System setup and notes
Hardware
| System | ASUS COMMANDO system | ECS PN2 SLI2+ System | Foxconn 975X7AB System | MSI K9A Platinum AM2 System |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz, 4MiB L2 cache, LGA775) | AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 (2.8GHz, 2 x 1MiB L2 cache, Socket AM2) | ||
| Motherboard | ASUS COMMANDO - Intel P965 | ECS PN2 SLI2+ - nForce 680i SLI | Foxconn 975X7AB - Intel i975X | MSI K9A Platinum AM2 - ATI RD580/SB600 |
| Memory | 2GiB (2 x 1024) Corsair EPP | |||
| Memory timings and speed | 4-4-4-12 2T @ 800MHz (PC6400) | |||
| Graphics card(s) | HIS X1900 CROSSFIRE EDITION + Sapphire X1900XTX | NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX + SLI card | HIS X1900 CROSSFIRE EDITION + Sapphire X1900XTX | |
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 160GB SATAII (ST3160812AS) | |||
| BIOS revision | 0601 (22/12/2006) | 691N0P19 (10/31/2006) | 635F1D08 (09/08/2006) | 1.2B1 (07/17/06) |
| Mainboard software | Intel Inf Update 8.1.1.1010 | NVIDIA 9.53 | Intel Inf Update 8.0.1.1002 | Catalyst 6.8 Southbridge package |
| Graphics driver | ATI CATALYST 6.8 | NVIDIA ForceWare 91.47 | ATI CATALYST 6.8 | |
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional, w/ SP2, 32-bit | |||
| PSU | FSP Epsilon 600W | |||
| Monitor | Dell 2405FPW | |||
Software
We ran the mainboards through our usual array of benchmarks.| 2D Benchmarks |
ScienceMark Memory Bandwidth ScienceMark Memory Latency HEXUS Pifast calculation to 10M places HEXUS WAV encoding HEXUS DivX encoding Cinebench 2003 v9.5 HDTach RW v3.0.1.0 |
|---|
| 3D Benchmarks |
Far Cry v1.33 Quake 4 v1.04 Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05 |
|---|
Observational notes
Our sample was a pre-production model but exhibited no problems during burn-in or formal testing. There's no reason to expect retail boards will be any different in terms of stability and features.We've stacked the COMMANDO up against an ECS nForce 6801 SLI board. It's based on the reference design and its overall performance and BIOS define the current benchmark for all LGA775 mainboards. The ASUS's £140 tag puts it firmly in Intel's own i975X chipset-based boards' pricing spectrum, so we've added a decent example from Foxconn, which is actually cheaper to buy and offers CrossFire support as standard. Finally, rounding out the quartet, is a premier AMD AM2 chipset-based motherboard that should highlight cross-platform performance.
Benchmark results from chipsets based around the same processor and supporting components tend to be almost identical. That's why we pay attention to the actual speed that the boards run the Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor at, to see if anyone's gaining an artificially-induced advantage by sneakily increasing the board's FSB.
2933.1MHz - 266.6MHz FSB - Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 - ECS PN2 SLI2+ nForce 680i
2930.4MHz - 266.4MHz FSB - Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 - ASUS COMMANDO - P965
2928.4MHz - 266.2MHz FSB - Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 - Foxconn 975X7AB - i975X
2810.7MHz - 200.8MHz FSB - AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 - MSI K9A Platinum AM2 - ATI RD580/SB600
The playing field is pretty level as far as the Intel boards are concerned. On to the benchmarks!