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Performance Comparisons with XMPEG -
Divx 5.02 Conversion |
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Video Conversion
Performance |
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If there is one test that
truly exercises overall system bandwidth, it would have to
be a Divx conversion with XMPEG. Here we've taken a
20MB MPEG 2 file and converted it to Divx format with an
installed Divx 5.02 CODEC.
Here the Granite Bay based MSI
board shows the same relative scale in performance, that
we saw in the previous Winstone tests. The GNB Max-FISR
is some 5% faster than the i850E with PC1066 RDRAM and
some 10% faster than the i845PE board.
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Performance Comparisons with 3DMark
2001SE |
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A very Mad Onion |
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MadOnion's 3DMark 2001SE is up next and it too likes
it's healthy share of memory bandwidth but not at the
expense of overall CPU performance. Let's see how
things stack up here.
1024X768 - 32 Bit Color
Well, it's nip and tuck for
the i850E PC1066 system and the MSI GNB Max-FISR, however
the photo finish goes to the Granite Bay board once again.
This edge is most likely due in part to the AGP8X timing
that is driving the Radeon 9700 Pro and giving it a few
more clock cycles of bandwidth. We ran the default
benchmark, since it is a well known metric that most folks
use. However, a better test may have been a low
resolution mode, where the graphics pipeline would not be
the limiting factor.
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Quake 3 Arena Time Demo Benchmark |
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Old, crusty but
still relevant |
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So, here's an example of
a test setup where the graphics pipeline will be
running flat out and open, barely breaking a sweat
at 640X480 resolution. We set up our Quake 3
Time Demo run at the "Normal" setting with low
640X480 resolution. This will help to isolate
the CPU and showcase overall System Bandwidth as
well.
640X480 - 16 Color and Textures
Get a good look at the
scores here. This is the first and last time in
this review, where you'll see the i850E with PC1066
RDRAM, outpace the Granite Bay Dual Channel DDR MSI
board. Although the GNB Max passes by the i845PE
board with a 10% lead, it is then surpassed by the
i850E system by a small margin of 3.7%. It's
hard to say why this is the case but perhaps it could
be that Q3 is heavily weighted by memory bus speed,
where the 1.06GHz (533 clock doubled) RDRAM bus gives
it the edge.
Unreal
Tournament 2003 and the rating
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