Test Setup

We compared the performance of the Asus P5AD2-E to the Abit Fatal1ty AA8XE (925XE), the Intel 925X motherboard, and the Asus P5AD2 Premium (925X). We tested with the 3.6Ghz 800FSB Intel 560 CPU on the 925X, and the 3.46EE 1066FSB CPU on the 925XE boards. We also included results for the fastest current A64 processors - the FX55 and the 4000+ on the nForce 4 PCI Express Reference board. To remove the video card as a performance factor, all benchmarks were run with the PCI Express nVidia 6800 Ultra.

 Performance Test Configuration
Processor(s): Intel 3.46EE (1066FSB) Socket 775
Intel 560 (3.6GHz) Socket 775
AMD FX55 (2.6Ghz) Socket 939
AMD 4000+ (2.4GHz) Socket 939
RAM: 2 x 512MB Crucial DDR2-533
2 x 512MB OCZ 3200 Platinum Rev. 2 DDR
Hard Drive(s): Maxtor 250GB MaXLine III (16MB buffer)
Video Card(s): nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra PCIe
Video Drivers: nVidia 61.77 Graphics Drivers
Operating System(s): Windows XP Professional SP1
Power Supply: OCZ Power Stream 520 (520W)
Motherboards: Asus P5AD2-E (Intel 925XE)
Abit Fatal1ty AA8XE (Intel 925XE)
Asus P5AD2 Premium (Intel 925X)
Intel 925XCV (Intel 925X)
nVidia nForce 4 Reference Board

The configuration was kept as close as possible between the 3 motherboards, but we are forced to compare DDR400 memory at 2-2-2-10 to DDR2-533 at 3-3-3-10. However, as we saw in the DDR vs. DDR2 review, the performance of fast DDR400 and DDR533 is very close.

In the Performance graphs, the tested Asus P5AD2-E board is in Dark Blue. Other Intel-based motherboards are in Light Blue. Athlon 64 reference results are in Green - Light Green for FX55 and Dark Green for 4000+.

Asus P5AD2 Premium: Overclocking and Stress Testing Performance Tests
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  • mkruer - Monday, November 29, 2004 - link

    I love Intel’s comment a while back when they stated that their version of dual core would be better because it “shares resource” between the cores.
  • Monkeydonutstick - Monday, November 29, 2004 - link

    #22 can you not read?
  • classy - Monday, November 29, 2004 - link

    LOL Dothan. Unless you can oc that bad boy extremely it will get crushed by an A64. It does better at gaming than desktop Intel chips, but performs poorly at rendering and the like. Stop with Pentium M Dothan nonsense. And by the way, the motherboards are priced in server board territory. Lets OC an Athlon 64 platform and see the scorching the Dothan will get.
  • Monkeydonutstick - Monday, November 29, 2004 - link

    http://translate.google.com/translate?sourceid=nav...
  • ariafrost - Monday, November 29, 2004 - link

    But Dothan doesn't scale up to high clock speeds and won't compete directly with Athlon 64 procs...
  • Monkeydonutstick - Monday, November 29, 2004 - link

    Try Dothan with a faster bus. preliminary benchmarks show a clock for clock intel advantage
  • Wesley Fink - Monday, November 29, 2004 - link

    #17 - This is a First Look review and not a full motherboard review. As we explained when we launched First Look, we will use that format to bring more motherboard reviews more quickly to AnandTech readers. PCMark 04 is used to provide a braod General Performance comparison that includes media encoding in the benchmark.

    We did run a full suite of benchmarks for future comparisons, but nothing really changes.

    925XE/3.46EE - 925X/3.6E - nF4/FX55 - Benchmark
    34.1 - 34.4 - 39.3 - MM Content Creation 04
    26.7 - 26.5 - 31.1 - Business Winstone 04
    73.1 - 73.4 - 69.1 - AutoGK DivX 5.1.1
  • danidentity - Monday, November 29, 2004 - link

    #13 - Ugh, Intel's answer is EM64T, which is functionally identical to AMD64 and is fully compatible with it. CPUs supporting it will be on sale before WinXP-64 is released.

    About the review, WHY do you have a ton of gaming benchmarks and only a single solitary non-gaming benchmark. Do you think the people who read your reviews do nothing but play games? I'd like to see an equal number of non-gaming benchmarks. Content creation, business apps, encoding, etc.

    Also, why didn't you test an 800MHz FSB CPU in this board? The overclocking potential is much better because of the 1066MHz FSB support.
  • smn198 - Monday, November 29, 2004 - link

    No. I didn't have a pre-production 50MHz CPU ;)

    I meant 550MHz
  • smn198 - Monday, November 29, 2004 - link

    Haven't bought an Intel CPU since I had my K7 50Mhz a long time ago but I really did like my PII 233 @ 350. I'd switch back to Intel in an instant if they offered better price:performance.

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