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PCMark 2002 |
Synthetic CPU and Memory Bandwidth Testing |
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One benchmark from Futuremark
that we have become accustomed to using here is PCMark 2002. This test performs a series of
intensive tasks such as image compression, text searches, and
audio conversion to give us three scores: CPU, Memory, and
Hard Disk Drive (HDD). It also is a relatively
quick process for comparing the performance of two or more
systems. We ran
PCMark2002's "CPU" and "Memory" performance modules on all
of the test systems, again with the CPU clocked at
its default speed of 2.40GHz.

PCMark2002's CPU
performance module had the Asus P4P800 just narrowly
edging MSI's 865PE Neo2. From there, the
Abit IS7 came in third, then the Chaintech 9PJL, and
finally the Albatron 865PE Pro II. Again, one only
needs to look at the actual front side bus speeds to see
that the top boards had the highest base speeds, and vice
versa. At a total difference from top to bottom of
1%, we can call this test a virtual tie as well.
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.
Here we saw larger differences
between the leaders and the rest of the pack. Asus
and Abit have apparently not only "cracked the code", but
have done so in a convincing manner. While MSI and Albatron
both have a memory performance mode option in their BIOS,
their implementation did not provide as big of a boost.
Chaintech's 9PJL did not have any such optimization,
landing in fifth place, a full 15% behind
the top boards.
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Business & Content Creation Winstones |
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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The Asus P4P800 was at or near
the top of the pack in each test, while the other four
settled in right behind it. The Business Winstone
test is highly CPU and hard drive limited, and the higher
clocked boards found themselves near the top. The
only real note to make was how the Chaintech board was
nearly a point behind in each of the tests. We are
beginning to see some trends in performance testing, but
how does this translate to gaming?
Gaming and 3DMark
benchmarks
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