Synthetic Graphics Performance
The 3DMark series of benchmarks developed and provided by Futuremark are among the most widely used tools for benchmark reporting and comparisons. Although the benchmarks are very useful for providing apple to apple comparisons across a broad array of GPU and CPU configurations they are not a substitute for actual application and gaming benchmarks. In this sense we consider the 3DMark benchmarks to be purely synthetic in nature but still valuable for providing consistent measurements of performance.
In our first test, the combination of the Intel Core 2 Duo and G965 makes for a great showing against the AM2 offerings. Okay, so we're being a bit sarcastic in that announcement as we consider these results to be anything but great. The Intel platform had no issues running the full 3DMark series but our AMD platforms could not complete the Shader Mark 3.0 tests. However, they exceeded the Intel platform scores in both the SM 2.0 and CPU tests. While the Intel platform passed the SM3.0 tests, this means little in actual game performance where the G965 failed to properly run games with SM3.0 capability.
General System Performance
The PCMark05 benchmark developed and provided by Futuremark was designed for determining overall system performance for the typical home computing user. This tool provides both system and component level benchmarking results utilizing subsets of real world applications or programs. This benchmark is useful for providing comparative results across a broad array of Graphics, CPU, Hard Disk, and Memory configurations along with multithreading results. In this sense we consider the PCMark benchmark to be both synthetic and real world in nature and it provides consistency in our benchmark results.
The margins are closer in the PCMark05 results with the 690G platform showing a minor advantage over the G965 and 6150 platforms. While this benchmark is designed around actual application usage, we will see if these results mirror our application testing.
Rendering Performance
We are using the Cinebench 9.5 benchmark as it tends to heavily stress the CPU subsystem while performing graphics modeling and rendering. Cinebench 9.5 features two different benchmarks with one test utilizing a single core and the second test showcasing the power of multiple cores in rendering the benchmark image. We utilize the standard multiple core benchmark demo and default settings.
The AM2 processors have always enjoyed an advantage in this test and the results continue to show the AM2 platform being dominant in this benchmark with a 26% advantage. The two AM2 platforms basically tie each other indicating CPU throughput is equal on either solution.
The 3DMark series of benchmarks developed and provided by Futuremark are among the most widely used tools for benchmark reporting and comparisons. Although the benchmarks are very useful for providing apple to apple comparisons across a broad array of GPU and CPU configurations they are not a substitute for actual application and gaming benchmarks. In this sense we consider the 3DMark benchmarks to be purely synthetic in nature but still valuable for providing consistent measurements of performance.
In our first test, the combination of the Intel Core 2 Duo and G965 makes for a great showing against the AM2 offerings. Okay, so we're being a bit sarcastic in that announcement as we consider these results to be anything but great. The Intel platform had no issues running the full 3DMark series but our AMD platforms could not complete the Shader Mark 3.0 tests. However, they exceeded the Intel platform scores in both the SM 2.0 and CPU tests. While the Intel platform passed the SM3.0 tests, this means little in actual game performance where the G965 failed to properly run games with SM3.0 capability.
General System Performance
The PCMark05 benchmark developed and provided by Futuremark was designed for determining overall system performance for the typical home computing user. This tool provides both system and component level benchmarking results utilizing subsets of real world applications or programs. This benchmark is useful for providing comparative results across a broad array of Graphics, CPU, Hard Disk, and Memory configurations along with multithreading results. In this sense we consider the PCMark benchmark to be both synthetic and real world in nature and it provides consistency in our benchmark results.
The margins are closer in the PCMark05 results with the 690G platform showing a minor advantage over the G965 and 6150 platforms. While this benchmark is designed around actual application usage, we will see if these results mirror our application testing.
Rendering Performance
We are using the Cinebench 9.5 benchmark as it tends to heavily stress the CPU subsystem while performing graphics modeling and rendering. Cinebench 9.5 features two different benchmarks with one test utilizing a single core and the second test showcasing the power of multiple cores in rendering the benchmark image. We utilize the standard multiple core benchmark demo and default settings.
The AM2 processors have always enjoyed an advantage in this test and the results continue to show the AM2 platform being dominant in this benchmark with a 26% advantage. The two AM2 platforms basically tie each other indicating CPU throughput is equal on either solution.
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3 CUBED - Friday, March 9, 2007 - link
I have to mention power also. Considering that a HTPC is properly going to be on quiet a bit, I would like to se some info on the power draw, from these mobo's. The same goes in the roundup!! Also considering that the energy prices is headed only UP, even a little lower performance might be worth that in the long run!!Thanks Kasper.
MrNeutrino - Thursday, March 8, 2007 - link
Guys,First, the feedback:
Frankly I'm quite frustrated from waiting for a site like AT for the past half a year or more to come out with more mATX reviews (until this review, which is a start).
I realize there are a lot of gamers OCers out there - very many AT readers. However, there are many (just as many?) non-gamer enthusiasts hoping to run stock-speed,SILENT, SFF systems out there - myself for one.
While lesser known sites have reviewed many of these products, I (and others like me I know of) have been waiting for AT to publish SOMETHING in the mATX / C2D (current and long-standing performance champ depending on the system config.) category for months on end! I realize you have dedicated folks working for each review category. However, AT - a site as a whole - still seems to have enough bandwidth to publish back-to-back LCD and heatsink reviews in a matter of day or two each. Yet you seem to have held off on prioritizing mATX system reviews for some inexplicable milestone until yesterday. I recall reading a vague comment in one of your reviews around the end of the year regarding an 'upcoming' mATX review, if I remember correctly. In my opinion it was already too delayed a review. Little did I know I'd be waiting another two months for such a review.
