Setup and notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.MESH Matrix 64 3200+ E-JOY (1002 BETA 009 BIOS)
Evesham Axis 64 3200+
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Comparison HEXUS system
Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz CPU with retail fan
DFI LANPARTY 865PE
2 x 512MB TwinMOS PC3200 RAM (2.5-3-3-7)
Seagate 120GB SATA hard drive
Creative Audigy 2 ZS
ATI Radeon 9800SE AIW
Toshiba 8x DVD-ROM
Software
Windows XP Home SP1 for MESH and Evesham systems. XP Pro SP1 for the HEXUS system
DirectX9.0b
Intel 5.00.1015 chipset drivers
VIA Hyperion 4.49v2 chipset drivers for both MESH and Evesham
ATI CATALYST 3.9 drivers and control panel
NVIDIA Detonator XP 52.16
Benchmarks
Pifast v41 to 10m places
Lame v3.92 MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end using U2's Pop album (611MB)
HDTach 2.70
Kribi Bench 1.19
ScienceMark 2.0
Realstorm Raytracing benchmark 320x180x32
3DMark 2001SE b330
3DMark03 b340
UT2003 Retail (Build 2225)
X2: The Threat - Rolling Demo
AquaMark 3
Notes
A comparison system comprising of a Pentium 4 3.2GHz CPU, a decent Intel Springdale board, a Radeon 9800SE AIW and 1GB of TwinMOS PC3200 run at SPD timings was used as a yardstick. We could expect a similar PC from either Evesham or PC, and it should show where the Athlon 64 3200+ is either weak or strong. To determine what kind of value for money either system presents to the buyer, we tried to assemble a similar PC from a well-known e-tailer. The system comprised of the following components.
Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz CPU Retail
ASUS P4P800 Deluxe i865PE motherboard
1GB TwinMOS PC3200 memory
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 200GB SATA hard drive
Hercules Radeon 9800SE AIW 128MB DDR graphics card
Creative Audigy 2 ZS sound card
Creative Inspire 7.1 T7700 7.1 speaker package
Chieftec Dragon DX01-BD Midi Tower w/360w PSU
Hercules ProphetView 920 Pro DVI 17" TFT
Microsoft Wireless Optical Pro keyboard and mouse
Pioneer 106 DVD-ReWriter
Sony 16x DVD-ROM
Black floppy drive
Microsoft Windows Home Edition
There can always be energetic debate as to whether another component deserves to be included, but we'd think most people would agree that the system listed above is a decent alternative that mixes and matches parts from both MESH and Evesham PCs. The staggering part is that the self-build would cost just a snip under £1700 in components and software alone, and that's without paying for the building and any form of hands-on warranty. In view of this, both systems offer excellent value and they take away a large reason for building it yourself, which is normally perceived as significant cost savings.
Issues
Very few, thankfully. Both systems were paradigms of stability throughout testing. That's testament to wise component selection and excellent build quality. One problem we ran into was the Evesham's 9800SE AIW card crashing with OpenGL applications. That's more to do with the driver than with general installation. ATI has a patch on its 'site to cure the ailment. Other than that, there's scant little to report.
MESH's system shipped with DirectX 9.0a in place. It was manually upgraded to 9.0b to meet the Evesham and HEXUS comparisons' software specification. Another 'issue' that we ran into was MESH's Matrix using the performance option from within the 52.16 drivers' control panel. We're assured that this is not normally the case, but it can make gaming benchmark comparisons useless. We manually changed it to the quality and best image settings. MESH's E-JOY presented us with an issue that is common with ASUS boards. The board was setup to Turbo1 parameters which artificially boosted the Athlon 64 3200+ and associating memory's speed to an overall driven clock of 2050MHz.
Naughty, naughty.
Both systems used similar memory timings. Here's a CPU-Z shot of the Evesham's.
Notice the DRAM clock at the specified 200MHz ?. That's how it should be. On the other hand, you could consider that MESH offers 'free' performance.
We'll be running through our usual benchmarking suite with one significant difference. As both supplied TFTs operate natively at 1280x1024, we thought it a good idea to evaluate performance in the gaming section with the same resolution. Makes sense, after all.
For disclosures' sake, here's the running speed of the 3 machines.
32707.7MHz - HEXUS comparison system - P4 3.2GHz
2050.2MHz - MESH Matrix 64 3200+ E-JOY
2000.1MHz - Evesham Technology Axis 64 3200+
