System setup and notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.Motherboards
EPoX EP-9NDA3+ nForce3 Ultra motherboard (05/10/2004 BIOS), S939
ATI XPRESS 200 Bullhead reference motherboard, S939
ASUS K8V Deluxe VIA K8T800 S939
Intel reference D925XECV2, LGA775
CPUS
AMD Athlon 64 3800+, S939, 2.4GHz
Intel Pentium 4 570J, LGA775, 3.8GHz
Other components
2x512MB OCZ Platinum Rev 2 dual-channel RAM (2-2-2-5)
2x512MB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 667 (3-3-3-10)
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT reference (350/1000)
Western Digital 160JB hard drive
Samcheer 420w PSU
Dell P991 19" monitor
Software
Windows XP Professional SP2
DirectX 9.0c
NVIDIA ForceWare 5.10 platform drivers
VIA Hyperion 4.53 drivers
Intel 6.0.1.1006 chipset drivers
NVIDIA ForceWare 61.77 drivers
CPU-Z 1.24
Benchmarks
Pifast v4.1
ScienceMark 2.0
Lame v3.92
MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end using U2's Pop album(607MB)
KribiBench v1.1
Realstorm Raytracing 2004 - 512x384 - no AA
HEXUS XviD encoding test
USB 2.0 transfer test
3DMark2001SE b330
UT2003 HEXUS Custom low-detail benchmark
Comanche 4
DOOM 3 - Timedemo 1 - HQ
Notes
No problems to report during installation. However, as noted earlier, a distinct lack of DDR voltage is a worry.
The above shot represents the system under Prime95 load. CPU voltage is just where it should be, but DDR is over 0.1v off.
Benchmarks were carried out 3 times. The highest and lowest results were discarded. A comparison against 2 rival S939 chipsets should yield some useful information for prospective purchasers. All 3 AMD-based boards were run with an Athlon 64 3800+ CPU and low-latency DDR400 memory. A comparison Intel Pentium 4 3.8GHz (570J) CPU and i925XE motherboard combination was also included.