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| Benchmarks
and Comparisons Continued... |
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The Winstones... |
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Our next round of tests will
focus on how effectively the system executes today's popular
business and multimedia applications. What better
programs to do this than Business Winstone 2001, Content
Creation 2001 and Content Creation 2002? We've opted
to weigh the AK35GTR's performance against the results of a
similar board we reviewed here a few weeks back, the
Acorp
7KT266A motherboard. However, we have no comparison
for the Content Creation 2002 test since this is the first
time that I've used the new benchmark on a KT266A based
motherboard. The AK35GTR will be the comparison board
with Content Creation 2002 in future reviews.
Business Winstone 2001:
First up in our Winstone line of
tests is Business Winstone 2001. This benchmark
focuses on stressing a system's ability to handle some of the
more popular Windows-based 32Bit applications on the market
such as: Microsoft Office 2000 applications, Microsoft
Project 98, Lotus Notes R5, NicoMak WinZip, Norton AntiVirus
and Netscape Communicator.
Based on these results, we can
see that both the 7KT266A and AK35GTR are capable of running
the Business Winstone 2001 test applications quite
effectively. However, the Shuttle had a clear lead in
this round of tests, surpassing the Acorp by 12%. Next
up is Content Creation 2001.
Content Creation 2001:
Both Content Creation 2001 and
2002 test a systems ability to process multimedia intensive
32-Bit Windows applications with various versions of
the following: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere,
Macromedia Director, Macromedia Dreamweaver UltraDev,
Netscape Navigator and Sonic Foundry Sound Forge.
Content Creation 2002:
Once again we see that both
systems are more than capable of handling these CPU
intensive applications. With Content Creation 2001 the
Shuttle AK35GTR took the lead again, however the Acorp
7KT266A put up a better fight narrowing the Shuttle's lead
to 4.8%. With Content Creation 2002 the AK35GTR
performed respectably and will make for an excellent
reference score in future reviews. This time around,
the score will have to stand on its own.
As we bring this review to a
close we are happy to report that we are not at a loss for
words on this one. In all phases of testing, the
AK35GTR excelled beyond any expectations we may have had.
Once again the designers at Shuttle have come up with an
impressive, high-quality product that can boast both
excellent quality and performance. With its
intelligent layout, abundant BIOS features, top-notch
performance and impressive over clocking ability, the
AK35GTR has really won this reviewer over. Although we
have reported a few issues in the synthetic benchmarking
section of this review, We will continue to press further
and see if we can provide you with some more specifics.
In the meantime, I am comfortable stating that these
are technical issues that more than likely do not hinge on
the design of this particular motherboard but rather the
hard drives that were used. We will update this review
with any other findings we come up with in the future in
regards to this.
Our overall experience with the
Shuttle AK35GTR was terrific, excelling in all aspects of
this review. For its exceptional quality, performance
and over clocking ability we give the Shuttle AK35GTR a Hot
Hardware Heat Meter Rating of a 9 as well as Editor's Choice
for its overall excellence.
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