Business Winstone 2001 from ZD Labs is an application-based PC benchmark suite that uses business programs like MS Office 2000, FrontPage 2000, Lotus Notes, and Netscape to test overall system performance. New in the 2001 version are specific tests for file compression, anti-virus scanning and email. This suite of programs are run from a batch script that attempts to accurately emulate a business system load, then supplies a final performance rating.
The Business Winstone results brought us the first surprise of the roundup, as the AOpen AK77-333 powered away to an easy victory. AOpen has historically marketed their boards towards the business user, and in this benchmark at least, this board shows a definite advantage. The Soyo finishes close behind, followed by EPoX. As expected, the value-priced ECS board finished last, but both ABIT and MSI failed to impress with lower-than expected scores.
Content Creation Winstone 2002 is another excellent benchmark from ZD, and is one of the first to have Windows XP as the intended platform. Its demanding applications and exceptional stability makes it a great match for our high-end testing and a valuable tool when determining system performance levels using cutting-edge hardware and software.
Content Creation Winstone once again showed the AOpen scoring very high, but this time the ASUS A7V333 finished first in a very competitive race. The results here are much closer than with Business Winstone and all of the boards placed very well. The Soyo KT33 Dragon Ultra does take a bit of a performance hit when moving to Content Creation Winstone, but the rest of the results are quite consistent.
SiSoft SANDRA 2002 is an interesting suite of individual benchmarks and system utilities. The memory bandwidth tests are the most popular section of the SiSoft SANDRA benchmark suite, and really highlight the potential performance of the Athlon XP using DDR333 memory.
This particular test tends to reward motherboards with excellent memory throughput, as well as those with detailed memory timing options present in the BIOS. The performance results mirror these thoughts, as the EPoX, MSI and ASUS boards finish in the top three positions, with ABIT coming in fourth.
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