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 | | Benchmarks and Comparisons | | System Overview | |
MadOnion's PCMark2002Pro:
One of the newest and all inclusive system benchmarks around is MadOnion's PCMark2002Pro. The beauty of this package is its ability to test the three most important components of a system in a single test, CPU, Memory, and Hard Drive performance. For a frame of reference, we ran the same tests with the same processor, RAM and hard drive on a very popular KT333 motherboard, the Abit KX7-333R.
The CPU performance of the two systems were extremely close, giving the advantage to the newer KT4 Ultra. We were not completely surprised at the scores of the two boards with this test since the KT400 has little advancements that would increase CPU performance by any great measure. Next we'll take a look at the memory performance.
Once again, the KT4 Ultra walked away with a slightly higher score, topping the Abit KX7-333R by a little over 1%. Again, we were not expecting any tremendous difference in performance with the two systems because of the similarities between the two chipsets. Next up...Hard Drive performance.
With the hard drive scores we saw the widest margin between the two boards out of all three tests. This time the MSI KT4 Ultra-FISR took a lead of almost 30 points equating to a 3% increase over the KX7-333R. All in all it was a fairly close competition with the scales tipped in favor of the KT4 in all three tests.
Quake 3:
Another way that we like to test a motherboard's performance is by testing its CPU limitations with Quake 3. To do this, we set up the Timedemo to run with the visual settings reduced, to minimize the effects of the video card on the score. We ran the test at the stock CPU speeds with both motherboards and also on the KT4 while overclocked.
Here we saw the KT4 take a more commanding lead over the KX7-333R, topping it by 6.7FPS. Once we kicked the memory up to 400MHz. and the bus speed to 150MHz., the KT4 tacked on an additional 28.1 FPS, a boost of 11%. On the next page we'll take a look at the performance of both motherboards to ascertain their abilities when running DirectX, OpenGL and of course, the Winstones.
DirectX, OpenGL, and a Dash of Winstone
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