Benchmarks III
After noting how ASUS 'optimises' its 900-series boards for behind-the-scenes graphics card overclocking via its PEG Link function, I ensured that this 'feature' was disabled throughout testing. The 500-mark difference between it and a reference board cannot just be explained away via a 42MHz clock speed increase. However, and this is the important point, graphics card intensive tests such as Nature showed no deviation from a refernce 925XE's results, suggesting that no obvious optimisation was taking place. The board's 22,373 score can be seen in more detail here. Whilst faster than a reference 925XE board it's still, as a combination, far slower than an Athlon 64 3800+.
Nothing much between the two Intel protagonists. AMD's far ahead in this test; it doesn't matter which motherboard is used with a 3.8GHz Pentium 4.
The pattern that has emerged from the very first benchmark is further repeated here.
No commentary is needed here, folks.