Geez! Publish the review in parts if you must, but don't make your readers hold off for this long and think all is well! What's the point of releasing this type of review, months after products became widely available and just a few months before the next round of technology updates?!
-----------------------
Second is a set of requests for the (personally) much anticipated upcoming mATX review next week 'as well as' for future reviews:
Requests for the upcoming mATX review:
* Please try to include Asus P5B-VM. One of the currently best featured G965 MBs.
* Please include at least one C2D ATX MB for comparison! My vote is for Asus P5B-E. I can't stress this enough! I have yet to receive any 'quantitative' (read: benchmark backed) response in forums http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...">here) and http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...">here, on the following topics (quoting from my earlier posts):
- how do mATX boards compare to ATX boards "for non-gaming tasks such as video / audio editing, general productivity, multi-tasking etc.?"
- "How much of a performance hit does a G965 type mATX motherboard with integrated graphics incur as a result of sharing memory bus bandwidth with the CPU, for NON-GAMING benchmarks, compared to regular C2D ATX boards?" (Assuming of course, the user chooses to use integrated graphics vs. discrete solution and has that enabled in BIOS.)
Please BE SURE to adderss these and other such real-world topics and help make the review more meaningful for folks like me.
Requests for future reviews:
* Consider investing more time and effort in SFF / mATX / silent PC config based reviews! Yes, there is an audience out there...
* For a site this major and popular - both with readers and vendors - you need to seriously evaluate your time-to-publishing lags for some of these reviews - C2D mATX roundup review for one. I realize there are a million things you can review and only 24 hours in a day. Delayed reviews (compared to when the products came out) don't help your readers as much - think luxury car depreciation over time... :)
Thanks.
Gary Key - Thursday, March 8, 2007 - link
Hi,Your suggestions and comments are appreciated. I did reply in the forums this morning.
:)
MrNeutrino - Friday, March 9, 2007 - link
Thanks Gary.I appreciate you reviewing the feedback and requests in detail. Hopefully we'll see some follow-up action based on this as and where appropriate.
Also, thanks for replying to some of the key questions I've had around mATX vs. ATX boards. Lack of major performance delta is very good to hear about, at least for pre-Vista Windows OSes. Interesting.
Based on your comments in the forum posting re: Vista + IGP + memory latency, I am intrigued. If you are going to cover this in the upcoming review, feel free to say so and defer this question. Else I am curious what performance difference we are talking about between XP vs. Vista using IGP solutions? Any pointers to help with this comparison would be helpful in helping decide whether or not a Vista purchase is worthwhile from a performance standpoint in such categories / applications.
Also, have you transitioned to exclusively testing using Vista?
blawck - Wednesday, March 7, 2007 - link
I'm buying a small-form-factor PC with an Intel 965G motherboard (it was the only option), and I'm plugging in an NVIDIA 8800GTX video card. So, I was wondering how these IGP motherboards (specifically this Intel one) perform in general with a vidcard plugged in. Is performance on par with (or at least somewhere close to) that of full-size motherboards? Or am I getting screwed?Gary Key - Wednesday, March 7, 2007 - link
It depends on the board that you buy. The Gigabyte GA-965G-DS3 allows for a decent level of overclocking (330FSB) and memory options (CAS 3 operation), the overall performance difference will not be noticeable in day to day activities when compared to a more enthusiast level board. A base G965 board will not offer the same overclocking options and a couple of the boards only allow CAS 5 operation at DDR2-800, but once again, the performance delta overall will be less than 5% in most cases, nothing to be concerned about especially given your choice of video cards.blawck - Wednesday, March 7, 2007 - link
Great, thanks for the quick reply! This is a high-quality site =). The manufacturer is Maingear, and the board they're using for my system is simply identified generically as "Intel 965G Express," but based on your response, I have faith that I am, indeed, not getting screwed =). I've built all my previous machines, but I'm getting old and fat and lazy, so I figured I'd spend a few hundred extra and have someone do it for me. Not too worried about SLI or overclocking at this point...I'll accept whatever resolution I can run Oblivion in, as long as I can run it. Thanx again.chucky2 - Wednesday, March 7, 2007 - link
For the mATX review, you should include results for the Abit Fatal1ty F-I90HD.It's basically the 690G version for Intel CPU's...and that'd allow a direct comparison between Conroe and AM2 CPU's as the chipset would be the same.
Just a thought...
Chuck
P.S. Plus, I'm sure there's a good amount of people that'd like to run Conroe on a cheap but good mATX, and the Abit Fatal1ty F-I90HD looks to be about the best option out right now for that (albiet in limited quantities so far...), just too bad it doesn't have onboard Firewire (at least I don't think it does, didn't list it on the spec page), because then it'd have like everything one could want...
Gary Key - Wednesday, March 7, 2007 - link
We should receive that board next week. I will do my best to include in it the roundup.chucky2 - Wednesday, March 7, 2007 - link
Awesome if you can Gary, Cool if you can't......March looks like the month of motherboard reviews... :)
Chuck