System setup and notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.
- AMD Athlon XP2100+ S462 CPU
- Shuttle AK37 GT/R KT400 Motherboard run in DDR33 and DDR400 modes
- Intel Pentium 4 2.26GHz Northwood B S478 CPU
- ABIT IT7-MAX2 i845E run in DDR356 mode
Common components
- Leadtek GeForce4 Ti 4600 128MB at stock speeds (300/648)
- 256MB Corsair XMS3200 C2 run at 2-5-2-2 at DDR333, and DDR356 modes and 2-6-2-3 in DDR400 mode
- 40GB Maxtor D740L ATA133 Hard Drive.
- Liteon 16x DVD
- Samcheer 420w PSU
- 21" Sony G500 FD monitor
Software
- Windows XP Professional Build 2600.xpclient.010817-1148
- VIA 4-in-1s 4.43
- Intel 4.00.109 chipset drivers
- Intel application accelerator drivers
- Detonator XP 40.41 drivers
- Sisoft Sandra 2002 Professional SP2
- Pifast v41
- Lame v3.91 MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end
- Virtual Dub 1.4.10 DVD encoding, DivX 4.12 CODEC
- 3DMark 2001SE
- Comanche 4 benchmark
- Serious Sam 2 Demo
- Unreal Tournament Demo
- Quake 3 v1.30
Notes
To be able to run at DDR400, and to run at DDR333 / 356 with super-strict timings, I had a couple of high-performance modules on hand.
I've decided to benchmark the XP2100 / Shuttle AK37 GT/R combination not against its own peers because, after all, motherboards based on one chipset perform with a percentage point or two of each other. What is more interesting, however, is comparing the performance of this AMD-based competition against an Intel-based setup costing roughly the same once we factor in a decent cooler for the AMD setup. To this end, I've chosen a Pentium 4 running at 2.26GHz housed on the impressive ABIT IT7-MAX2 motherboard.
Stability
Stability on the AK37 GT/R was excellent through 4 days of testing under load. It was completely stable with 1GB of system RAM and with 4 PCI cards used. I have to comment on the fact that I couldn't run at DDR400 speeds with strict timings, especially if both PC3200 modules were used. I'm using amongst the best DDR memory currently available, so the modules' ability wasn't in question. They both ran at extremely strict timings at DDR33, however.
Overclocking
Using a highly overclockable XP1500 processor, I was able to gain decent system stability at 175FSB (1750MHz / 175FSB). Our headroom wasn't limited by the motherboard, more by the CPU used. The fact that we had a 5:1 FSB:PCI divider helped matters enormously.
