Benchmark Setup
Our abit AB9 QuadGT motherboard fully supports the current range of socket 775 Intel processors. We chose an E6300 for testing as we feel this will be a very popular Core 2 Duo CPU choice with the P965 motherboards. (Granted that many people looking at a $200+ motherboard like this abit are likely to opt for a more expensive CPU as well, but with the more budget-oriented P965 boards the choice makes sense, and we continue to use this CPU for purposes of consistency.)
A 2GB memory configuration is now standard in the AT test bed as most enthusiasts are currently purchasing this amount of memory. Our choice of DDR2-800 memory from GEIL offered a very wide range of memory settings during our stock and overclocked test runs. Our memory timings are set based upon determining the best memory bandwidth via our test application results.
We are utilizing the MSI X1950XTX video card to ensure our 1280x1024 resolutions are not completely GPU bound for our motherboard test results. We did find in testing that applying a 4xAA/8xAF setting in most of today's latest games created a situation where the performance of the system starts becoming GPU limited. Our video tests are run at 1280x1024 resolution for this preview article at standard settings.
Synthetic and Application Performance
We are utilizing an abbreviated test suite for our first look at the abit AB9 QuadGT motherboard. We will present full test results in our next article that will look at new P965 boards from ASUS and Gigabyte.
At stock speeds the AB9 QuadGT motherboard posts the best WinRAR and Quake 4 scores, and it's SuperPI and Nero Recode scores are near the top as well. We had performance issues with Battlefield 2 at stock settings as the frame rates were consistently about 5fps below the other boards. The game also stuttered at various points in the benchmark and dropped online connections three out of five times. We finally traced the issue down to the BIOS and JMicron controller. After setting our memory latencies to 3-4-3-10 and loading the JMicron RAID driver instead the standard XP IDE driver our scores improved to 104.8.
Although not listed, we noticed a drop of about 200~300 points in PCMark 2005 when compared to our other P965 motherboards. The solution was once again to switch the JMicron controller from IDE to RAID and load the JMicron RAID driver set. Our scores improved from 5664 to 5962 while our disk intensive WinRAR and Nero Recode scores improved by a couple of percent.
In our overclocking tests the AB9 QuadGT was absolutely superb and offered the best overall performance even though the ASUS P5B-Deluxe has a 70MHz CPU speed advantage. This performance is a direct result of the 1067 strap settings and aggressive memory sub-timings. Stability was also excellent during overclocking, although we continued to have issues with BF2 until we changed the JMicron driver. Once the driver was changed our overclocked BF2 fps score improved to 151.3.
We have not encountered any performance issues with our Quad Core (QX6800), E6600, or E4300 in limited testing to date. We will provide a performance update with these processors in our next P965 comparison article. Overall, this board clearly performed very well in our limited testing.
Our abit AB9 QuadGT motherboard fully supports the current range of socket 775 Intel processors. We chose an E6300 for testing as we feel this will be a very popular Core 2 Duo CPU choice with the P965 motherboards. (Granted that many people looking at a $200+ motherboard like this abit are likely to opt for a more expensive CPU as well, but with the more budget-oriented P965 boards the choice makes sense, and we continue to use this CPU for purposes of consistency.)
| Standard Test Bed Performance Test Configuration |
|
| Processor: | Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Dual Core, 1.86GHz, 2MB Unified Cache 1066FSB, 7x Multiplier |
| RAM: | Geil PC2-6400 800MHz Plus (2x1GB - GX22GB6400PDC) (Micron Memory Chips) |
| Hard Drive: | Seagate 320GB 7200RPM SATA2 16MB Buffer |
| System Platform Drivers: | Intel - 8.1.1.1010 |
| Video Cards: | 1 x MSI X1950XTX |
| Video Drivers: | ATI Catalyst 6.11 |
| CPU Cooling: | Scythe Infinity |
| Power Supply: | OCZ GameXstream 700W |
| Optical Drive: | Sony 18X AW-Q170A-B2 |
| Case: | Cooler Master CM Stacker 830 |
| Motherboards: | ASUS P5B-Deluxe WiFi (Intel P965 C2, 1.01G) - BIOS 0804 abit AB9-Pro (Intel P965 C1) - BIOS 1.5 abit AB9 QuadGT (Intel P965 C2) - BIOS 10 Biostar T-Force 965 Deluxe (Intel P965 C1) - BIOS IP96a803 Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 (Intel P965 C2) - BIOS F7 MSI P965 Platinum - (Intel P965 C2) - BIOS 1.2 |
| Operating System: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
| . | |
A 2GB memory configuration is now standard in the AT test bed as most enthusiasts are currently purchasing this amount of memory. Our choice of DDR2-800 memory from GEIL offered a very wide range of memory settings during our stock and overclocked test runs. Our memory timings are set based upon determining the best memory bandwidth via our test application results.
