System Tests
Kribibench to kick us off first in our non-graphical system tests. It's a pure software 3D renderer, relying on masses of CPU power to perform well. It favours P4 in its usage.
The faster the better, the SiS655TX powered board shows that its memory limited performance carries over into the tests that enjoy lots of CPU horsepower too. With equal CPUs, the 655TX board should come home the (slight) winner from now on.
Realstorm is a 3D renderer too, but its remit falls into the realm of realtime raytracing. The scene is rendered as geometry only, then the lighting is calculated by means of rays, each corresponding to a ray of light that your eye would see. The Athlon 64 system romps home here, Realstorm loving the L2 cache size on the Model 3200+. Again the 655TX-based ASUS takes home the small victory over the i865PE+PAT that powers the DFI.
Q3 is a system test now, at least at the settings we use here. Graphics card power makes no real difference at all, we'd get similar numbers on a lesser powered card than the Radeon 9800XT used. Again, the A64 system makes the P4 based platforms look silly, the bigger the L2 size the better as far as Q3 is concerned, with the 655TX beating the PAT-enhanced Springdale yet again.
LAME is an MP3 encoder and we're using v3.92MMX which absolutely loves a lightening fast FPU and little else. Memory subsystem performance matters little, as does L2 size or performance. That said, the 655TX still comes home the winner, by a couple of seconds. The P4 systems make the A64 look very silly this time, MP3 encoding favours the Netburst architecture more than K8.
A page of graphical tests before we hit the conclusion.