System setup and notes
Hardware and Software
Test Platforms
| ABIT AW8-MAX System | Intel D955XBK System | Gigabyte 8I955X Royal System | MSI P4N Diamond System | Intel i945G System | Athlon 64 S939 PCI-Express System | |
| Processor(s) | Intel Pentium 4 660 | Intel Pentium 4 660 | Intel Pentium 4 660 | Intel Pentium 4 660 | Intel Pentium 4 660 | AMD Athlon 64 4000+ |
| Mainboard | ABIT AW8-MAX | Intel D955XBK Extreme | Gigabyte 8I955X Royal System | MSI P4N Diamond nForce4 SLI I.E. | Intel D945GTP | ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 nForce4 |
| Memory | 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS2-5400UL | 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS2-5400UL | 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS2-5400UL | 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS2-5400UL | 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS2-5400UL | 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS3200XL | Memory timings | 3-2-2-8 @ DDR533 | 3-2-2-8 @ DDR533 | 3-2-2-8 @ DDR533 | 3-2-2-8 @ DDR533 | 3-2-2-8 @ DDR533 | 2-2-2-5 1T @ DDR400 |
| Graphics Card | ATI RADEON X850 XT PE - PEG16X - CATALYST 5.3 | Disk Drives | 160GB WD IDE & 36GB SATA Raptor | |||
| BIOS Version | BIOS 1.2 | BK95510J.86A.1452.2005.1606 | BIOS 1 | BIOS F4d | NT94510J.86A.0897 | BIOS 1.3 -25/04 05 |
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional, SP2 | |||||
| Mainboard Software | Intel INF Update Utility 7.0.0.1019 | Intel INF Update Utility 7.0.0.1019 | Intel INF Update Utility 7.0.0.1019 | nForce4 7.02 platform driver | Intel INF Update Utility 7.0.0.1019 | nForce 6.39 platform driver |
Benchmark Software
HEXUS.in-house Cryptography Benchmark
HEXUS Pifast Benchmark
ScienceMark 2.0 (7th February 2005)
Realstorm Raytracing 2004
CINEBENCH 2003 multi-CPU render
HEXUS.in-house MP3 Encoding Benchmark using LAME 3.97a (Intel HT compiler) - 701MB WAV
picCOLOR 32-bit v4.0
KribiBench v1.1
Microsoft Movie Maker 2.1
Simpli Software HDTach
3DMark2001SE b330
3DMark05 b1.2.0
DOOM 3 b1282
Far Cry v1.3
Notes
We'll be looking at the performance of these three high-end Intel boards against Intel's very own, supposedly slower i945G chipset. Further comparisons will be made against an NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel Edition motherboard and, as usual, a S939 motherboard with an AMD Athlon 64 4000+ in the socket. This time it's ABIT's Fatal1ty AN8.
There were zero stability problems to report during installation and testing. The i955X chipset is a proven design with an impressive memory controller.
Benchmark differences between motherboards sporting identical chipsets is often down to the exact FSB speed of motherboard in question. That being so, the running speed of the boards was as follows:
3611.3MHz - Gigabyte 8I955X Royal - Intel i955X - Intel Pentium 4 660
3600.2MHz - Intel i955XBK - Intel i955X - Intel Pentium 4 660
3600.2MHz - Intel D945GTP - Intel i945G - Intel Pentium 4 660
3599.4MHz - MSI P4N Diamond - nForce4 SLI I.E. - Intel Pentium 4 660
3591.3MHz - ABIT AW8-MAX - Intel i955X - Intel Pentium 4 660
2411.2MHz - ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 - nForce4 Ultra - AMD Athlon 64 4000+
