System Setup and benchmarking notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.
- Intel Pentium4 1600MHz S478 Northwood CPU
- MSI 645E MAX-LRU SiS645DX Motherboard run in DDR333 Mode at both 100 and 133FSB.
- ABIT IT7 I845E run at both 100FSB and 133FSB
- Abit TH7II-RAID I850 with 256MB (2 x 128MB) of Samsung PC800 RAMBUS (BIOS TH738)
- VIA P4PA P4X266A
Common components
- Creative Geforce4 Ti 4600 clocked at stock speeds (300/660)
- 256MB Samsung PC2700 run at strictest timings (common for both DDR motherboards)
- 120GB Western Digital 120JB 7200rpm hard drive with 8MB cache.
- Liteon 32x12x40 CDRW
- Liteon 16x DVD
- Samcheer 420w PSU
- 21" Sony G500 FD monitor
- D-Link FE530TX NIC
- Sonic Fury Soundcard
- Lian-Li PC60 Aluminium Case
Software
- Windows XP Professional Build 2600.xpclient.010817-1148
- Detonator XP 28.32 drivers
- Sisoft Sandra 2002 Professional
- Pifast v41
- Lame v3.91 MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end
- XMpeg 4.2A DVD encoding, DivX 5.0 CODEC
- Ocuk SETI benchmark
- HD Tach 2.61
- 3DMark 2000
- 3DMark 2001SE
- Comanche 4 benchmark
- Serious Sam 2 Demo
- Quake 3 v1.30
We'll be comparing the MSI 645E Max-LRU motherboard against its immediate competition. We've recently reviewed the ABIT I845E, another motherboard officially validated for 133FSB operation, we'll be comparing the MSI against at both 100FSB and 133FSB.
We'll also include the ABIT I850 TH7II-RAID RAMBUS-based motherboard. The VIA P4PA P4X266A rounds up the collection on test
All benchmarks were conducted at 1024x768x32 100Hz with vertical sync' disabled. Benchmarks were run 3 times consecutively, an average score was taken. All three systems were configured for maximum performance.
All four test motherboards operate at a slightly different frequency when set to 1600MHz in BIOS. The difference isn't great, but could affect results if they are initially close. Therefore, I've decided to normalise the results to 1614MHz, as 3 of the motherboards on test natively run at that speed when set to 1600MHz.
We've chosen a 1600MHz test CPU because firstly it allows us to find the maximum operating FSB of the MSI, and secondly because we can run it at 133FSB without any problems. The ABIT IT7 offers a 3:4 FSB:Memory ratio at 133FSB, effectively running the memory at 177MHz. The MSI SiS645DX motherboard only offers a 4:5 ratio, thereby running the memory at 166MHz, or PC2700 specification.
I've chosen to go with the maximum bandwidth possible. The MSI 645E Max-LRU offers more bandwidth at default CPU speeds, 166Mhz Vs. 133MHz for the IT7. The IT7, however, offers more at 133FSB (177MHz Vs. 166MHz), this should make for some interesting results between the chipsets.
Anyway, onto the benchmarks.
