Review: AOpen AK86-L K8T800 S754 Motherboard

by Tarinder Sandhu on 26 March 2004, 00:00

Tags: Aopen, AMD (NYSE:AMD), VIA Technologies (TPE:2388)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaxb

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ScienceMark 2.0, Pifast

Memory bandwidth first. ScienceMark 2.0 leads the way.



The differences between the CPUs' results can be explained away via the Athlon 64 Model 3xxx's use of of a single-channel memory controller, whereas the Pentium 4, by using a quad-pumped Front-Side Bus, can take advantage of double the bandwidth at DDR400 speeds. 3GB/s out of a theoretical 3.2GB/s is excellent, though.



Latency differences can also be explained away by the CPUs' architecture. Whilst the K8T800 chipset, and by inference both the AOpen and EPoX boards here, have discrete Northbridges their task isn't to interact with system memory. That's left to a memory controller right on the CPU, so latency is naturally lower. AOpen's AK86-L manages to run with very slightly tighter timings than the EPoX model, which is reflected by the ScienceMark 2.0 graph.



Pifast also likes AOpen's board. It's the fastest stock time we've so far seen from a Clawhammer CPU. Let's not forget that it has to overcome an 8MHz speed deficit to the EPoX board, too. We've purposely kept the same version of Pifast for 2 years. Looking back at results obtained using an AMD Athlon XP2100+ processor and VIA KT333 motherboard, a time of 89.27s was recorded. There's been progress, that's for sure.