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 Pentium4 1600MHz S478 Northwood CPU
- MSI 845E Max2 BLR 845E Motherboard
- MSI 645E MAX-LRU SiS645DX Motherboard run in DDR333 Mode at both 100 and 133FSB.
- ABIT IT7 I845E run at both 100FSB and 133FSB
Common components
- Asus Geforce4 Ti 4600 clocked at (300/660)
- 256MB Samsung PC2700 run at strictest timings (common for all three DDR motherboards)
- 2x120GB Western Digital 120JB 7200rpm hard drive with 8MB cache.
- Liteon 40x12x40 CDRW
- Pioneer DVR-104 DVD ReWriter
- Samcheer 420w PSU
- 21" Sony G500 FD monitor
- D-Link FE530TX 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
- 3DMark 2000
- 3DMark 2001SE
- Comanche 4 benchmark
- Serious Sam 2 Demo
- Quake 3 v1.30
We'll be comparing the MSI 845E Max2 BLR motherboard against its immediate competition. I've previously reviewed two other motherboards that are officially ratified for 133FSB use, the ABIT IT7 MAX and MSI 645DX. They will form the basis of reference.
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 three 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 2 of the motherboards on test natively run at that speed when set to 1600MHz.
We've chosen a 1600MHz test CPU because firstly it allows us to find the maximum operating FSB of the MSI, and secondly because we can run it at 133FSB without any problems. I will benchmark at both 1600MHz and 2133MHz (133FSB) to show performance differentials at each setting.
I've chosen to go with the maximum bandwidth possible. The MSI 645E Max-LRU offers more bandwidth at default CPU speeds, 166Mhz Vs. 133MHz for the MSI 845E Max2 and ABIT IT7. The 845E motherboards, however, offer more at 133FSB (177MHz Vs. 166MHz), this should make for some interesting results between the chipsets. Although newer graphics card drivers are available, I've chosen to go with the 28.32s for reasons of fair comparison. I've also disabled Bluetooth on the 845E Max2 for benchmark purposes as it adversely effects performance. Seeing as the IT7 doesn't have it, the 845E should not be unfairly penalised.
Anyway, onto the benchmarks.