System setup and notes
Hardware and Software
Test Platforms
| System | ECS PF88 Extreme System | Intel i925XE system | Athlon 64 S939 PCI-Express System |
| Processor(s) | Intel Pentium 4 660 & AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 (via A9S add-in card) | Intel Pentium 4 660 | AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 |
| Mainboard | ECS PF88 Extreme w/A9S card | EPoX EP-5LWA+ 925XE | ABIT AX8 K8T890 |
| Memory | 1GByte (2x512MB) Crucial Ballistix DDR2-667 & 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS3200XL | 1GByte (2x512MB) Crucial Ballistix DDR2-667 | 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS3200XL | Memory timings | 4-4-4-12 for DDR2, 2-2-2-5 1T for DDR1 | 4-4-4-12 | 2-2-2-5 1T |
| Graphics Card | ATI RADEON X850 XT PE - PEG16X - CATALYST 5.3 | Disk Drive | 160GB WD IDE & 36GB SATA Raptor |
| BIOS Version | 16/4/05 for Intel, 25/04/05 for AMD | 23/02/2005 | BIOS 10 - 25/02/2005 |
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional, SP2 | ||
| Mainboard Software | SiS 2.04a | Intel INF Update Utility 6.3.0.1007 | VIA Hyperion Pro v4.55 |
Benchmark Software
HEXUS.in-house Cryptography Benchmark
HEXUS Pifast Benchmark
ScienceMark 2.0 (7th February 2005)
Realstorm 2004
CINEBENCH 2003 multi-CPU render
HEXUS.in-house MP3 Encoding Benchmark using LAME 3.97a (Intel HT compiler) - 701MB WAV
picCOLOR 32-bit v4.0
KribiBench v1.1
Microsoft Movie Maker 2.1
SimpliSoft HDTach (USB2.0, SATA, and PATA transfer tests)
DOOM 3 Timedemo 1
3DMark2001SE b330
UT2003 HEXUS Bot Match
Notes
ECS gave us the opportunity of evaluating the PF88 Extreme motherboard in the full knowledge that both AMD and Intel BIOSes are works in progress. The board was manually updated to the latest available at the time of writing, being 16/04 and 25/04 for Intel and AMD, respectively. However, even with these builds, a few problems were apparent. The board would often freeze on the OS-loading screen, necessitating a reboot. Reboots often didn't function correctly and a cold start was needed at times. Further, I was advised not to run AMD's BIOS with 5x HTT setting applied. Once successfully in Windows, though, the PF88 Extreme, with both Intel and AMD CPUs, was a paradigm of stability. I'm adamant that future BIOS releases will cure the test board's ailments.
A single OS?
Adding in the A9S card and removing jumpers takes but a minute. One can turn the PF88 Extreme from an Intel-based motherboard to an AMD's in a jiffy. However, when attempting to load the PF88 Extreme's Pentium 4 edition of Windows XP Professional with the A9S in place, each attempt was meet with abject failure, usually resulting in the system rebooting just as XP finished loading. The culprit in this case appears to be Windows XP itself, which isn't happy going from a 2-CPU (well, HT-equipped P4) to a single-CPU AMD system. Going the other way around, from AMD to Intel, worked flawlessly.
I'll be comparing the ECS PF88 Extreme's performance against two established motherboards based on Intel's premier i925XE and AMD/VIA's K8T890 chipsets. The PF88 Extreme purports to offer the best of both worlds, so it will be interesting to see just how competitive it is, in terms of performance, with two of the fastest boards on either platform.
Explicit running speeds of the boards were as follows:
3630.8MHz - EPoX 5LWA+ (i925XE) - Intel Pentium 4 660
3600.5MHz - ECS PF88 Extreme - Intel Pentium 4 660
2405.4MHz -ABIT AX8 (VIA K8T890) - AMD Athlon 64 FX-53
2399.8MHz - ECS PF88 Extreme - AMD Athlon 64 FX-53
Note that the PF88 Extreme's clock generator doesn't inflate the FSB, unlike EpoX's. Please bear the running speed in mind when comparing results. Other than clock speed, the PF88 Extreme, in both Intel and AMD guises, was setup in an identical manner to the two comparison boards.