Date:
Tuesday , August 13, 2002
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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Asus P4T533

The P4T533, Asus’ new flagship i850E motherboard poised to raise the performance bar for enthusiasts alike. But does it deliver? Read on for what will most assuredly be some surprising results.

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Software

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When you insert the Asus CD it auto launches with the Driver screen selected to install the Intel chipset drivers, USB 2.0 drivers or Intel Application Accelerator. If you click on the Software tab you can install software that Asus has bundled with this motherboard.

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One of the most helpful applications is Asus Probe. It allows you to see temperature, fan speed, and voltage of your computer. You can set the interval to update every one second and have it warn you from set warning levels that you can change.

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Asus has also included an update utility that will allow you to perform certain actions regarding your BIOS.

Test Setup

ASUS P4T533, Pentium 4 2.4Ghz Northwood B (clocked at stock 533Mhz FSB and 1066Mhz RDRAM); 512MB Samsung RIMM 4200/ECC; Asus GeForce4 Ti 4600; 3Com 3c905tx-nm NIC, 40GB Maxtor ATA133 HD, Enermax 450 watt PSU. Memory settings of RDRAM Turbo Enabled. Windows XP, NVIDIA driver v29.42, Intel Chipset Driver 4.00.1013

MSI 845G MAX, Pentium 4 2.4B, Intel Stock HSF, Gainward GeForce4 Ti4600 128MB (28.32 Drivers), 2x Corsair 256MB XMS3000 DDR SDRAM, 3Com 905cx-txnm 10/100 NIC, Maxtor 40GB ATA/133 7200RPM HDD, Windows XP Professional, DirectX 8.1, NVIDIA Driver v28.32, Intel Chipset Driver version 4.00.1009.

Intel D850EMV2 / Intel i850E; Pentium 4 2.53B; Intel HSF; VisionTek GF4 Ti 4600 128MB (29.42 Drivers); 4x Kingston PC1066 128MB RDRAM; NetGear FA311 10/100 PCI; Maxtor 40GB ATA/133 7200RPM HD; Windows XP Professional; Intel Chipset Driver v3.20.1008.

Intel D850EMV2 / Intel i850E; Pentium 4 2.53B; Intel HSF; Gainward Ultra 750/XP GF4 Ti 4600 128MB (28.32 Drivers); 4x Samsung PC800 128MB RDRAM; 3Com 905CX-TXNM 10/100 PCI; Western Digital 30GB ATA/100 7200RPM HD; Windows XP Professional; Intel Chipset Driver v3.20.1008.

For comparison I have shown the fastest DDR based P4 platform we have reviewed, the MSI 845G at DDR266 and DDR333 speeds plus i850E PC800 and PC1066 results. In the graphs P4T533 140x4 means we have overclocked the Asus P4T533 to a 140Mhz FSB and have the 4x memory setting in the BIOS selected for FSB to equal RDRAM bus. P4T533 158x3 indicates the FSB being set at 158Mhz while the memory bus has been set down to 474 RDRAM bus. Complete overclocking explanations are covered later in this review.

Application Benchmarks

Business Winstone 2001

Business Winstone measures a PC's overall performance by running today's top-selling Windows-based 32-bit applications. Latest release: Business Winstone 2001 version 1.0 (11/07/2000). The Business Winstone tests are "market-centered" tests. Business applications are the popular applications employed by most users every day. Their final list of ten business productivity applications includes: Five Microsoft Office 2000 applications (Access, Excel, FrontPage, PowerPoint, and Word); Microsoft Project 98; Lotus Notes R5; NicoMak WinZip; Norton AntiVirus; and Netscape Communicator.

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Right off the bat this motherboard performs exceptionally well at stock speeds. Comparing to a Pentium 4 DDR board it is barely able to surpass it at stock speeds though. Look at the DDR333 results; they are surpassing our Asus P4T533 with 32bit RDRAM 4200. But once we start overclocking this monster it steals the show.

Content Creation 2002

Content Creation Winstone 2002 is a system-level, application-based benchmark that measures a PC's overall performance when running top, Windows-based, 32-bit, content creation applications on Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, or Windows XP. Content Creation Winstone 2002 uses the following applications: Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1, Adobe Premiere 6.0, Macromedia Director 8.5, Macromedia Dreamweaver UltraDev 4, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 7.01.00.3055, Netscape Navigator 6/6.01, Sonic Foundry Sound Forge 5.0c (build 184).

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With Content Creation 2002 the ASUS P4T533 with its RDRAM surpasses the DDR board at stock speeds. The strength shown here is how high bandwidth applications will benefit from the shear throughput of RDRAM.

SysMark 2002 Office Productivity

SysMark 2002 incorporates the following Internet Content Creation and Office Productivity applications:

Office Productivity: Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Excel 2002, Microsoft PowerPoint 2002, Microsoft Outlook 2002, Microsoft Access 2002, Netscape Communicator® 6.0, Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred v.5, WinZip 8.0, and McAfee VirusScan 5.13

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Again the P4T533’s superior RDRAM is able to surpass the DDR P4 board, even at DDR333. What’s interesting to note however is how much greater the score is between the two overclocked results. Even though the memory bandwidth is lower the score is much higher with a high CPU clock.

SysMark 2002 Internet Content Creation

SysMark 2002 Internet Content Generation: Adobe Photoshop® 6.01, Adobe Premiere® 6.0, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 7.1, Macromedia Dreamweaver 4, and Macromedia Flash 5.

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The same scenario is played out here but much more visible this time. Note how the P4 with DDR333 is very close to our P4T533 overclocked to 2.52Ghz with faster memory!