Systems setup and notes
Hardware
| System | Foxconn N570SM2AA system | Sapphire PURE AM2RD580 system | ASUS COMMANDO system |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 (2.8GHz, 2 x 1MiB L2 cache, Socket AM2) | Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz, 4MiB L2 cache, LGA775) | |
| Motherboard | Foxconn N70SM2AA - nForce 570 SLI | Sapphire AM2RD580 - CrossFire Xpress 3200 | ASUS COMMANDO P965 |
| Memory | 2GiB (2 x 1024) Corsair PC8500 EPP | ||
| Memory timings and speed | 5-4-4-12 2T @ 800MHz (PC6400) | 4-4-4-12 2T @ 800MHz (PC6400) | |
| Graphics card(s) | GeForce 7900 GTX 512MiB in SLI | HIS X1900 CROSSFIRE EDITION + Sapphire X1900XTX | |
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 160GB SATAII (ST3160812AS) | ||
| BIOS revision | 5C4W1P30 (08/07/2006) | 2K060826 (08/26/2006)) | 0601 (22/12/2006) |
| Mainboard software | ForceWare 9.34 | Catalyst 6.10 Southbridge package | Intel Inf Update 8.1.1.1010 |
| Graphics driver | ForceWare 91.47 | CATALYST 6.10 BETA (CAT 6.8 for COMMANDO single-card) | |
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional, w/ SP2, 32-bit | ||
Software
We ran the mainboards through our usual array of benchmarks.| 2D Benchmarks |
SiSoft SANDRA Memory Bandwidth ScienceMark Memory Latency HEXUS Pifast calculation to 10M places HEXUS WAV encoding POV-Ray HEXUS DivX 6.4 encoding with multi-threading enhancement Cinebench 2003 v9.5 HDTach 3RW |
|---|
| 3D Benchmarks |
Far Cry v1.33 Quake 4 v1.30 Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory |
|---|
Notes
We're looking at the performance of the Foxconn and Sapphire boards against one another. That might not seem like a fair comparison given the pricing of the Sapphire motherboard, costing twice as much, but it should give you, the reader, an idea of what extra performance, if any, paying more provides. We've also added in a decent enthusiast-oriented board from ASUS. It's powered by the Intel P965 chipset and Core 2 Extreme X6800 CPU, so it will give some comparative numbers to evaluate the AM2 setups by.Issues observed
Foxconn N570SM2AAWe use reference heatsinks (PIB) for our motherboard testing. The Foxconn motherboard, however, would frequently shutdown when running dual iterations of Prime95, one of our stability tests. The CPU temperature was reported as 70C, suggesting that it shipped with an incorrectly calibrated thermal circuit. The problem was resolved by switching to a better-performing cooler but we must note that we have experienced no problems with the reference cooling when used on other motherboards.
Our system setup table reflects the inability to manually set the CAS latency on the N570SM2AA, which was run at a SPD default of 5 clocks.
Sapphire AM2RD580
We found that the board didn't detect a USB floppy drive when installing Windows XP so we couldn't install the OS in the preferred AHCI mode. The CPU fan speed wasn't adjustable through the BIOS or, for that matter, through the ATI System Manager interface.
Running speeds
Benchmark results from chipsets based around the same processor and supporting components tend to be almost identical. That's why we pay attention to the actual speed that the boards run their respective CPUs at.2930.4MHz - 266.4MHz FSB - Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 - ASUS COMMANDO - Intel P965
2813.0MHz - 200.9MHz FSB - AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 - Foxconn N570SM2AA - NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI
2800.0MHz - 200.0MHz FSB - AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 - Sapphire AM2RD580 - ATI RD580/SB600
A slight performance advantage for the Foxconn nForce 570 SLI motherboard. Let's see how it pans out in the benchmarks!
