System Setup and Notes
| ECS PA1 MVP Extreme Test System | |
| Processor | Intel Pentium 4 660 3.6GHz, 2MiB L2 cache, LGA775 |
| Mainboards | ECS PA1 MVP Extreme (ATI RD400X) ABIT AW8-MAX (Intel i955X) |
| Memory | 2 x 512MiB DDR2 3-2-2-8 @ 533MHz |
| Graphics Cards | ATI RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition PEG16X |
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional, SP2 |
| Mainboard Software | ATI CATALYST 5.9 Mainboard GART + SB450 Intel INF Update Utility 7.0.0.1019 |
| Graphics Driver Software | ATI CATALYST 5.3 |
Benchmark Software
HEXUS.in-house Cryptography Benchmark
HEXUS Pifast Benchmark
ScienceMark 2.0 (7th February 2005)
Realstorm Raytracing 2004
CINEBENCH 2003 multi-CPU render
picCOLOR 32-bit v4.0
KribiBench v1.1
Notes
The ECS PA1 MVP goes up against the winner of our recent 3-way i955X shootout, ABIT's AW8-MAX. Comparing the system performance of the ATI RD400X-based ECS mainboard against arguably the best Intel-based Intel mainboard will be interesting. We use a slightly shortened version of our platform testing suite for testing the PA1 MVP.Testing with the initial BIOS release on the PA1 MVP produced scores that were competetive with i955X and the ABII AW8-MAX but which always fell slightly short across the board. Using the PA19238M BIOS dated 26th September raised performance pretty much across the board to levels expected from a decent Intel mainboard that's holding a P4 660 and 1GiB of low latency DDR2.
As always, benchmarks were run three times and the median result reported. If any benchmark result was spurious in any way, all collected results were discarded for that benchmark and the test was rerun until consistent results were obtainable. If you have any question or queries about how we test mainboard, please visit the HEXUS.community.