NF4 Ultra Shoot-Out: Abit vs. MSI vs. ECS

Name: NF4 Ultra Shoot-Out: Abit vs. MSI vs. ECS - Page 17
Brand: NF4

by Marco Chiappetta — Thursday, July 07, 2005, 10:00 PM EDT

To start our in-game testing, we did some low-resolution benchmarking with Epic's Unreal Tournament 2004. When testing with UT 2004, we use a specific set of game engine initialization parameters that ensure all of the systems are being benchmarked with the exact same in-game settings and graphical options. Like the other in-game tests in this review, we used a "Low-Quality" setting with UT2004 that isolates CPU and memory performance.

Unreal Tournament 2004

DirectX 8 Gaming Performance

Our custom Unreal Tournament 2004 benchmark had the Abit Fatal1ty AN8 slightly ahead of the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum, by roughly 2 frames per second. And the ECS KN1 Extreme finished the test about 5 frames per second behind the MSI board. Not a monumental victory by any mean, but another victory for the AN8 regardless.

Benchmarks with Doom 3

OpenGL Gaming Performance

For our next game test, we benchmarked all of the test systems using a custom multi-player Doom 3 timedemo. We cranked the resolution down to 640 x 480, and configured the game to run at its "Low-Quality" graphics setting. Although Doom 3 typically taxes today's high-end GPUs, when it's configured at these minimal settings it's more CPU / Memory-bound than anything else...

The results reported by our custom Doom 3 benchmark were in stark contrast to the Unreal Tournament 2004 results. This time around, the Abit Fatal1ty AN8 fell behind the competing nForce 4 Ultras by a few frames per second. The MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum posted the highest score of the board's we're focusing on here at 159.8 FPS, followed very closely behind by the ECS KN1 Extreme at 158.7 FPS.

Tags: MSI, ECS, MS, shoot, Ultra, F4, Abit, SHO, ULT

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com