![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , March 19, 2002
- Author:
- Steve Lynch
- Editor:
- Sean Quinn
- Google +1
Iwill XP333-R Mainboard
I think we started this review several months ago and it has certainly been a journey. Have a look at our experience with ALi, Iwill, and DDR333.
Benchmarks (cont.)
Content Creation Winstone measures a PC's overall performance when running top Windows-based, 32-bit, content creation applications. Latest release: Content Creation Winstone 2001 version 1.0 (11/07/2000). Content Creation Winstone 2001 uses the following applications in its test: Adobe(R) Photoshop(R) 5.5; Adobe Premiere(R) 5.1; Macromedia(R) Director 8.0; Macromedia(R) DreamWeaver 3.0; Netscape Navigator(R) 4.73; and Sonic Foundry(R) Sound Forge(R) 4.5.
While the XP333R seemed to struggle with office application benchmarks, it redeemed itself somewhat by edging out the KT266A board in the Content Creation benchmark.
SYSmark 2001 incorporates the following Internet Content Creation and Office Productivity applications:
OFFICE PRODUCTIVITY - Microsoft Word 2000, Microsoft Excel 2000, Microsoft PowerPoint 2000, Microsoft Outlook 2000, Microsoft Access 2000, Netscape Communicator® 6.0, Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred v.5, WinZip 8.0, and McAfee VirusScan 5.13.
It seems the XP333R is struggling with office based applications, turning in scores that are consistently shy of the reference board marks.
INTERNET CONTENT CREATION - Adobe Photoshop® 6.0, Adobe Premiere® 6.0, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 7, Macromedia Dreamweaver 4, and Macromedia Flash 5.
Again, the XP333R seemed to do well under the Content Creation test environment, as opposed to office applications.
WebMark 2001 is a new benchmark for evaluating Internet performance from a user’s perspective. Internet access is a requirement for most businesses and a driving force behind consumer PC purchases today, yet no comprehensive metric exists for understanding how the client computer and the speed of the connection will affect the overall Internet experience. WebMark will address the need for a broadly deployed, industry standard benchmark that can record and report Internet performance for businesses and consumers alike. The workload of WebMark includes a combination of popular and emerging Internet technologies such as: Adobe Acrobat Reader; Apple QuickTime; Cycore Cult3D; Java; JavaScript; Macromedia Flash; Microsoft Agent; ASP; Windows Media Player; VML; RealNetworks RealAudio and RealVideo; SSL; and XML.
The XP333R restarted itself once during the initial Webmark test run. Once restarted, the board finished the benchmark without any further incidents, although it did post a lower score than the KT266A board.
3D Gaming Applications
Quake3 Arena is a fantastic benchmark in many respects, and used in conjunction with other benchmarks, it can be a great tool for testing every aspect of your machine. It is just my personal choice to leave mainly game benchmarks for my video card or CPU reviews. I am an advocate of Q3 as a benchmark, I just don't think motherboard reviews should be made up solely of game benchmarks, or an over-abundance of them. Again, we have set the video settings low to allow the system to do the lion's share of the work.
3DMark 2000 is a DirectX 7 based benchmark that uses a real game engine to test Frames Per Second. While the score does not represent FPS, the score is based on that. The faster, the better. Default mode at 1024x768x16 is used. With most gaming benchmarks memory bandwidth is king, and we know for a fact that this is the case with 3DMark 2000.
After the Quake III scores posted by the XP333R, I was less than optimistic about how well it would perform during these tests. I was surprised to see the IWill board take the lead here.
3DMark 2001 is a DirectX 8 based benchmark that is very similar to the previous 3DMark 2000, except that it uses some totally different DirectX features that put much more stress on the VidCard. Default mode at 1024x768x32 was used. The benchmark was designed to run on a GeForce3, which is the card that was used, and you will see the scores bunch up much more tightly here. While memory bandwidth is still an issue, if you were to see this benchmark alone, you would certainly be left with a different perception of our systems. 3DMark 2001 has moved very close to being a VidCard benchmark instead of a system benchmark. The 3DMark 2001 will surely stay an industry standard, as it utilizes the Vertex and Pixel Shader programming, but it has lost some of its usefulness as a total benchmark.
More of the same carried over here from the 3DMark 2000 benchmark. The XP333R again edged out the KT266A based board.
RAID Performance
Obviously, we are not going to go over the definition of RAID, and surely there are far better explanations of RAID and how it works than I could ever provide. Here is a basic overview that will get us through this section of the review with at least a "basic" understanding of RAID.
RAID 0: (known as "striping") links each drive in the array as one huge drive. Storage capacity is determined by the smallest drive in the array. That capacity is then applied to format all other drives in the array. If using a 40 GB, 60 GB, and 45 GB drive in a RAID 0 array, your system will see one huge drive of 120 GB (40 GB x 3) versus 145 GB. RAID 0 offers double or more performance under sustained data transfers when one drive per ATA port is used. In such a configuration, unlike SCSI, ATA drives are always available to the system. SCSI requires more management of the SCSI bus.
RAID 1: (known as "mirroring") makes and maintains an identical image of data from one drive to a second drive or from multiple drives to a second set of multiple drives. Should one drive fail, the working drive or drive set continues operating. To the system, such an array is still seen as a single drive letter. While RAID 1 is the least efficient use of hard drives to provide data protection (since the user does not see any of the additional storage capacity of the mirrored drives), low-cost ATA makes it acceptable. If performing 1-to-1 mirroring with two 40 GB drives, the system only sees one 40 GB drive. ATA RAID 1 represents a significantly lower cost than SCSI RAID 1.
For testing purposes, RAID 0 was used for this benchmark. HD Tach 2.61 was used for testing the speed of our test set up. HD Tach is a freeware program widely available on the internet, although to use it under Win2K you will need a registered version. I used a pair of Maxtor ATA133, 7200rpm, 40GB hard drives for testing.
The performance was impressive, as can be expected. The board maintained a high data rate throughout the entire benchmark. You will also notice the lack of data "spikes" throughout the benchmark. This is something that makes a RAID array such as this very desirable among the server crowd and to the Audio / Video buffs as well. One thing that we don't see with the Highpoint controller that we do with the Promise FastTrac is the lack of spiking. Where six months ago I would have sided with Promise for their built on ATA controllers, it seems as though Highpoint has now matured with both their drivers and performance.