Systems setup and notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.- AOpen XC Cube EZ18-120 SFF, nForce2 (R1.10 BIOS, 15/12/2003)
- Shuttle XPC ST62K Zen SFF system (28/1/2004 BIOS)
- EPoX 8RDA3G nForce2 Ultra 400 desktop motherboard
Other components
- ATI Radeon 9
Software
- Windows XP Professional
As the AOpen's nForce2 IGP NB (non-Ultra 400) is limited to an official 166MHz FSB and uses onboard graphics, we're using an AMD Athlon XP2500-M Barton CPU with a running speed of 1833MHz / 166MHz FSB. We'll be using the EZ18 with onboard graphics for both 2D and 3D tests. As a comparison of sorts, we'll add in a proven nForce2 Ultra 400 EPoX 8RDA3G motherboard and Shuttle's ST62K Zen SFF. The latter features an Intel 3.2GHz CPU, so we fully expect the AOpen to lag in most tests.
Onboard video was allotted 32MB of onboard memory, limiting the system to 480MB. NVIDIA integrted GeForce MX GPU features 2 rendering pipelines and 2 texture units per pipe. 200MHz GPU speed isn't going to make it a benchmark monster, but should return adequate 3D performance. 2D quality was reasonably good at 1600x1200 @ 75Hz. Not quite as good as the Shuttle Zen's Radeon 9100 IGP, it has to be said. TV-Output was pretty good in most respects, and having two VGA outputs is a notable feature. We'd easily sacrifice one for DVI output (well, it's not really a sacrifice with a converter).
Running speeds were as follows:
3192.6MHz - Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz / Shuttle XPC ST62K Zen (Radeon 9100 IGP)
1837.5MHz - AMD Athlon XP2500-M Barton / AOpen EZ18-120 SFF system (NVIDIA nForce2 - IGP NB / MCP-T SB)
1837.5MHz - AMD Athlon XP2500-M Barton / EPoX 8RDA3G nForce2 Ultra 400
Overclocking
With onboard video used and run with synchronous RAM the maximum stable speed was 192MHz FSB. It's unfortunate that the Barton XP3200's 200MHz FSB was unachievable. We can put this down to high-speed DDR run with low-latency timings. Stability at 166MHz, though, was excellent.