Benchmarks II
In the gaming benchmarks, the MSI K7N2-L will also be run with a Radeon 9000 graphics card. It betters the on-board GeForce4 MX by supporting DirectX8 features, but retails at a similar price-point as a mid-range MX card.
Starting off with 3DMark 2001SE v330. Remember that we are now using a genuine Radeon 9800 Pro as the discrete graphics card for both motherboards.
The first point to mention is that the integrated graphics cannot run the DX8 nature test, thereby debilitating its score somewhat. Whilst a Radeon 9800 Pro scores almost identically across the two nForce2 motherboards, the interesting comparison is with the on-board graphics using both dual channel and single channel DDR. With single channel DDR, we barely satiate the needs of the 166FSB CPU, therefore the integrated graphics bandwidth is taken out of CPU's bandwidth. However, with dual channel DDR, there's enough bandwidth left over to run the integrated graphics comfortably. A ~50%+ gain over single channel performance tells us all. The 3DMark compares are below.
Restricted bandwidth really hurts the MN31N in the single channel scenario.
How about Serious Sam 2 at 1024x768x32 with a quality bias ?.
Again, very similar performances with a discrete Radeon 9800 Pro. The dual channel MN31N's performance with the integrated GeForce4 MX is, again, 50%+ over that posted by single channel usage. The Radeon 9000 Pro proves to be an MX-beater, again.
More of the same here, although using single channel DDR doesn't cause such a drop this time.
