Intel's i845 The MSI 845 Ultra and DFI NB70 DDR Motherboards


Intel's i845DDR The MSI 845 Ultra and DFI NB70 Motherboards - Page 3

 

Intel's i845 DDR Chipset Debuts
MSI's 845Ultra-ARU & DFI's NB70-SC
DDR Solutions Based On Intel's New Value Platform

By, Dave Altavilla
December 17 2001

 
Next up, we have tests for the serious side of computing with ZD Content Creation and Business Winstones.  We've tested the MSI and DFI boards against the Intel reference i845D board, an i850 with RDRAM combination and a VIA based P4X266A board.

Ziff Davis Content Creation and Business Winstones, Video 2000, 3DMark
All work and no play

Clearly, under the light load of the Business Winstone test, all the boards were neck and neck, in terms of raw performance.  However, these scores are well within the margin for error.  Under Content Creation, we see a different picture with the P4X266A reference system leading the pack by a decent margin but most likely indistinguishable to the user and within 5% of the average i845 DDR solution.  The addition of ATA133 RAID support for the MSI 845Ultra, certainly goosed those scores up a notch as well.

Let's look at something more strenuous.

Here we see a very similar outcome as was seen in the Winstone tests.  All boards are within close striking distance of each other.

On the 3D Gaming side of things, we bring you our MadOnion 3DMark scores.

The i845 DDR solutions certainly posted respectable numbers within 4 - 5% of the lead P4X266A board.  We also need to remember that this is the initial release of the i845D chipset and Intel is surely going to optimize performance further with new chipset drivers.  Don't forget that this is the "second coming" of the P4X266 chipset from VIA, so that platform is slightly more mature in this regard.

Let's Quake and call it a day...


 


 


 

 

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