System setup and notes
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
Biostar iDEQ 200T SFF platform
Shuttle SB65G2 XPC SFF platform with FB62 motherboard
Shuttle SN85G4 XPC SFF platform with FN85 nForce3 150 motherboard
ABIT IC7-MAX3 i875P Canterwood (21/08/03 BIOS) for the 3.2GHz 800FSB P4
Other components
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro (380/340)
2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3500C2, run at 2-6-2-2 @ DDR400. Single-channel running on the SN85G4. Run with 'Enhanced' on the IC7-MAX3
Toshiba 8x DVD
Samcheer 420w PSU
Dell P991 19" monitor
Thermaltake AX478 cooler with a 25CFM fan
Software
Windows XP Professional SP1
DirectX9.0a
Intel 5.00.1015 chipset drivers
NVIDIA nForce2 2.45 drivers
NVIDIA nForce3 3.43 drivers
ATI CATALYST 3.7 drivers and control panel (6378s)
Pifast v41 to 10m places
Lame v3.92 MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end using U2's Pop album (611MB)
XMPEG v5.02 and DivX 5.05 Pro
Kribi Bench 1.19
ScienceMark 2.0
Realstorm Raytracing benchmark 320x180x32
3DMark 2001SE v330
UT2003 Retail (Build 2225)
X2: The Threat - Rolling Demo
Comanche 4 benchmark
Serious Sam 2: Sierra De Chiapas Demo.
Quake 3 v1.30 HQ
Notes
The 200T installed Windows XP Professional SP1 fine. Sound, FireWire and USB2.0 features were tested and found to be working as specified. It's kind of nice when everything works first time. As mentioned previously, the PSU began to give off a high-pitched squeaking sound after a few hours of OS load. The 'problem' didn't go away after extended use. It was, however, stable under prolonged load.
2D, on the Intel Extreme 2 graphics, was subjectively abysmal. It lacked any kind of sharpness and clarity at 1280x1024 @ 85Hz. That's not what we expect from a GPU that finds it hard going with 3-year-old games' engines. This needs to be stressed again. The Extreme 2 is anything but extreme in most respects, and woeful in most. Give us a dedicated, low-end AGP card any day of the week.
Benchmarks were carried out three times and the lowest and highest results were discarded. The running speed of each of the protagonists was as follows:
3216.7MHz - P4 3.2GHz / Biostar iDEQ 200T
3208.2MHz - P4 3.2GHz / ABIT IC7-MAX3 (Canterwood)
3207.7MHz - P4 3.2GHz / SB65G2 (Springdale i865G)
1999.8MHz - Athlon 64 3200+ / SN85G4 (nForce3 150)
A slight, artificial lead for the Biostar. In terms of overclocking, the sample would refuse to run at over 220FSB with any kind of stability. That's with integrated graphics used. Higher speeds would be show in POST, and Windows would often load, but CPU-Z showed that any speeds greatly over 220FSB would be reset to the default 200FSB. Kind of strange and annoying. We had high hopes of 250FSB+.
