Date:
Tuesday , October 01, 2002
Author:
Kyle Bennett
Editor:
Sean Quinn
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AMD 2800+

AMD is once again looking for the coveted Speed Crown and this time they enlist the help of NVIDIA in their quest.

continued...

Test Systems:

I wanted to go about things a bit different this time in that I wanted to try to give us the best line up of "apples to apples" systems that we could produce. While this was a great theory, I still pulled up a bit short in our test systems as we were hindered by compatibility problems. We've transitioned over to using the 9700 Pro as our test card for video, and we've experienced some problems with it working on two mainboards: the Asus A7V8X (KT400) and the MSI 648 Max (SiS 648). Oddly enough, the 9700 works on both the KT400 and SiS 648 reference boards, so we used the KT400 board from VIA for testing. Sadly, I killed the 648 board during testing. Several other boards were counted out as well, as they didn't have a 2800+ compliant BIOS and wouldn't even boot with the chip.

Even with the troubles, we've managed to tag together what the main idea was to begin with, which is to show you cross-platform benchmarks on both Pentium 4 and 2800+ systems with DDR333 tweaked out for optimal performance. Important to note is that the four test systems benchmarked used the exact same components in testing, besides the obvious differences.

2800+: Asus A7N8x (nForce2), ATi 9700 Pro, 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3200 (333MHz memory bus utilized), 40GB Maxtor ATA133 Hard Drive, Thermalright SK6+ HSF, Vantec 520W PSU.

2800+: VIA KT400 Reference mainboard, ATi 9700 Pro, 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3200 (333MHz memory bus utilized), 40GB Maxtor ATA133 Hard Drive, Thermalright SK6+ HSF, Vantec 520W PSU.

2800+: EPoX 8K3A+ (VIA KT333), ATi 9700 Pro, 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3200 (333MHz memory bus utilized), 40GB Maxtor ATA133 Hard Drive, Thermalright SK6+ HSF, Vantec 520W PSU.

Pentium 4 2.8GHz: Asus P4PE, ATi 9700 Pro, 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3200 (333MHz memory bus utilized), 40GB Maxtor ATA133 Hard Drive, Intel Stock, Vantec 520W PSU.

Software: WindowsXP w/integrated SP1, ATi Catalyst 2.3/6166, VIA 4.43 4n1s, Beta nForce2 drivers.

Benchmarks:

Memory Bandwidth:

SiSoft Sandra has been a staple around our workbench for many a year now. SiSoft's memory benchmark is valuable, especially for those of you that want to get the most bandwidth between your CPU and RAM. Quick, accurate, repeatable results you can rely on.

I think everyone will be interested in these numbers. It's amazing how well they grouped across the platforms. Of course, remember that the nForce2 board is the only one that utilizes dual channel DDR.

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The Pentium 4 and the nForce2 go head to head in this match up with the KT400 and KT333 very close behind. Of course, we all know that while SiSoft is a good tool, real world benchmarks are better to judge with.

Content & Biz Benchmarks:

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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While we see expected gains on the VIA boards, the nForce2 board here is simply shining. For comparison, the 2600+ on the same EPoX board scored a "72". No doubt that AMD knew exactly what it was doing when it paired up the engineering sample nForce2 boards with its new 2800+.

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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Again, we see a tremendous leap by the 2800+ and nForce2 combination. It has stretched far beyond even our 2.5GHz OC on the EPoX board.

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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Yes, above you see the benchmark that AMD states is unfairly weighted towards Intel. I wonder if they will be complaining today? Seems as though the nForce has given the 2800+ wings. I'm at a loss to explain the poor showing of our KT333 board in this instance, and would consider the 187 scores to be "off" at best as it has surely scaled better. By the time I realized we had an error somewhere, it was too late to retest.

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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Here we see the nForce2/2800+ combo take a commanding lead over the VIA solutions, but as usual the Pentium 4 board dominates the score through its use of SSE2 instructions.