System setup and notes
We've taken a few AM2 systems for a spin through our labs already, including a couple pre-built by system integrators SCAN and Evesham Technology. We'll be using results from those tests to help us examine the capabilities of MSI's K9N SLI Platinum.
| MSI K9N SLI Platinum System | Foxconn C51XEM2AA System | ATI Sturgeon System | SCAN 3XS Athlon 64 FX-62 AM2 | Evesham FX-62 AM2 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 (2.8GHz, 2MiB L2 cache, AM2) | ||||
| Motherboard | MSI K9N SLI Platinum - nForce 570 SLI | Foxconn C51XEM2AA - nForce 590 SLI | ATI Sturgeon Reference | Foxconn C51XEM2AA - nForce 590 SLI | |
| Memory | 2GiB (4 x 512) Crucial Ballistix PC8000 | 2GBytes (2x 1GByte) Corsair EPP PC8500 | 2GBytes (2x 1GByte) Crucial Ballistix PC6400 | ||
| Memory timings | 4-3-3-8 2T | 5-5-5-15 2T | 5-4-4-12 2T | ||
| Graphics card(s) | NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX SLI | Radeon X1900 CROSSFIRE | NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 1GB | NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX SLI | |
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 160GB 7200.9 SATA2 | Western Digital 150GB Raptor 10K (WD1500ADFD) SATA 2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB SATA2 |
Western Digital 500GB 16MB cache SATA - (WD5000KS) | ||
| BIOS revision | 1.12 (BETA) | 612W1P14 | 08.00.13 | 612W1P18 | |
| Mainboard software | 9.34 | SATA(AHCI): 2.5.1540.25 IDE: 1.00.0000.3 CHIPSET: 5.10.1000.5 |
9.34 | ||
| Graphics driver | ForceWare 84.21 | ForceWare 91.32 | 8.243-060404a-033273E-ATI | ForceWare 91.32 | |
| Operating System | Windows XP Pro SP2 32-bit | Windows XP MCE 2005 | |||
For our testing of the MSI K9N SLI Platinum, we used the following drivers:
VGA: Forceware 84.21
IDE: 5.1.2600.2180 (standard windows driver)
SATA: 6.67
LAN: 60.15
CPU: 1.2.2.0
AUDIO: 5.10.0.5233
CHIPSET: 4.52
USB: 5.1.2600.2180 (standard windows driver)
We had our usual suite of test software out:
ScienceMark 2.0 (21st March 2005)
HEXUS Pifast Benchmark
HEXUS.in-house MP3 Encoding Benchmark using LAME 3.97a (Intel HT compiler) - 701MB WAV
HEXUS.in-house DivX encode using DivX 6.01 and VirtualDub on 416MB DV file
CINEBENCH 2003 multi-CPU render
KribiBench v1.1
HDTach 3.0.1.0
...Along with the regular games benchmarks we've created:
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05 - HEXUS custom benchmark
Quake 4 v1.04 HEXUS Custom Benchmark
Far Cry v1.33 - HEXUS custom benchmark
We first attempted to use ForceWare 91.27 driver, but with both 9.15 and 9.34 chipset driver packages, we found SLI to be a non-starter, with crashes and STOP errors. Moving to the 80-series resolved the problem.
Further notes on the software front, before we get into performance results... The copy of NVMonitor found on the driver CD (4.00.00.08) reads CPU and system temperatures OK, but gives different values than MSI's Dual Core Center software. The difference can be up to 20ºC; it seems they read from different sensors. Also, at the time of writing, we cannot get any version of NTune to work completely with the board. We get trouble reading and setting RAM timings, or with altering fan speeds and system voltages.
