Intel 925X Roundup: Creative Engineering 101
by Wesley Fink on August 12, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
General Performance and Encoding
With all motherboards based on the same Intel 925X chipset and tested with the same CPU, it is not a surprise that the test results for Multimedia Content Creation Winstone and Business Winstone are tightly clustered. You may be more interested in comparisons to the Intel 915 chipset board, which is just a bit slower, and the Athlon 64 FX53, which dominates these two general performance areas.
The performance of the LGA 775 925X boards in the new AutoGK 2-pass Media Encoding benchmark was pretty much what was expected. Intel has dominated media encoding in the past, but results are now close comparing the top 925X boards to a top 939 Athlon 64 board. With these top-line 925X boards combined with the top 3.6 Prescott CPU and DDR2 running at 3-3-3 instead of the slower 4-4-4 timings, Intel retains a small lead in Media encoding.
We expected Intel to retain their lead in media encoding due to our logical choice of DivX 5.1.1 as the encoding codec. This codec fully exploits the SSE3 features of the Intel chipset and generally favors the Intel processors. The DVD2AVI engine at the heart of AutoGK, on the other hand, generally favors AMD processors. It appears that you can really show whatever you wish in encoding these days, depending on the Encoding program and codec used. Anand did extensive research on media encoding and chose the new AutoGK/DivX 5.1.1. as our new standard due to the fair, balanced and respected results obtained with this combination.
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jdoor0 - Tuesday, October 26, 2004 - link
This review has been reviewed:http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=18896
Nige - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
Does the ASUS P5AD2 Deluxe motherboard have the same overclocking capability as the P5AD2 Premium?skiboysteve - Friday, August 13, 2004 - link
Wow nice catch. i guess my "(I know... toms sucks)" disclaimer came true.yaeh i understand.
Wesley Fink - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
#26 -There is now an apology to Asus up at THG. They measured the voltage wrong. We had also measured the voltage and found 1.5 to 1.55 which is well within spec, not 2.1 as they reported. They now acknowledge the correct voltage measurement for the P5AD2 is 1.53V.
High Northbridge voltage is not the reason the Asus, or any other 925X/915 board, overclocks well. There are far too many simple and wrong explanations for the complex overclocking issues of the 925X/915 chipsets.
skiboysteve - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
Page 10"...Broadcom attached to the faster PCI Express bus..."
there is no PCI Express bus, its a point to point protocal.
Just nitpicking.
Great review.
Also, over at Toms (I know... toms sucks) they looked at 9x5 Boards over there and showed that the Asus P5AD2 was running at an astounding 2.1v on the northbridge (1.5v is the stock)
Something might have to be mentioned about reliability of such out of spec behavior, and cooling concerns. You might want to conduct your own quick test on the voltage with a multimeter.
broberts - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
One of the problems with these arguments is that the FX-53 is almost 20% more expensive.I've been thinking for a while now that benchmarks should show some form of pricing index so that one can better judge the advantage/disadvantage of the various choices. Just quoting prices isn't ideal, for a host of reasons. I'd suggest, instead, a relative measure. And not just the cost of the particular component being benchmarked. Calculate the cost of the each system used in the benchmarks. Pick one, perhaps the lowest or highest cost one and calculate the relative difference in price. I suggest using the entire system because quite often the choice of one component dictates the available choices for other components. Ideally a relative measure for both the components and entire system would be calculated and published.
manno - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
Moo Moo MOO.manno - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
why no Doom3?Wesley Fink - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
#21 -We will definitely be including Doom 3 benches in future reviews. The only reason they are not included in this 925X roundup is because most of the testing was completed before we had a working copy of Doom 3. You can get a clear idea of how the 925X/Intel 560 performs in Doom 3 in Anand's Doom 3: CPU Battlegrounds review published August 4th at http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
kherman - Thursday, August 12, 2004 - link
Umm, Doom 3 benches?