Benchmarks III
On to gaming and 3DMark 2001SE. Run at its default resolution of 1024x768x32.
Using a 2.8GHz P4 and a Radeon 9700 Pro, the 6 different chipsets are covered by around 1,000 marks. This test is increasingly about bandwidth; the more you can offer, the higher your marks. I'm quite surprised that the Granite Bay motherboard, when run with a single DIMM at DDR266 speeds, is able to knock 400+ marks out of the similarly powered i845E. Some memory optimisations here.
On to Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. Using the publicly available Valley of the Jaguar Timedemo. Run at 1024x768x32 with Normal settings.
The DDR266-powered chipsets and the VIA P4X400 don't do so well here. Having similar bandwidth to the PC1066 RAMBUS solution, we see the Granite Bay MSI almost match its FPS.
On to Comanche 4, another test that greatly stresses the memory subsystem. Run at 1024x768x32.
The performance delta between chipset, now standing at around 10% from fastest to slowest is statistically significant. Dual-DDR appears to a be a capable gaming chipset.
