Benchmarks III
Let's now turn our attention to gaming and the DX7 compliant 3DMark 2000. It's still relevant today as many titles require DX7 or lower versions of Direct X. We'll run the test at the default benchmark of 1024x768x16.
A commendable performance once again from the VIA P4PA, comfortably displacing the I845D, and not too far behind the SiS 645 and I850 respectively. Remember, they are running faster memory subsystems. We continue to witness the competitiveness of the P4PA amongst the established P4 chipsets. Let's see if the situation is any different in the more bandwidth dependant 3DMark 2001SE.
We're surprised to see the P4PA lagging here. It must be mentioned that you simply cannot tell the difference between any of the motherboard solutions from a visual aspect. Close scores are usually indicative of mature platforms which are efficient at extracting available bandwidth. Considering that the SiS 645, I845D, and VIA P4X266A are all relatively new, the homogenous scores are laudable.
Let's now have a look at the bandwidth hungry Valley of the Jaguar benchmark contained within the publicly available edition of Croteam's excellent first person shooter, Serious Sam 2. Settings are 1024x768x32 Normal preferences. Empirical testing has shown that the test is CPU / memory limited, even at this relatively high resolution.
Another close set of results. This particular benchmark thrives on pure bandwidth. The P4PA is no slouch in this test either. The underlying fact remains that it is an extremely stable and competitive chipset.
How does the P4PA fare in the extremely bandwidth intensive Comanche 4 benchmark from Novalogic, only one way to find out. Bear in mind that Comanche 4, like most aircraft simulations, requires massive geometry throughput. Benchmarked at 1024x768x32, a resolution that is still heavily subsystem limited.
The results largely speak for themselves here, bandwidth is king.
Last but certainly not least is Quake 3. I'll limit the benchmark to 512 fastest as increases in resolution simply make the results more convergent. 512 fastest provides us with an excellent insight to system throughput.
Quake 3 certainly isn't slow on any Intel platform bar the I845 SDR (not shown). Remember we're only using a 1600Mhz CPU. Another job well done by the VIA P4PA.
