Epox 5LWA+ i925XE Motherboard
Gaming Benchmarks - Part 1
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To get a little different flavor of how the Epox 5LWA+ performed, we ran through some time demos with the OpenGL game Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Wolfenstein: ET is a free, standalone multiplayer game that is based on the original Return to Castle Wolfenstein that was released a few years back. It uses a heavily modified version of the Quake 3 engine which makes it a very easy to use benchmarking tool. We ran the test using the built-in "Fastest" setting, which runs at a low resolution of 640X480, using 16-bit color and textures. Running this test with a higher-end graphics card, at these minimal settings, isolates processor and memory performance, without being limited by the graphics subsystem.
Similar in many ways to the 3DMark05 results, the Epox 5LWA+ took a substantial lead over both the SB95P and D915PBL boards. It's hard to imagine that there should be such a difference between the top two boards, since CPU and RAM performance were basically equal in the synthetic tests, but the graphs don't lie.
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We also tried benchmarking with Epic's Unreal Tournament 2004. When we tested these systems with UT 2004, we ensured that all of them were being benchmarked with the exact same in-game settings and graphical options, and we dropped the resolution and detail levels to isolate CPU and memory performance.
Again, we've got the Epox 5LWA+ outpacing the other two boards, this time beating both of them by just over seven frames per second, or about a 6% increase in frame rates. In this test, the SB95P and D915PBL were running closer together than we would have expected; we would have thought that the SB95P would be producing on levels nearer to the 5LWA+ since both systems were using the same chipset, CPU, and RAM.
