performer.
The system beat the KT4 by a 1.5 point margin while
increasing that gain an additional .7 points with DualDDR
enabled. On a whole, the nForce2 based system
performed quite well, beating the KT400 nicely, although the
gains of DualDDR were minimal at best.
After much
anticipation, we've finally had our chance to take a look at
the nForce2 chipset on a variety of different motherboards.
With a series of new technologies and design improvements
over the original nForce, nVidia has come up with a potent
alternative to the norm. We were pleased to see one of
the top motherboard OEMs in the industry, ASUS, take the
steps to quickly incorporate NVIDIA's new design into their
product line. Not only was this a great decision for
ASUS, it was also a solid vote of confidence for nVidia.
With a majority of motherboard manufacturers hesitant to
adopt NVIDIA's first offering, it seems that they've earned
themselves a solid position in the Athlon chipset industry.
Asus has put
together a great motherboard that offers the user a lot of
positives. With proven performance, excellent
integrated features and overclocking potential, the A7N8X
Deluxe is
a winner in our eyes. Compared to the high-end KT400
based KT4 Ultra FISR from MSI, the A7N8X Deluxe beat it in
virtually every test we ran. We were hoping to see a
larger difference in overall performance with DualDDR
enabled, but the strength of that technology truly lies with
on-board graphics. Yes, we saw some nice gains here
and there. However, Dual Channel DDR will show far greater
differences in gaming performance on an nForce2 board with
an IGP. Certainly it is just a matter of time until
one of these products finds its way into our labs, but until
then, you'll need to take our word for it.
HotHardware's PC Hardware Forum is all the rage! Are
you in?
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