Performance Test Configuration


 Performance Test Configuration
Processor(s): Intel Dual Xeon 3.06 (1 Mb Cache) 533FSB
AMD Opteron Socket 940 at 2.0GHz (9x222) 444FSB
Intel Pentium 4 at 3.0GHz (800FSB)
RAM: 2 x 512MB Mushkin PC3500 Level II
4 x 512MB Legacy ECC at 2.5-3-4-5
2 x 256MB Corsair PC3200 TwinX LL
(v1.1 or 1.2) Modules (SPD rated)
Hard Drive(s): Maxtor 120GB 7200 RPM (8MB Buffer)
Western Digital 120GB 7200 RPM Special Edition (8MB Buffer)
Video AGP & IDE Bus Master Drivers: Intel INF Update v5.00.1012
NVIDIA nForce version 2.45 (7/29/2003)
Video Card(s): ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB
(AGP 8X)
Video Drivers: ATI Catalyst 3.6
Operating System(s): Windows XP Professional SP1
Motherboards: Asus PC-DL Dual 3.06 Xeon @200.0 MHz
nVidia Reference nForce3 @ 222.0 MHz FSB
Asus P4C800-E @200.5 MHz
ABIT IS7-G (865PE)
ABIT IC7-G (875P)
Gigabyte 8KNXP (875P)


Recent performance tests on Intel 875/865 boards used 2x512MB Mushkin PC3500 Level II Double-bank memory. Previous tests of Intel motherboards used 2x256MB Corsair 3200LL Ver. 1.1.

Performance tests run on nForce3 Reference Board with Opteron at 2.0Ghz used 4x512MB Legacy PC3200 Registered ECC modules set to 2.5-3-4-5 timings in Dual-Channel DDR400 mode at DDR444 speed.

All performance tests were run with the ATI 9800 PRO 128MB video card with AGP Aperture set to 128MB with Fast Write enabled. Resolution in all benchmarks is 1024x768x32.

Additions to Performance Tests

We have standardized on ZD Labs Internet Content Creation Winstone 2003 and ZD Labs Business Winstone 2002 for system benchmarking. We are no longer reporting SysMark2002 results as part of our standard benchmark suite.

Game Benchmarks

We have added Gun Metal DirectX Benchmark 2 from Yeti Labs as a standard game benchmark. We are also evaluating the new X2 Benchmark, which includes Transform and Lighting effects as part of the standard benchmarks. Results are reported here for reference. Jedi Knight II has been dropped form our standard Benchmark Suite. We were forced to use different patches for operation on Athlon and Intel Pentium 4, which made cross-platform comparison difficult if not impossible. In addition, Opteron/Athlon64 requires a 3rd patching variation for benchmarking. JK2 uses a Quake engine, and we are continuing Quake3 as a standard benchmark for the time being.

New Hardware

With the release of DirectX 9 late in 2002, the availability of Benchmarks to test DX9, and the availability of DX9-supporting video cards from both nVidia and ATI, we are now using the ATI Radeon 9800 PRO for all hardware reviews.


Asus PC-DL: Tech Support and RMA Gaming and Media Encoding Performance
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  • Kiwi42084 - Tuesday, March 2, 2004 - link

    This Benchmark is totally unfair!!!!!
    The PC-DL has the avalibility to produce 4 usable CPUs...2 Physical and 2 Logical....
    Windows XP will only see 2 of these. The benchmarks are being done with Half of the POWER POTENTIAL.
  • vppaul - Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - link

    I am having a problem with my PC-DL board. The System Management BIOS is reporting that there is 4096 MB of RAM, but Windows reports that 2048 MB is available. Anybody ideas? I am trying to get help from Asus tech support but any help would be appreciated. Running dual 3.06 with 4 x 1GB sticks.
  • piperfect - Monday, February 23, 2004 - link

    I totally agree with FutureShock999. Why not run several instances of the a divx encoder. For instance do a 2 part movie on an encoder that runs two threads per instance then run both of the parts at the same time in two instances of the program on the xeon and see who finishes first. What you guys are doing is like comparing an f-16 fighter jet to a f-15 and saying the f-15 can only use one of its engines.
  • piperfect - Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - link

    I got my pc-dl with 2.8GHz Xeons with raptor drives in RAID0 to 3361MHz 160FSB with a dram clock of 200MHz. 4:5 It ran Sandra burnin overnight. Maybe my board is a newer revision. I read this article after I bought the Raptor so I didn't try to overclock it until yeaterday but it did and it runs well!!!!!
  • FutureShock999 - Monday, October 6, 2003 - link

    Wesley,
    A nice review, but I believe the wrong benchmarks. No one should buy a dual-processor machine to execute a single-threaded application faster, especially when that single proc is slower than others on the market. Dual-proc boards are bought to do multi-threaded stuff, either runnig a single multi-threaded application, or running several different single-threaded applications. In no place did I see benchmarks that explicitly looked like that.

    As such, your review was a good cautionary tale for people that didn't KNOW the above, and hopefully will stop some people from spending a lot of money on a this board hoping to have a great UT setup.

    Now if you had shown what it was like to play a game, encode media, and download a few gigs of content SIMULTANEOUSLY, then we could really see how this board stacks up to the competition you evaluated it against. And I think it might have beaten them rather handily...
  • Wesley Fink - Tuesday, September 9, 2003 - link

    #23 -
    We recently changed our standard video card from nVidia's Ti4600 to the ATI RADEON 9800 PRO. Theoretically this should have no impact on encoding scores, but we reran all benchmarks with our new standard hadware on a few of the highest performing boards. Evan ran about half the new encoding benchmarks on the west coast, and I ran the other half on the east coast. As you can see our new results compare very well to each other.

    I have no other explanation, but perhaps Evan can shed some light on this. I have used the new ATI Radeon 9800 PRO from day 1 and my benchmarks have been cumulative over the last couple of months with no dramatic change that you point out.
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 9, 2003 - link

    The 865/875 P4 boards in this test all perform 50% faster in the media encoding benchmark in this review than they did in the round-up a couple weeks ago.

    Has anyone else noticed this dicrepancy? The Abit IS7-G has gone from 64.45 fps to 104 fps. Both times they used a P4 3.0Ghz, 800mhz FSB, with HT enabled. Nothing seems to have changed except the encoding speed. I wish I could do that to my rig ; )

    A 50% increase in as linear and consistent a benchmark as DivX encoding is simply astounding.

    I just wanted to point this out to everybody around here.

    Thank you for your time.
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 9, 2003 - link

    It' will not overclock with the SATA drives on the intel controller. BUT it will if you run them on the onboard promise controller. I have 2 WD Raptor's running RAID0 and the 2800/533's running @3250 100% stable.
  • Anonymous User - Monday, September 8, 2003 - link

    Which brings up the question about whether or not HT was enabled on it. And the fact is they used a regular consumer card for video Most workstations would have a workstation class card in them such as a Quadro, FireGL, or even a 3DLabs card in them. It all depends on the applications that one uses. Most normal people wouldn't use a dual machine for gaming anyways. They'd use them for graphical processing or media encoding or file serving and such. Just talk to those guys over at 2CPU.com they know what I'm talking about. ;)
  • Anonymous User - Monday, September 8, 2003 - link

    From the looks of it, there would be little if any reason to spend gobs of extra money on a system that is beat by AMD in gaming, and by single P4 siblings in high-end workstation tasks.

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