System setup and notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.- Intel Pentium 4 3.00GHz HT S478 Northwood CPU (800FSB)
- AMD Barton XP3
Common components
- ATi Radeon 9800 Pro (380/340)
- 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3500C2 run at 2-6-2-2 at DDR-400 for
Software
- Windows XP Professional Build 2600.xpclient.010817-1148
- DirectX9
- Intel 5.00.1012 chipset drivers
- NVIDIA nForce 2.03 drivers
- ATI CATALYST 3.2 drivers and control panel (6307s)
- Pifast v41 to 10m places
- Lame v3.91 MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end using U2's Pop album
- SiSoft SANDRA 2003 (9.4
Notes and issues
It's a Springdale and Canterwood carnival now. 2 comparison Springdales and a Canterwood should provide ample reference material. The Shuttle AB60RS did exactly what we like in a test motherboard. It booted and operated without problems with our stringent testing parameters. We're thankful that its design lent itself to easy DDR placement and removal. Corsair, OCZ and Crucial sticks were used to test with, and Corsair's XMS3500C2 were used for official benchmarking. The CPU's VCore tended to drop by close to 0.1v under Prime95 load, but as our 3.00GHz CPU runs flawlessly at 3.25GHz and default volts, stability was never likely to be compromised.We now provide each board's running speed for accurate comparisons. Barring the amazing speed of the ASUS Springdale derived from implementing PAT technology, a manufacturer can only tweak a chipset so much. Therefore, it's important to note the exact operating frequency of each board. The Shuttle runs our 3.00GHz CPU a little faster than the ABITs. ASUS are past masters of FSB inflation, sadly.
3030.2MHz - ASUS P4C800 Deluxe and ASUS P4P800 Deluxe
3015.22MHz - Shuttle AB60RS i865PE Springdale
3007.52MHz - ABIT IS7 and IC7-G
2205.3MHz - EPoX 8RDA3+ (AMD Barton 3200)
Off to the benchmarks we go.
The BIOS limits us to 233FSB. We had no trouble in running at this FSB. We'll be looking towards Shuttle for a newer BIOS to fix a couple of issues, including the FSB ceiling.
