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Asus P5WD2 Premium: DDR2-1066 and the Promise of 955x SLI

 by Wesley Fink on May 11, 2005 12:05 AM EST
34 Comments | Add A Comment
34 Comments

General Performance & Encoding

General Usage Performance

Content Creation Performance

General Performance

MPEG-4 Encoding Performance - 'Sum of All Fears' Ch. 9

The range from top to bottom in Business Winstone and Multimedia Content Creation was just one point among 925X boards and 955x and NVIDIA nF4-SLI Intel chipsets. This included a range of chipsets running at a constant 3.6GHz with low latency memory at DDR2-533, DDR2-667, and DDR2-800. We can only conclude from this tight clustering of General Performance benchmarks that memory speed makes very little difference in the performance of standard desktop office applications and content creation on these Intel chipsets. We have seen in past reviews that CPU speed impacts these General Performance benchmarks, but Microsoft Office seems to perform the same at 3.6GHz, regardless of the memory speed.

PCMark2004 also shows a very small improvement as we move from fast 533 to fast 667 to fast DDR2-800 memory. Auto GK encoding scores also show a tight clustering of performance. If these are the applications that you run on your computer, the added DDR2 memory speed of the 955X/nF4-SLI Intel will not provide much boost to your performance.

Test Setup DirectX 9 Gaming Performance
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  • HardwareD00d - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link

    Wow, 3% increase. That falls within a margin of error.

  • HardwareD00d - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link

    This article did an excellent job of showing why DDR2 is total crap. Until they can tighten up the timings, DDR533==DDR667==DDR800 pretty much.

  • quicksilverXP - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link

    Hey,

    What bios was your board running at? I purchased two recently, and both of them don't have the DDR2-800 option. I noticed you have 7 ratios available while mine only has 5, and only up to DDR2-667. My Bios version is 0124 from the POST screen. Can you help me out?

  • KristopherKubicki - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link

    "Heatsink" is one word. If you are describing a general "heat sink" (there is a distinction), then you are talking about something else.

    Furthermore, fans are in fact considered active cooling. Active cooling by definition is any cooling device that can be disabled/enabled at will. Heatsinks are passive; fans, peltiers, etc are not.

    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3A...

    Kristopher

  • Darth Farter - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link

    well, anyone know where I can find this?

    what is the msrp for these (dual core) boards, cause those $255/$245 prices on newegg/ZZF are hard to ignore...

  • fishbits - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link

    "a fan doesn't actually cool anything, it just pushes air around"

    Try disabling the fans in your rig and A/C, take temp readings before and after and get back with us. Moving same temp to same temp isn't cooling. Moving cooler air (or water or other) to something that is hotter (chip, compressor, radiator, etc) most definitely actively cools it.

  • ElFenix - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link

    heat sink is two words
    fans are not active cooling. air conditioning is active cooling, turning the ceiling fan on in your room is not. a fan doesn't actually cool anything, it just pushes air around.


    thanks!

  • Doughboy - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link

    My retail package also did not include the WiFi/Tuner and Remote. Still a great board though. :)

  • jonny13 - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link

    Why the hell is Doom3 listed under DirectX 9 gaming?

    Someone should tell Carmack that he was actually coding in DirectX 9 and not OpenGL like he thought...

    Also, on the third graph of the General Benchmarks, you have the orange color as the Asus P5ND2-SLI instead of the Asus P5WD2 like every other chart. If you are going to use colors for the graphs, at least be consistant.

  • bob661 - Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - link

    #6
    Hypertransport is an open standard. Neither AMD nor NV owns it.

    #10
    A64's also use Hypertransport to connect the processor to the northbridge.

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