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Taking
the processing and bandwidth requirements to the
next level, we have our Business Winstone, Content
Creation Winstone and SiSoft Sandra scores.
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| Business,
Content Creation and our girl Sandra |
| Going
through the motions... |
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We've
placed the Business Winstone 2001 numbers from our
previous Pentium 4 reviews in the graph for the
sake of comparison. Considering the Pentium
4 rig is approximately triple the price of our
Shuttle / P3 / DDR combo, its not a fair
comparison...just bear with us until our database
of Winstone numbers fills up a bit!
BUSINESS
WINSTONE 2001
Not
quite as fast as the Pentium 4 setup, but its
still a good number. The Business Winstone
test isn't very bandwidth hungry though, so the
increased bandwidth of the DDR RAM isn't an
issue. Lets see how the AV30 compares in
Content Creation Winstone 2001...
CONTENT
CREATION WINSTONE 2001
Here
you can see the Pentium 4s pull further ahead but
the AV30 is by no means slow...it's roughly a 10%
performance difference.
Time
to move on to SiSoft's Sandra. We ran the
CPU and Memory benchmarks at both the default and
overclocked speeds. Hard drive performance
historically hasn't increased much when
overclocked so we skipped that one...
PIII
@ 933MHz.
PIII @ 1.0GHz
As
you can see, CPU performance with the Shuttle AV30
is excellent, on par or better than other PIII
boards we've tested.
Memory
@
933MHz
Memory @ 1.0GHz.
I know
what you're all thinking, "Where's the
benefit of DDR? These numbers don't seem
much higher than normal!". True, but
there are a few variables you have to take into
account. Our RAM was PC1600 running at
100MHz. That's 33MHz. lower than the FSB of
our PIII 933. Also, try and remember what
happened to the Apollo Pro 133A as it
matured. Huge performance gains were
realized as the product matured. There is no
reason not to think the we're back in the same
situation. As the Apollo Pro 266 chipset and
it's BIOS mature, expect noticeable performance
gains. Also, should we have had PC2100 DDR
RAM running at 133MHz. performance would have no
doubt been much higher. That 30% increase in
clock speed is very significant.
ATA100
on the AV30
There
is nothing wrong with VIA's hard drive controller
this time around...these numbers are actually a
little higher than we're used to seeing with this
particular drive.
Overall
we were very pleased with the Shuttle AV30 /
Crucial DDR combo. Performance,
compatibility and stability were excellent
considering both products were pre-release
engineering samples. As long as the shipping
retail product isn't a radical departure from what
we've reviewed, we can whole heartedly recommend
the Shuttle AV30 to anyone contemplating a new
motherboard purchase. If you're looking for
an excellent performing motherboard packed full of
features, you can't go wrong with the Shuttle
AV30. We give it a HotHardware Heat Meter
Rating of...
Stop
Being so Quiet! Get in the H.H. Conference Room
and Speak Your Mind.
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