Shuttle SN25P XPC (nForce 4 Ultra)

Name: Shuttle SN25P XPC (nForce 4 Ultra) - Page 10
Brand: Shuttle

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, April 26, 2005, 11:45 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

The Shuttle SN25P XPC scored another first place finish in our custom Unreal Tournament 2004 benchmark. Its score of 155.82 frames per second was marginally faster then the other nForce 4 Ultra based motherboard, the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum, but it was about 3% faster then the nForce 4 SLI.

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...

Our custom multi-player Doom 3 benchmark had the nForce 4 SLI rig finishing in first place, followed by the nForce 4 Ultra based K8N Neo4 Platinum and nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition reference motherboard. And although the SN25P XPC trailed slightly behind all of the other systems here, the approximate 2 frames per second separating it from any of the full-sized rigs is nothing to get excited about.

Tags: nforce, Shuttle, PC, XPC, XP, Ultra, force, 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