Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P - P45 at its Finest
by Gary Key on February 3, 2009 12:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
General Performance
Futuremark's PCMark Vantage x64 is probably the single most diverse set of benchmarks that can be run on a system to mimic real world usage scenarios. The TV and Movies, Gaming, and Music Suites can be frighteningly difficult to pass when a system is not set up correctly. We've had boards in the labs that will pass hours of Prime95 torture testing or OCCT that fail even the basic 30 minute run of PCMark Vantage, let alone the full 1 hour and 30 minute test run that we loop five times.
Although the scores are very close for the P45 boards, the ASUS P5Q-E offers a minor advantage in our Overall benchmark result thanks to slightly better video performance. The Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P scores very well in all of the individual tests. The MSI P45 Platinum also offers solid performance in these benchmarks. Except for minor variations in the individual suite scores, any board based on the P45 chipset will perform similarly.
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poohbear - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
thanks for benching @ 1680x1050 so we know real world usage. hate it when they bench @ a real low rez even if there's a difference as that means nothing to 99% of ppl that game @ anything but the lower resolutions.:)crimson117 - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
When they bench at low resolutions, it's to discover any CPU bottleneck. It's the equivalent of saying, "we know the GPU can handle this low res at super high framerates, so will the CPU processing the game mechanics keep the framerates down?".For example, an RTS like Supreme Commander will have okay graphics, but most of the horsepower will be the CPU calculating troop movement, damage, etc, especially on large maps with lots of players. So they'll want to take the GPU's rendering speed out of the equation and see how fast the CPU can do its gameplay calculations.
This can really help people know which part of their computer to upgrade. A friend of mine has an E6300 Conroe 1.86GHz (one of the earliest C2D's), so his CPU is pretty old. He has a 9800GT graphics card. If he wants to play Supreme Commander with 10 opponents at once, should he upgrade his graphics or his CPU?
At low resolutions, the video card can handle it no problem, but no matter what resolution, the CPU still has to calculate 10 players actions at once. If they only benchmarked at high resolution, then the graphics lag would mask the fact that the CPU calculations were also laggy. So by reducing the resolution to really low levels, he'd find out the CPU still can't keep up and should be upgraded.
zebrax2 - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
seems like those polls are starting to take effect