Jedi Knight is the newest Quake 3-based game and many would say it is the most resource hungry. In fact, it's been nicknamed the "best reason to own a GeForce4 Ti" and supplies us with another excellent way of measuring high-end gaming performance. In this particular instance, the motherboards have been tested using standard High Quality detail settings with the resolution increased to 1024x768.
In a shocking revelation, EPOX pulls out the Jedi Knight II performance win followed by MSI, ASUS and ABIT.
MadOnion's 3DMark 2001SE is a very popular 3D benchmark tool, and as long as the video component and driver revision is kept absolutely consistent, then it can be a good system/CPU test as well. 3DMark 2001SE may also answer the question of which motherboard may be the best fit for high-end 3D video cards and gaming performance. Benchmark testing was performed at the default setting of 1024x768, 32-bit color/textures, and Pure Hardware T&L support.
Let's start up that broken record again, as EPoX has won yet another benchmark. The usual suspects are following along with MSI, ABIT and ASUS following close behind.
The big winner in the benchmark section is definitely the EPoX 8K3A+, as it finished at the top of the charts for an overwhelming number of benchmarks. The MSI KT3 Ultra-ARU also impressed and took the second place position a number of times, especially in the game benchmarks. Performance differences between motherboards are usually very slight, but in this case, the EPoX 8K3A+ demonstrated it is in a class by itself.
No matter how well a board performs or how deep its feature set, the retail price always comes into play. We have visited quite a few online retailers and have compiled a chart that reflects the estimated street price of the KT333 roundup motherboards.
What we can glean from the above prices is that ECS is offering a lot of board for the price, and that the $100 range holds a few very intriguing possibilities. MSI, EPoX and ABIT all have very nice products in this range, while both ASUS and Soyo offer a few more features and naturally command a higher retail price.
* Please note that these prices were taken at the time of review and are not meant to reflect long-term trends.
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