Far Cry 2
Featuring fantastic visuals courtesy of the Dunia Engine, this game also features one of the most impressive benchmark tools we have seen in a PC game. For single GPU results we set the performance feature set to Very High, graphics to High, and enable DX10 with AA set to 2x.
The MI-T36 gives up a couple of FPS here, which are within the bounds of variance between repeated benchmark runs.
Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II
We are big fans of the Warhammer franchise, especially Dawn of War II. One of the latest RTS games in our library is also one of the more demanding titles on both the CPU and GPU. We crank all options to Ultra, enable AA, and then run the built-in performance benchmark for our result.
Resident Evil 5
For our final game benchmark we decided to add the Resident Evil 5's fixed time demo, running DX10, Ultra settings and 4xAA.
DFI's offering is hot on the heels of the big boys in our gaming suite. What you're giving up by using it for a gaming system is the ability to keep up with ATX sized boards that can hold 4GHz CPU speeds day in and day out. In most benchmarks this equates to a performance disparity of around 5% between stock and 4GHz on the current Intel platforms.
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Mini Motherboard - Monday, January 11, 2010 - link
Thanks for great review. I have been waiting for someone to write about it. I have linked to your article on my blog at my [url=http://www.minimotherboard.com">http://www.minimotherboard.com]Mini-ITX blog[/url]Saosin - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
Mini-ITX review and no power consumption tests? :(Rajinder Gill - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
Page 2Rajinder Gill - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - link
Check page 2 in the performance summary :)ScavengerLX - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
I have my 860 on a MI P55 at 150bclock with HT on. While gaming core temps usually get up to the mid-60s. So far so good! Thats about as far as I can push it safely.ScavengerLX - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
Did you observe the PWM temps at 4.0GHz?Rajinder Gill - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
Hi,Not sure if you read the review in depth, but the 4GHz benches were for fixed frequency compare purposes only. I used a 120MM fan to blow air across the board just for the sake of running the game benches where the CPU loads are very light (only around 50 Celsius). If you're running the board in a case or stress testing (OCCT, Linpack etc), keep it at stock with HT enabled CPU's and at a max of say 3.6GHz with a 750 in a case.
later
Raja
LoneWolf15 - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
Any version on what Creative chip DFI is actually using?I'm guessing it's the cheapie they use on their gimped X-Fi XtremeAudio cards, since I haven't seen a real X-Fi chip on any board, but I was just curious.
Rajinder Gill - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
Hi,the X-FI features are purely software/drivers from Creative, supported by the Realtek ALC885. So no Creative hardware I'm afraid (I did mention software support in the feature table on page 3).
regards
Raja
ScavengerLX - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
Rajinder-Thanks for the great review. I have this motherboard so I appreciate the insight into the finer details.
Josh