ECS 755-A2: Performance and Value for the Athlon 64

Performance Test Configuration

Testing of the Athlon 64 family has reached the point where most everyone has a very good idea of how the Athlon 64 compares to Pentium 4 performance. For that reason, we have dropped P4 comparisons from our A64 benchmarks and added back a high speed Athlon XP as many have requested. If you are interested in more information, comparing the Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX to the P4 and P4EE, please see our in-depth comparisons in the recent 3400+/3000+ launch reviews:

Athlon64 3400+: Part 2
AMD's Athlon 64 3400+: Death of the FX-51
Athlon64 3000+: 64-bit at Half the Price

We have included our top-performing VIA and nForce3-150 Socket 940 FX51 boards for reference only, to better represent the complete range of AMD performance. The FX51 runs at 2.2GHz which is the same speed as a Athlon 64 3400+. It is therefore expected that the FX51 will be the best performers in these tests, and results are not directly comparable to the 2.0GHz 3200+ used for the Socket 754 tests. We are currently benchmarking a gaming system with the ECS 755-A2 motherboard and a 3400+ processor which will provide a better comparison of the 755-A2 to the top Socket 940 Dual-Channel boards.

Performance Test Configuration
Processor(s):	AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz) AMD Athlon 64 FX51 (2.2GHz) AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (2.2GHz, 400MHz FSB)
RAM:	2 x 512MB Mushkin PC3500 Level II 2 x 512MB OCZ PC3500 Platinum Ltd 2 x 512MB Mushkin ECC Registered PC3200
Hard Drive(s):	Seagate 120GB 7200 RPM (8MB Buffer)
Video AGP & IDE Bus Master Drivers:	SiS AGP 1.17 (10-07-2003) VIA 4in1 Hyperion 4.51 (12-02-2003) NVIDIA nForce version 3.13 (11-03-2003)
Video Card(s):	ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB (AGP 8X)
Video Drivers:	ATI Catalyst 4.1
Operating System(s):	Windows XP Professional SP1
Motherboards:	ECS 755-A2 (SiS 755 A64 3200+) SiS 755 Reference Board (A64 3200+) Abit KV8-MAX3 (VIA K8T800 A64 3200+) ChaintechZNF3-150 (nForce3-150 A64 3200+) MSI K8T Neo (VIA K8T800 A64 3200+ Asus SK8V (VIA K8T800 - FX51) Gigabyte K8NNXP-940 (nForce3-150Pro - FX51) DFI NFII Ultra (nForce2 U400 Athlon XP 3200+)

Tests on Socket 754 Athlon 64 motherboards and Socket A Athlon XP used either Mushkin PC3500 Level II or OCZ PC3500 Platinum Ltd memory modules. Both DIMMs use Winbond BH5 chips and perform virtually the same in our benchmarks. The Athlon 64 FX requires Registered or Registered ECC memory. Tests with the Asus SK8V and Gigabyte K8NNXP-940 were performed with Mushkin High Performance Registered ECC DDR400 memory.

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 unless otherwise noted.

Additions to Performance Tests

We have recently updated to Veritest Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 and Veritest Business Winstone 2004 for system benchmarking.

Game Benchmarks

We have added several new benchmarks to our standard Gaming tests. These include Halo, Microsoft's Direct X 9.0b game; Splinter Cell, a DX9 game; X2 Benchmark, a DX 8.1 game that includes Transform and Lighting effects; the DX9 Aquamark 3; and the DX 8.1 Comanche 4 benchmark. Since we have found that Comanche 4 can become performance bound at higher resolutions in standard mode, we will only include benchmarks run with 4X anti-aliasing enabled to differentiate better the system performance using our standard ATI Radeon 9800 PRO video card. We will be reporting more results at 1280 x 1024 resolution in future system and motherboard benchmarking where that resolution provides useful performance data.

We have dropped Yeti Studios DX9 Gun Metal 2 from our standard motherboard and system benchmarks, since there are many other DX9 choices now available that better measure system performance variations.

Some of the new benchmarks only compare performance to upcoming review boards, but the database will grow as we review additional boards. We will be adding other benchmarks in the near future.