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UT2003 & Comanche 4 |
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Gaming Tests |
|
We also tested
the two motherboards with a couple of popular games. We used
Novalogic's Comanche 4, an extremely CPU limited benchmark,
because its
results reflect CPU performance quite well. We also
used Epic's UT2003, set a low resolution, to isolate overall
system performance.
Like we saw with PCMark04, the
graphics performance of the Foxconn 875A02 lagged ever so
slightly behind the comparison board. Once we
overclocked the system bus to 233MHz, we saw healthy gains
in both tests, tacking on an additional 27.71 FPS in
UT2003 and 7.93 FPS in Comanche 4, gains of approximately 13-15%.
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|
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PC
Magazine's Content Creation 2004 and Business
Winstone 2004 |
|
Real
World Application Testing |
|
For our last
round of tests we ran both Content Creation Winstone 2004
and Business Winstone 2004. Each application gauges a
system's overall performance with workstation and multimedia
applications. Content Creation 2004 tests multimedia
intensive applications, while Business Winstone 2004
compares performance with common workstation applications.
Below is a list of the programs each test uses to calculate
its final score.
|
Business Winstone 2004
- Microsoft Access
2002
- Microsoft Excel 2002
- Microsoft FrontPage
2002
- Microsoft Outlook
2002
- Microsoft PowerPoint
2002
- Microsoft Project
2002
- Microsoft Word 2002
- Norton Antivirus
Professional 2003
- WinZip 8.1
|
Content Creation 2004
- Adobe® Photoshop®
7.0.1
- Adobe® Premiere®
6.50
- Macromedia® Director
MX 9.0
- Macromedia®
Dreamweaver MX 6.1
- Microsoft® Windows
Media?
- Encoder 9 Version
9.00.00.2980
- NewTek's LightWave®
3D 7.5b
- Steinberg? WaveLab?
4.0f
|
The Foxconn and Albatron boards
traded victories in the Winstone benchmarks. In
CC2004, the Albatron board managed to outpace the Foxconn
875A02 by about 3%, but in the Business Winstone 2004 test,
Foxconn rebounded and took the lead by the same 3%.
After taking a
good look at the Foxconn 875A02, and giving it a fair work out, we
were somewhat impressed with this motherboard. The
Foxconn 875A02 was built well with good component placement overall
and a very complete list of on-board features. We were equally
impressed with the supporting bundle of hardware and
software, and especially liked the clearly written instruction manual. On
the performance front, the motherboard performed on par with
similarly configured Canterwood boards we have reviewed in
the past. Foxconn also did a good job of making
their system board look a little different than competing
products, both physically and with it's relatively
unique BIOS options and supporting software. We were
mildly disappointed with the company's conservative approach
to overclocking, however, which somewhat limits this board's
audience. In the
end, the Foxconn 875A02 did reach the peak system bus speed
available in the BIOS, without issue, which resulted in performance gains in excess of
15%. If you are a
serious overclocking enthusiast looking for a
high-performance motherboard, you will probably want to look
elsewhere. However, from a feature and performance
perspective, the 875A02 did a good job of satisfying our
needs and impressing us with a complete, feature rich
package. And at only
$128 it is one of the least expensive Canterwood boards
we've come across.
We give the Foxconn 875A02-6EKRS a HotHardware Heat Meter
Rating 7.5
HotHardware's PC Hardware Forum is all the rage!
Are you in?
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