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We continued our
testing with Futuremark's PCMark2002 benchmarking suite.
Keep in mind, that like other synthetic benchmarks, it's
difficult to translate PCMark2002 scores into "real world"
performance. However, because it is very easy for end
users and our readers to run as a reference point, and
produces repeatable, comparable results, PCMark2002 has
become a staple here in the H.H. labs.
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PCMark 2002 |
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Synthetic CPU and Memory Bandwidth Testing |
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We ran
PCMark2002's "CPU" and "Memory" performance modules on all
three of the test systems, again with the CPU clocked at
its default speed of 3.0GHz (15 x 200MHz). The CPU
module incorporates the following tests:
CPU Tests:
PCMark2002's CPU
performance module gives an ever so slight edge to the MSI
board, with the DFI and Chaintech boards coming in second
and third place, respectively. At less than 1%
though, the
performance deltas seen here fall well within the "margin
of error" for this test. For all intent and
purposes, these scores are identical.
Memory Test Technical
details: (Quote Taken From Futuremark)
Raw read, write, and read-modify-write operations are
performed starting from a 3072 kilobytes array decreasing
in size to 1536 KB, 384 KB, 48 KB and finally 6 KB. Each
size of block is tested two second and the amount of
accessed data is given as result. In the STL container
test a list of 116 byte elements is constructed and sorted
by an integer pseudo-random key. The list is then iterated
through as many times as possible for 2 seconds and the
total size of the accessed elements is given as result.
There are 6 runs of this test, with 24576 items in the
largest run corresponding to a total data amount of 1536
KB, decreasing in size to 12288 items (768 KB), 6144 items
(384 KB), 1536 items (96 KB), 768 items (48 KB) and 96
items in the smallest run corresponding to 6 KB of total
data.
We saw larger performance
deltas between the three boards using PCMark2002's memory
performance module, but they were still small enough to be
considered insignificant. Once again, we see the
875P-Neo FIS2R coming out on top, with the Chaintech and
DFI boards falling just behind MSI's offering. The
189 point difference in performance separating the
875P Neo-FIS2R and the LANPARTY Pro875 equates to just
over 2%, which is nothing to get overly excited about.
Let's move on...
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Business & Content Creation Winstones |
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Simulated Application Performance |
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To test "Real
World" application performance, we used eTesting Labs'
Business and Content Creation Winstone 2002 benchmarks.
We'll directly quote ZD's eTestingLabs website for an
explanation as to how Business Winstone 2002 derives its
score. (Content Creation Winstone 2002 uses the same
process, but the scripted activities are comprised of
different, more bandwidth hungry applications.):
"Business Winstone is a system-level, application-based
benchmark that measures a PC's overall performance when
running today's top-selling Windows-based 32-bit
applications on Windows 98, Windows 2000 (SP2 or later),
Windows Me, or Windows XP. Business Winstone doesn't mimic
what these packages do; it runs real applications through
a series of scripted activities and uses the time a PC
takes to complete those activities to produce its
performance scores."
Business Winstone
Applications:
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Five
Microsoft Office 2002 applications
(Access, Excel, FrontPage, PowerPoint, and Word)
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Microsoft Project 2000
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Lotus
Notes
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WinZip 8.0
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Norton Antivirus
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Netscape Communicator
Content Creation
Winstone Applications:
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Adobe
Photoshop 6.0.1
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Adobe
Premiere 6.0
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Macromedia Director 8.5
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Macromedia Dreamweaver UltraDev 4
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Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 7.01.00.3055
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Netscape Navigator 6/6.01
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Sonic
Foundry Sound Forge 5.0c (build 184)
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Unfortunately, the performance
picture didn't get any clearer after running the Winstone
tests. The MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R continued its winning
ways, but again the lead it held over the other boards
wasn't large enough to have any real world value.
The Business Winstone benchmark, which is basically CPU
and Hard Drive limited, shows a .4 point performance variance
between the first and third place boards. The
Content Creation tests were even closer, with a <1%
difference separating the three boards.
Comanche 4, Q3, Xmpeg &
The Ratings
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