System setup and notes
Hardware
| System | Foxconn P9657AA System | abit AB9 Pro System | abit AW9D Max System |
|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz, 4MiB L2 cache, LGA775) | ||
| Motherboard | Foxconn P9657AA-8EKRS2H | abit AB9 Pro | abit AW9D Max |
| Memory | 2GiB (2 x 1024) Corsair PC8500 | ||
| Memory timings and speed | 4-4-4-12 2T @ 800MHz (PC6400) | ||
| Graphics card(s) | Sapphire Radeon X1900 XTX 512MiB | ||
| Disk drive(s) | Maxtor 300GB SATA (6V300FO) | ||
| BIOS revision | 638F1P32 (23/10/06) | 1.4 (08/09/06) | 1.2 (15/09/06) |
| Mainboard software | Intel Inf Update 8.0.0.1009 | ||
| Graphics driver | CATALYST 6.8 | ||
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional, w/ SP2, 32-bit | ||
Software
We ran the mainboards through our usual array of benchmarks.| 2D Benchmarks |
ScienceMark Memory Bandwidth ScienceMark Memory Latency HEXUS Pifast calculation to 10M places HEXUS WAV encoding HEXUS DivX encoding Cinebench 2003 v9.5 |
|---|
| 3D Benchmarks |
Quake 4 v1.04 Splinter Cell: v1.05 Chaos Theory |
|---|
Notes
We're comparing the performance of the Foxconn P9657AA against abit's AB9 Pro, a highly-specified P965 chipset-based motherboard that we took a look at here. Further, to see how P965 fares up to the range-topping 975X we've added in results from the abit AW9D-MAX, which you can find here.Analysing motherboards' performance starts with defining the exact speed which the CPU, and consequently memory, is run at, so here it is:
2940.02MHz - abit AW9D-Max
2934.2MHz - Foxconn P9657AA
2925MHz - abit AB9 pro
The Foxconn board's clock generator keeps it closest to default. Manufacturers often increase the boards' FSBs and induce artificial performance benefits. abit, though, goes both ways.
