ScienceMark 2.0, Pifast
EPoX's i865G-powered Mini Me SFF system will provide a decent yardstick to measure both Shuttle's by.
ScienceMark 2.0's memory test highlights the detrimental effects of running with onboard video. ATI's Radeon 9100 IGP has historically scored lower in this test than an i865G, so we can already assume that the Zen won't do as well as the SB75G2 in 2D tasks. Shuttle's Canterwood cube jumps past the 4GB/s barrier. There's something to be said for the i875P after all.
A fact that borne out by the memory latency analysis. Higher bandwidth and lower latency correlate well with strong benchmarks results. Not only is the Zen lacking in bandwidth, probable performance is further hampered by high memory latency, not helped by the chipset's refusal to run anything tighter than 2-2-4-8 timings. The 9100 IGP's forte isn't blazing 2D performance, it's more to do with pin-sharp 2D clarity and above-average integrated 3D performance.
ScienceMark 2.0 predicted it, Pifast realises it. Sure, the Zen's slightly underclocking the 3.2GHz 200MHz FSB Pentium 4 CPU, but a few MHz difference cannot explain away the near-7-second gap. We leave the explanation to ScienceMark's analysis.
