Systems setup and notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Clawhammer CPU. RAM running with an 10 divisor (2.0GHz, DDR400, single channel)
Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz ES 800FSB CPU
VIA PT880 reference board (31/10/03 BIOS)
ABIT IC7-MAX3 i875P Canterwood (21/08/03 BIOS)
ABIT AI7 i865PE (pre-PAT-enabling BIOS (ai712), to highlight a standard i865PE's performance)
SiS 655FX reference board (dual channel DDR)
Biostar K8VHA Pro (VIA K8T800 - 1/10/03 BIOS)
Other components
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (380/340)
IBM 40GB P-ATA hard drive
2 x 36GB WD360 Raptor hard drives
2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3500C2, run at 2-6-2-2 @ DDR400 for all DC boards. Single-channel running on the K8VHA Pro.
Toshiba 8x DVD
Samcheer 420w PSU
Dell P991 19" monitor
Thermaltake AX478 cooler with a 25CFM fan
Zalman 7000Cu S478 / 754 cooler
Software
Windows XP Professional SP1
DirectX9.0a
VIA Hyperion 4.49Pro drivers
Intel 5.00.1015 chipset drivers
SiS v1.16a AGP driver, v2.04 mini IDE driver, v1.02.07a SATA RAID driver
ATI CATALYST 3.7 drivers and control panel (6378s)
Pifast v41 to 10m places
Lame v3.92 MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end using U2's Pop album (611MB)
Simpli Software HDTach 2.70
Kribi Bench 1.19
ScienceMark 2.0
Realstorm Raytracing benchmark 320x180x32
3DMark 2001SE v330
UT2003 Retail (Build 2225)
X2: The Threat - Rolling Demo
Comanche 4 benchmark
Serious Sam 2: Sierra De Chiapas Demo.
Quake 3 v1.30 HQ
Notes
The reference board would not load the OS with 2 x 36GB Western Digital Raptor hard drives attached to the VT6420 discrete SATA controller. It was fine with them attached to the two sets of SATA ports emanating from the VT8237 South Bridge. Other than this, there were no installation problems. VIA Hyperion 4.49 Pro drivers were used for testing and our regular 2-6-2-2 memory latencies were used.
The PT880 reference board will be compared against a fully tuned Intel Canterwood with a PAT BIOS. The IC7-MAX3 is that board. We're also including a non-PAT-enabled Springdale PE (i865PE) in the form of the ABIT AI7. It has subsequently received a PAT-like BIOS, but we'd like to compare the PT880 against a standard i865PE. SiS' own dual-channel Intel chipset, the SiS655FX, is added to see where it stands in relation to VIA DC attempt, and VIA's S754 K8VHA Pro provides the support for AMD's Athlon 64 3200+ CPU.
Benchmarks were carried out three times and the lowest and highest results were discarded. The running speed of each of the protagonists was as follows:
3231.9MHz - P4 3.2GHz / SiS 655FX (dual channel)
3215.8MHz- P4 3.2GHz / VIA PT880 reference
3208.2MHz - P4 3.2GHz / ABIT IC7-MAX3 (Canterwood / i875P)
3208.1MHz - P4 3.2GHz / ABIT AI7 (Springdale / i865PE)
1999.7MHz - Athlon 64 3200+ / K8VHA Pro (VIA K8T800)
It's got a hella' lot of features.
