UT2003, X², Quake III
Moving on swiftly to a graphical benchmark that doubles up as a system test. We run Unreal Tournament 2003 (patched up to 2225) with a custom HEXUS bot match at 800x600 resolution. It's the Sun Temple test. The CPU and memory subsystems are hit especially hard here.
The P4 is left trailing in the A64 wake. We're surprised at just how close both the Biostar nF3 and VIA K8T800 get to the stock 2.2GHz FX-51's performance. The overclocked nForce3 150 Biostar, running at 2.2GHz with single-channel memory at DDR440 speeds with 2-6-2-2 latencies, crashes through the 200FPS barrier with ease. Consummate power.
Here's the most bizarre results obtained during testing. We've seen this kind of behaviour from X2 before, so it's not an unknown. It seems incredibly partial to the VIA K8T800 chipset, so much so that it leads the class, and finishes above the 2.2GHz nF3 150. The benchmark is run at 800x600 to minimise the effects imposed by a Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card. We can't attribute its lead to any chipset advantages over the nF3 150, so it must be a quirk relating to the benchmark itself. Strange but true.
The almost identical scores exhibited by both the K8T800 and nF3 150 Biostar boards continues right up to Quake III. In fact, we can say that both benchmark within a statistically insignificant degree of one another. That premise is born by the Biostar K8VHA seeming to have a slight edge in most benchmarks, a lead that can be attributed to its 5MHz faster clock speed. From a performance point of view, both boards are excellent. Fast and stable.
