MP3, Kribi, Raytracing, HDTach
Encoding WAV files into MP3 format now. The test is to crunch U2's Pop album, all 607MB of it, into 192kb/s MP3 format. LAME 3.92 is used in conjunction with RazorLAME's front-end.
2 minutes and 46 seconds is generally how long a 3.2GHz CPU will take to complete the task. The test is driven by the processor primarily. Here's one instance where the SN85G4 can't keep up.
Realstorm's Raytracing benchmark shows a marked preference for the Athlon 64's cube. The RefleXion maintains its lead over the ST61G4.
KribiBench shows the reverse to be true. It's an easy-to-use benchmark from Adept Development. It's a software (read subsystem) renderer that's capable of rendering amazingly complex scenes. The benchmark can be downloaded from here and features models with 16.7 billion polygons.. The test is the rather easier JetShadow model with the realistic setting. Intel and RefleXion lead the way.
ICH5R goodness was too much to pass up. A couple of Western Digital Raptors were strapped on to the ports, RAID was chosen from the BIOS section, and Intel's Application Accelerator RAID 3.5 was used to configure the drives into RAID0 with a 64kb block size. HDTach 2.70 was used to see how the drives reacted to the controller.
Low CPU utilisation has always been one of the hallmarks of the ICH5R. We've seen the average read speed as high as 80MB/s on a VIA VT8237 Southbridge's controller. A pretty decent set of results, however. The PSU thought nothing of running a Radeon 9800 Pro, 3.2GHz P4, 3 hard drives and an optical drive. Much like hi-fi amplifiers, it's not the total output that's the primary determinant of performance, it's more often the quality of the current.
