ScienceMark 2.0 and Pifast
A simple shootout of three motherboard from ABIT. The ABIT KV8-MAX. IC7, and AI7 represent the VIA K8T800, Intel i875P and Intel i865PE chipsets, respectively.Let's examine memory bandwidth and latency from ScienceMark 2.0.
The deficit to the two Intel ABIT boards is inconsequential. The Athlon 64 3200+ runs off a 200MHz clock driver with a single-channel memory architecture. Its theoretical maximum, then, is only 3.2GB/s. It does pretty well to manage over 90% efficiency, according to ScienceMark.
Latency is one area in which any Athlon 64 S754 board will excel in. ABIT allows the user to input manual DRAM latencies. The end result of our standard 2-2-2-6 parameters and the CPU's on-die memory controller is an excellent 46ns @ 2GHz. As always, lower bandwidth that's offset by excellent low latencies.
Theory translates to the KV8-MAX3 taking the slimmest of leads in Pifast, our resident constant calculator to 10m places. ABIT's tuned KV8-MAX3 is about as fast as current S754 motherboards go. Impressive speed from so few GHz.