Gaming Benchmarks
3D Mark 2001
With a lot of hype surrounding the new 3D mark 2003 we are continuing to use 3D Mark 2001 in tandem with 3D Mark 2003.
The performance trend found in the theoretical tests continued in 3D Mark 2001 with the MSI 655 performing worse than the Granite bay chipset, hardly surprising when the CPU and memory scores were lower. It seems that the un-buffered memory performance of the MSI does not translate into a true performance benefit in real life applications. The SIS 655 chipset seems to be held back by CPU throughput.
3D Mark 2003
The newcomer, 3D Mark 2003 takes testing into the DX9 arena. As the DFI board is no longer with us we were unable to test it using 3D Mark 2003.
The MSI performed much better in this test beating the Asus, although only just.
UT 2003
Unreal Tournament 2003 is probably the most relevant of our tests as it is one of the most played games on the market. Performance here will give you the closest indication of performance if your into computer gamming.
Yet again we found that the MSI is just not up to the performance of the Granite Bay boards. The DFI and the MSI seem very closely matched but the Asus retains its place as the best performing Pentium 4 motherboard for Unreal Tournament 2003 in our experience.
Serious Sam II And Quake III
Looking at some of the older 3D games, we tested the boards with Serious Sam – Second encounter and the old favourite Quake III.
In both games the Granite Bay chipset got its power into the games performance more effectively than the MSI 655 MAX. Proportionately the performance gap seems to be larger with these older games.
