Foxconn e-bot Small Form Factor PC

How we configured our test systems: When configuring the test systems for this review, we first entered the system BIOS and set each board to their "Optimized" or "High-Performance Defaults".  The hard drive was then formatted, and Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 was installed. When the installation was complete, we hit the Windows Update site and downloaded all of the available updates, with the exception of the ones related to Windows Messenger. Then we installed all of the necessary drivers, and removed Windows Messenger from the system altogether. Auto-Updating and System Restore were also disabled, and we setup a 768MB permanent page file on the same partition as the Windows installation. Lastly, we set Windows XP's Visual Effects to "best performance", installed all of our benchmarking software, defragged the hard drives and ran all of the tests.

Test System Specifications Can you say "Intel Inside!"

Preliminary Benchmarks With SiSoft SANDRA 2005 Synthetic Testing of the e-bot

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 can provide a host of useful information about your hardware and operating system. We ran three of the built-in sub-system tests that partially comprise the SANDRA 2004 suite (CPU, Multimedia, and Memory). All of these tests were run with the Foxconn e-bot powered by an Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz CPU with 512MB of Geil DDR.

SANDRA CPU Benchmark Pentium 4 @ 2.4GHz 512MB DDR (CL2)

SANDRA Memory Benchmark Pentium 4 @ 2.4GHz 512MB DDR (CL2)

SANDRA Multimedia Benchmark Pentium 4 @ 2.4GHz 512MB DDR (CL2)

We had a tough time finding exact comparisons within Sandra's database, so instead we will just give a summary of its relative performance throughout the benchmarking routines.  In the CPU Arithmetic test, the Foxconn e-bot's performance came closest to that of a Pentium 4 3GHz CPU, yet falling way shy of that of an AthlonXP.  The score we achiveved was much higher than a 2.4GHz P4, but using a slower bus speed.  The CPU Multimedia test flip-flopped a bit, where the benchmark score was generally closer to AMD's offerings and far behind the 3GHz P4.  Again, however, we were able to handily beat the P4 2.4GHz score from the database.  Finally, in the memory benchmark, we saw what will probably be the e-bot's biggest handicap; the single channel memory.  The memory bandwidth in this test was nearly a third slower than what was found with i865 or i915 boards, which is exactly what we will be using for comparisons in the upcoming benchmarks.