System setups, notes and O/C
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.- AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Clawhammer CPU. RAM running with an 10 divisor (DDR400, single channel)
- Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz ES 800FSB CPU
- AMD Barton XP3200+ S462 CPU (2200MHz / 200FSB
Other components
- ATi Radeon 9
Software
- Windows XP Professional
Notes
The SB62G2 installed Windows XP and functioned perfectly first time. SATA drives ran at the expected speeds and everything was, well, hunky-dory. It was run with a discrete ATi Radeon 9800 PRO graphics card and with the memory-sapping on-board graphics. Image quality is a very subjective matter. What appears great to one pair of eyes is merely acceptable to another. The added complication of comparing 2D quality from two sources makes it an even more subjective issue.
ATI's range of cards are well-known for their 2D / 3D quality, and with a Radeon 9800 PRO the SB62G2's 2D output at 1024x768x32 120Hz was crisp, clear and a pleasure to use. The same cannot be said for Intel's Extreme Graphics 2 image quality. It's quite difficult to get across the differences that exist between the two. Words alone, I feel, don't quite convey the how both sets of video is outputted on a Dell 19" flat-faced Trinitron monitor.
What I've sought to do is to take 2 shots with a digital camera that I believe to be indicative of image quality.
The
image on the left is from the 9800 PRO's HD15 output. The image on the right is
from the on-board graphics. If anything, the images perhaps don't show the true
nature of 2D quality difference. Notice how the text is sharper on the left.
That's how, subjectively speaking, it appears when viewing it on-screen. Intel's
on-board graphics provide for a substandard viewing experience. That's
enough reason to invest in a low-end graphics card. The SB62G2's lack of
S-Video output doesn't endear the Extreme Graphics 2 solution to many users
either
The 3.2GHz P4 /
Springdale i865G-powered SB62G2 will be compared to an AMD Athlon XP3200+
(Barton) / nForce2 Ultra pairing, Shuttle's very own SN85G4 AMD Athlon 3200+ /
nForce3 150, and the ABIT IC7-MAX3 / 3.2GHz combination. The SB62G2 will be run
with a discrete Radeon 9800 PRO and the on-board graphics option. Initial
overclocking tests showed promise. The SB62G2 was able to run at 240FSB without
problems
The
running speed of the protagonists were as follows:
3208.2MHz - P4 3.2GHz / ABIT IC7-MAX3 (Canterwood)
3207.7MHz - P4 3.2GHz / SB62G2 (Springdale i865G)
2205.1MHz - Athlon XP3200+ / EPoX 8RDA3G (nForce2 Ultra 400)
1999.8MHz - Athlon 64 3200+ / SN85G4 (nForce3 150)
