Benchmarks III
Gaming begins with 3DMark 2001SE b330.
Almost 16,000 marks from a £70 CPU and the Soltek EQ3702M shows just how much power today's barebones systems can muster. On-board graphics usually become unstuck when subjected to modern gaming engines. However, a GeForce4 MX may be a couple of iterations old but it does quite well when powered by the IGP's dual-channel memory architecture. The breakdown of the Soltek's discrete and onboard scores can be found here and here. The on-board graphics is a DX7 part, so no hardware support for the DX8 nature test.
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter shows similar results. The on-board graphics comes out looking a little better as it doesn't have to skip any tests. The 56.3FPS average seemed quite smooth in most areas of the Sierra De Chiapas benchmark.
Comanche performance is often limited by the subsystem when a high-end discrete card is used. We've seen nForce2 Ultra 400 boards hit close to 60FPS with an identical AGP card. Reasonable performances from all concerned.
