Determining overall performance levels for motherboards is a bit more difficult compared to processors or 3D video cards. Hardware and software consistency must be maintained, benchmarks should have some impact on overall system throughput, and the operating system and driver revisions must be standard. For our hardware reference base, we have selected the Pentium 4-3.2 GHz processor, along with 512-MB of Crucial TwinX PC3200 memory and an ATI Radeon 9800XT video card, all using Windows XP Pro SP1. This is a good approximation of a high-end Pentium 4 system and ensures that we are testing top-end features such as the 800 MHz FSB and Hyper-Threading technology.
* Please note that the only time we changed up the hardware selection was to use PC4200 memory with the single-channel i848P motherboard, in order to demonstrate the impact of a higher memory bandwidth.
* Many of the high-end i875P manufacturers list "certified DDR memory" for peak PAT operation on their motherboard, and we recommend checking out these listings before making any purchase. We used Corsair PC3200 TwinX with no problems in our benchmarking section, and followed that up with KingMax PC3200 for extra compatibility testing, but sticking with the manufacturer recommendations is always the safest course of action.
The System BIOS is also an important area, and for all benchmarks, the settings have been standardized to a degree. All motherboards have been tested using the highest memory timings allowed, along with other performance settings equalized at the high-end. This tends to reward manufacturers that allow greater tweaking in the BIOS, while maintaining equal footing in terms of the components used.
We do draw the line at bumping up the FSB at standard processor settings, or any other performance enhancing trickery. There are certain System BIOS options that do this very thing, as well as some selections that artificially increase system speeds. These have either been disabled or if needed, an equivalent FSB was selected manually (and confirmed via diagnostic software) to ensure an even playing field.
The benchmark list features a wide range of system, CPU, memory, and gaming tests. These include the brand-new revisions of PCMark 2004 and SiSoft SANDRA 2004, along with popular 3D game tests like AquaMark 3, GunMetal, Unreal Tournament 2003, 3DMark 2003, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. X2 Demo, Code Creatures, and Comanche 4. Our default game benchmark setting is 1024x768x32, which is demanding enough for comparisons and more realistic as an actual gameplay resolution, but still allows the motherboard-CPU-memory subsystem to take control in relatively low-resolutions testing.
* Please note that unless otherwise stated, all performance graph results equate to the standard "higher is better" routine.
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