DFI 855GME-MGF and Pentium-M Dothan Desktop Performance

For our test setup, we targeted pitting the Pentium M Dothan core CPU and the DFI 855GME-MGF motherboard against some of the toughest competition in desktop CPUs, that either Intel or AMD have to offer.  We literally took the fastest platforms from both camps, Athlon 64 4000+ and FX-55 chips for AMD and Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.46GHz, and Pentium 4 560 3.6GHz CPUs for Intel and paired them with the some of the fastest motherboards we had in the lab at the time.  We then backed those configs up with some of the fastest RAM and memory timings available, from Kingston and Corsair. 

We would especially like to thank our friends at Corsair Memory for coming to our aid in the clutch with 1GB of their fastest low latency 3200XL Pro DDR memory for our DFI 855GME-MGF Pentium M system, which allowed it to put its best foot forward in terms of system memory bandwidth.  This is great RAM for sure, if you're the type that likes aggressive low latency memory timings, like we do here at HotHardware. 

HotHardware Test Systems Tough Competition

Preliminary Benchmarks With SiSoft SANDRA 2004 Synthetic Testing

We began our testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic, and Reporting Assistant. SANDRA consists of a set of information and diagnostic utilities that test some basic metrics on major subsystem performance levels in a number of areas. We ran three of the built-in subsystem tests that comprise the SANDRA 2004 suite: CPU, Multimedia, and the Memory test, which is based on the "Stream" memory benchmark algorithm.  All of these tests were run with our processor set to its default clock speed of 2.0GHz (20x100MHz FSB) and an overclocked 2.53GHz (19X133MHz FSB).

CPU 2.0GHz	Multimedia 2.0GHz	Memory 333MHz DDR
CPU 2.53GHz	Multimedia 2.53GHz	Memory 440MHz DDR

The first thing you'll note in our memory tests, the DFI 855GME-MGF and more importantly, the i855GME chipset that it is built upon, only supports single channel DDR memory configurations, so our memory scores here are far below the reference Pentium 4 and AMD Athlon systems which employ either dual channel DDR2 or DDR memory for a considerable bandwidth advantage.  Beyond that, you can see that according to Sandra a Pentium M at 2GHz is in the ballpark of a Pentium 4 3.2GHz 540 or 3GHz Pentium 4 530 processor, in terms of Integer and Floating Point CPU performance.  However, at an overclocked 2.53GHz and 533MHz system bus speed, things really begin to fly for the Pentium M and it comes within striking distance of a Pentium 4 560 3.6GHz chip. 

Also, please note that at 2.53GHz, we have the DFI 855GME-MGF's memory speeds set to 5:4 divisors off a 133MHz FSB, which yields a 442MHz DDR memory speed, an upper limit for our Corsair memory but perfectly stable and just what the Pentium M needs to compete, in terms of additional memory bandwidth.