Test setup and notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.- Intel Pentium4 2800MHz S478 Northwood CPU
- ABIT IT7-MAX2 v2.0 i845PE run in official DDR333 mode
- ABIT IT7-MAX2 i845E run in official DDR266 mode (A4 BIOS)
- Gigabyte 8IHXP i850E motherboard run with PC1066 memory
- MSI SiS648 MAX motherboard run in DDR333 mode
- SOYO P4X400 DRAGON run in DDR333 mode
Common components
- ATi Radeon 9700 Pro (324/320)
- 256MB Corsair XMS3200 C2 run at 2-5-2-2 at DDR333 for all motherboards and DDR266 for the MAX2 (i845e)
- 61.5GB IBM 120GXP Hard Drive.
- Liteon 16x DVD
- Samcheer 420w PSU
- Samsung 181T TFT monitor
- Thermaltake S478 cooler
Software
- Windows XP Professional Build 2600.xpclient.010817-1148
- Intel 4.00.109 chipset drivers
- Intel application accelerator drivers
- SiS 1.12 AGP drivers
- VIA 4-in-1s, 4.43
- Plutonium XP 8.1 Radeon Drivers (based on ATI CATALYST build 6166)
- SiSoft SANDRA SP1
- Pifast v41
- Lame v3.91 MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end using U2's Pop album
- Virtual Dub 1.4.10 DVD encoding, DivX 4.12 CODEC
- OcUK SETI benchmark
- 3DMark 2001SE
- UT2003 Demo
- Comanche 4 benchmark
- Serious Sam 2 Demo
- Quake 3 v1.30
Notes
We have all the main chipsets that matter as comparison motherboards. Intel's i850E (Gigabyte 8IHXP), i845E (ABIT IT7-MAX2), SiS 648 (MSI 648 MAX), and VIA's P4X400 (SOYO DRAGON). All are being run at their officially supported memory speeds. It should make for an interesting comparison.
Stability
Stability proved to be excellent with the motherboard running SETI overnight at the strictest possible memory timings and 2 modules of RAM installed. It was indifferent to which video card was used. Once again it seems as if motherboard manufacturers have the stability angle covered well.
Overclocking
With a locked AGP / PCI bus option available and used, overclocking would be limited to either the CPU, RAM, or chipset. Running some proven PC3200 memory that has ran at 225MHz negated its impact on results. Using a proven 2.26GHz Northwood P4 I managed to get up to ~175FSB without undue difficulty. After that it was a case of the CPU giving out before the chipset. Top marks again to Intel and ABIT for producing such an overclocking-friendly chipset.
