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Performance Comparisons with Unreal Tournament
2003 |
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High End Direct X
Gaming Performance |
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Unreal
Tournament completely taxes systems resources of all
types, memory, CPU and graphics. However, to limit
the influence of the graphics subsystem on this test, we
configured our testing runs at a low 640X480 resolution.
640X480 Resolution
640X480 Resolution
In both the
Bot Match and Fly By runs, the P4G8X and MSI board pulled
ahead of the i850E PC1066 system by about 3%.
Perhaps this isn't a huge increase in performance but it
did scale in both types of testing here and was consistent
and repeatable. There was no real advantage between either
the Asus P4G8X or the MSI GNB Max board in this test,
since the slight differences in scores were well within
the margin of error for this type of benchmark. In
the end, the Granite Bay infused P4G8X shows its prowess
versus legacy chipset solutions.
Final
Analysis:
The P4G8X is
more of the same great "home-grown" design expertise from
the gang at Asus. The board has just about every
feature you could want in a high end motherboard,
including integrated LAN, SATA RAID support, 6 channel
audio and Firewire. However, there are some small
shortcomings in our opinion, like the Silicon Image
chipset for the SATA controller. We would have
preferred a Promise 20376 chip on there, with its single
parallel channel in addition to the Dual SATA channels, as
well as their more user friendly RAID BIOS. In
addition, we've grown to favor on board sound solutions
from C-Media, versus simple CODECs like those found on
this board from Realtek. However, these are small
subtle differences, which don't really weigh heavily in
our final assessment of this board.
All told, the
Asus P4G8X is just about all that a Granite Bay chipset
based motherboard can be, at this stage of the game.
The performance that we've seen from this chipset, with
Dual Channel DDR and AGP8X support, is more than
encouraging for the future of DDR technology with the P4.
We have high hopes for the upcoming Springdale chipset
however. With rumors of 800MHz FSB support for
future Pentium 4 CPUs, integrated SATA with the Intel
Southbridge, and 8 channels of USB 2.0, this looks to be
the chipset with which to build enthusiast boards.
Relative to
the Asus board we looked at for you here today, we are
wondering just how pervasive Granite Bay will be in our
market segment. Right now there are only a few
retailers on line listing the P4G8X for a lofty $229 -
$259 price tag. This new Asus motherboard is one of
the best solutions we've seen yet, in terms of raw
performance, for the P4. Now we'll just have to wait
and see what the market does with it. Or do we wait
for Springdale, when the flowers bloom?
- BIOS OC'ing
features while many Granite Bay boards don't
- AGP 8x Support
- Gigabit LAN
- 6-channel on-board
audio
- Faster than even
i850E with PC1066
- Firewire, USB 2.0
and SATA RAID
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- No Memory Timing
Multipliers
- Lack of official
DDR333 support
- Pricey
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