System setup and notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.- Intel Pentium4 2800MHz S478 Northwood CPU
- Iwill P4HT-S 845PE motherboard
- ABIT IT7-MAX2 v2.0 i845PE run in official DDR333 mode
- Gigabyte 8IHXP i850E motherboard run with PC1066 memory
- MSI i845PE-MAX2 FIR motherboard run in official DDR333 mode
- MSI SiS648 MAX motherboard run in DDR333 mode
- SOYO P4X400 DRAGON run in DDR333 mode
Common components
- ATi Radeon 9700 Pro (324/320)
- 256MB Corsair XMS3200 C2 run at 2-5-2-2 at DDR333 for all motherboards
- 61.5GB IBM 120GXP Hard Drive.
- Liteon 16x DVD
- Enermax 550w PSU
- Samsung 181T TFT monitor
- Thermaltake S478 cooler
Software
- Windows XP Professional Build 2600.xpclient.010817-1148
- Intel 4.00.109 chipset drivers
- Intel application accelerator drivers
- SiS 1.12 AGP drivers
- VIA 4-in-1s, 4.43
- Plutonium XP 8.1 Radeon Drivers (based on ATI CATALYST build 6166)
- SiSoft SANDRA SP1
- Pifast v41
- Virtual Dub 1.4.10 DVD encoding, DivX 4.12 CODEC
- OcUK SETI benchmark
- 3DMark 2001SE
- UT2003 Demo
- Comanche 4 benchmark
- Serious Sam 2 Demo
- Quake 3 v1.30
Notes
As usual, all systems will be run with the most aggressive timings. Benchmarks are run three times and the highest and lowest results are discarded. Benchmarks are run at 1024x768x32 85Hz unless otherwise stated. I'll be comparing the Iwill to two of its chipset stablemates in the ABIT IT7-MAX-2 v2.0 and the MSI 845PE MAX2 FIR respectively. Completing the S478 lineup are the i850E, SiS648, and P4X400 variants.
Overclocking
With a fixed PCI setting and CPU-frying 2v on tap, overclocking was always going to be an interesting affair. Using a relatively overclockable 1.6A Northwood, I managed to get to 2760MHz (172FSB) with comparative ease. The vast Vcore on tap (I only used 1.85v out of 2v possible) gave us all the help we needed. It would be nice if Intel could provide us with an unlocked P4.
Compatibility and Stability
I managed to run two separate PC3200 modules (Mushkin and Corsair respectively) together at 187MHz @ CL2, albeit with 2.8v. Each module can do 210MHz+ @ CL2 on its own. Stability, once again, was excellent. It's becoming increasingly difficult to find a fault with modern motherboards in this respect. I left the Iwill DivXing for 12+ hours overnight. It was still running smoothly the next morning.
Before I begin the benchmarking run, I'd like to highlight the speeds that each motherboard ran the 2.8GHz CPU when set to the default 133FSB. Please bear these in mind when comparing results, especially as the results tend be extremely similar given that we are running 3 motherboards based on one chipset, the i845PE, and 5 DDR motherboards in total.
2812.2MHz - MSI 845PE
2810.4MHz - MSI SiS648 MAX
2806.5MHz - Gigabyte i850E
2803.3MHz - ABIT 845PE MAX2
2793.1MHz - VIA P4X400
2793MHz - Iwill 845PE P4HT-S