We are utilizing the MSI X1950XTX video card to ensure our 1280x1024 resolutions are not completely GPU bound for our motherboard test results. We did find in testing that applying a 4xAA/8xAF setting in most of today's latest games created a situation where the performance of the system starts becoming GPU limited. Our video tests are run at 1280x1024 resolution for this preview article at standard settings.
Synthetic and Application Performance
We are utilizing an abbreviated test suite for our first look at the abit AB9 QuadGT motherboard. We will present full test results in our next article that will look at new P965 boards from ASUS and Gigabyte.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
At stock speeds the AB9 QuadGT motherboard posts the best WinRAR and Quake 4 scores, and it's SuperPI and Nero Recode scores are near the top as well. We had performance issues with Battlefield 2 at stock settings as the frame rates were consistently about 5fps below the other boards. The game also stuttered at various points in the benchmark and dropped online connections three out of five times. We finally traced the issue down to the BIOS and JMicron controller. After setting our memory latencies to 3-4-3-10 and loading the JMicron RAID driver instead the standard XP IDE driver our scores improved to 104.8.
Although not listed, we noticed a drop of about 200~300 points in PCMark 2005 when compared to our other P965 motherboards. The solution was once again to switch the JMicron controller from IDE to RAID and load the JMicron RAID driver set. Our scores improved from 5664 to 5962 while our disk intensive WinRAR and Nero Recode scores improved by a couple of percent.
In our overclocking tests the AB9 QuadGT was absolutely superb and offered the best overall performance even though the ASUS P5B-Deluxe has a 70MHz CPU speed advantage. This performance is a direct result of the 1067 strap settings and aggressive memory sub-timings. Stability was also excellent during overclocking, although we continued to have issues with BF2 until we changed the JMicron driver. Once the driver was changed our overclocked BF2 fps score improved to 151.3.
We have not encountered any performance issues with our Quad Core (QX6800), E6600, or E4300 in limited testing to date. We will provide a performance update with these processors in our next P965 comparison article. Overall, this board clearly performed very well in our limited testing.
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41 Comments
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Operandi - Wednesday, January 24, 2007 - link
Excellent.Talcite - Monday, January 22, 2007 - link
Do you guys mean 'Final Impressions' on the last page of the article?Gary Key - Monday, January 22, 2007 - link
It was First Impressions, slip of the tongue until we get the next BIOS release. ;)mechBgon - Monday, January 22, 2007 - link
Hey Gary, I think you got a typo:You meant "noting," not "nothing," right?
JarredWalton - Monday, January 22, 2007 - link
That was my fault, and it's what happens when you edit at 3 AM (and use voice recognition). Anyway, it's fixed, thanks.sprockkets - Monday, January 22, 2007 - link
Intel has such a good processor, then messes up on the IDE. I would gladly make a computer around such a chip, but the nForce 6150 and AMD/Ati chipset is much more compelling, and since my customer needs IDE anyhow, AMD wins.MadAd - Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - link
Its taken all this time to get rid of the parallel port yet the much more used IDE (which should have the same kind of legacy lifespan) is out the door in a flash.If I had a tin foil hat id be shouting conspiracy theory and wondering which one of the storage majors paid Intel off to pull a stunt like that.
Stele - Monday, January 22, 2007 - link
Oh no, that misnomer strikes again... capacitors which use solid aluminium electrolyte are properly called "solid aluminium electrolyte" or at least "solid aluminium"... there are no "solid state" capacitors since, in electronic parlance "solid state" is traditionally used to describe circuits that do not use vacuum tubes (electron flows in solid materials - the semiconductors within ICs - rather than vacuum/empty spaces such as in tubes).
It's a minor point on the face of it, but Anandtech is well-respected throughout the IT community; hence a mistake or misconception could potentially reach and misinform a great deal of readers (and even writers) out there. :)
JarredWalton - Monday, January 22, 2007 - link
Changed - not all of us are electronics experts. Solid state or solid electrolyte - is there a difference to the laymen of the world? ;)Stele - Monday, January 22, 2007 - link
Oh no, no, didn't mean it in any negative way; I understand that, so was just contributing what little I can to help keep Anandtech at the top :P
You're probably quite right that the layman may not know the difference, and indeed they likely wouldn't care either way anyway. The ones we're worried about are those that are just entering the technical arena and/or are in their formative, learning stages... wouldn't want them to start on the wrong footing and spread the misstep when they in turn teach others ;)