System Setup and benchmarking notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.
- Intel Pentium 4 1600MHz S478 Northwood CPU
- Abit I845E IT7 Motherboard (IT7_8H.B05 BIOS)
- ABIT SD7-533 SiS 645 Motherboard run in DDR333 Mode
- ABIT TH7II-RAID I850 with 256MB (2 x 128MB) of Samsung PC800 RAMBUS (BIOS TH738)
- EPoX 4BDA2+ Intel 845D (BIOS 0502)
Common components
- Creative Geforce4 Ti 4600 clocked at stock speeds (300/660)
- 256MB Samsung PC2700 run at strictest timings (common for both DDR motherboards)
- 2 x 120GB Western Digital 120JB 7200rpm hard drive with 8MB cache.
- Liteon 32x12x40 CDRW
- Liteon 16x DVD
- Samcheer 420w PSU
- 21" Sony G500 FD monitor
- D-Link 530TX NIC
- Lian-Li PC60 Aluminium Case
Software
- Windows XP Professional Build 2600.xpclient.010817-1148
- Detonator XP 28.32 drivers
- Sisoft Sandra 2002 Professional
- Pifast v41
- Lame v3.91 MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end
- XMpeg 4.2A DVD encoding, DivX 5.0 CODEC
- OCUK SETI benchmark
- HD Tach 2.61
- 3DMark 2000
- 3DMark 2001SE
- Comanche 4 benchmark
- Serious Sam 2 Demo
- Quake 3 v1.30
We'll be comparing the ABIT IT7 I845E motherboard against its immediate competition. ABIT's very own RAMBUS-equipped I850 has been the standard-setter for some now, so it is only fair we include it.
We'll also include the ABIT SD7 SiS645 motherboard run in DDR333 mode. The EPoX I845D 4BDA2+ rounds up the collection on test
All benchmarks were conducted at 1024x768x32 100Hz with vertical sync' disabled. Benchmarks were run 3 times consecutively, an average score was taken. All three systems were configured for maximum performance.
All four test motherboards operate at a slightly different frequency when set to 1600MHz in BIOS. The difference isn't great, but could affect results if they are initially close. Therefore, I've decided to normalise the results to 1614MHz, as 3 of the motherboards on test natively run at that speed when set to 1600MHz.
We've chosen a 1600MHz CPU because firstly it allows us to approach the FSB limit of the IT7, and secondly because we can run it at 133FSB without any problems. We'll also be comparing the performance of the IT7 against the EPoX 4BDA2+ when both are running at 133FSB with memory running asynchronously at 177MHz, this should give us an inkling into the possible performance of the upcoming Northwood Bs.
Please note that the following benchmark graphs depicting performance with the IT7 and EPoX I845D at 133FSB actually represent a clock speed of 2133MHz. In that context, please don't compare them directly to the I850 and SiS645 benchmarks as they are running at 100 FSB.