Soltek SL-K890Pro-939 Motherboard
3DMark05 & WME 9
It may not be an actual game, but 3DMark05's built-in CPU test is a "gaming related" DirectX metric that's useful for comparing relative performance among similarly equipped systems. This test consists of two different 3D scenes that are generated with a software renderer, which is dependant on the host CPU's performance. This means that the calculations normally reserved for your 3D accelerator are instead sent to the central host processor. The number of frames generated per second in each test are used to determine the final score.
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In the 3D test, both PCI Express platforms score comparably, slightly outpacing the older AGP 8x system. The Soltek board is just slightly slower than ASUS' much more expensive A8N-SLI, which bodes well for gamers looking to save some money by looking to an alternative platform.
The processor test turns things around a little, as the AGP-based K8T800 Pro board takes the lead. Both PCI Express platforms trail slightly, with Soltek's K890Pro taking a narrow last-place finish.
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We continued our testing with a video encoding benchmark using Windows Media Encoder 9. In this test, we took a Digital Video file and encoded to WMV9 streaming format. The encoding times were recorded in minutes:seconds, with lower times indicating better performance.
We converted a video clip for streaming in this test, using DVD-class video and CD-level audio quality. Soltek takes a first-place finish here and is followed by the nForce4 and K8T800 Pro boards, both of which score identically.
