Performance Testing

For our benchmarking tests, we will be using the following benchmarking tools:

Sisoftware Sandra 2003 Pro

The new version of Sandra includes the following changes/improvements:

• Gauge overall system performance in a flash with the combined performance index wizard and compare and contrast upgrading options.
• Supports the latest technologies (AGP 3, Hyper-Threading), chipsets (Intel 750X, 845GL/GV/GE/PE; SiS 648, 655, 746; VIA KT400, P4X400), controllers (SiS 963; VIA 8233A/C, 8235/L), Clock generator ICs and other devices on the market.
• Detailed context sensitive help for Tips/Warnings/Errors. Detailed technical definitions.
• Extensive reference results: over 50 different reference results from legacy to cutting edge systems. Can save your own and combine with the reference results.
• Burn-in wizard: improved monitoring options, can see in real-time the changes in system state as burn-in progresses. Can program terminate conditions in case of out-of-range states.
• Cooling system information: Can estimate thermal resistance to determine the performance of the cooling system, thus ensuring proper cooling for the processor(s).
• Multi-platform: Both ANSI (for legacy systems) and Unicode (native for Windows NT4/2000/XP/.Net) versions included in a single improved installer.
• Improved graphing options: users can compare the results in log, or inverse mode as well as standard linear mode.

More Information can be found here!

Mad Onion PCMark2002

PCMark2002 is designed to test normal home and office PC usage.

Mad Onion offers their free PCMArk2002 benchmark suite which can be

downloaded here!

Before we get started, let's take a look at our test system:

Motherboard: Albatron PX845PEV Pro

Memory: 1 stick of 256MB Corsair XMS3200

Hard Drive: Western Digital 7200RPM 30GB

Video Card:  Generic GForce 2

Sandra Memory Bandwidth Benchmark

Results

RAM Int Buffered ISSE2 Bandwidth Score: 3122

RAM Float Buffered iSSE2 Bandwidth Score: 3130

:

We were able to surpass the 3000 mark with "Turbo Mode" settings in the BIOS.  As shown above, our results exceeding that of the other test systems available for comparison.

Sandra CPU Arithmetic Benchmark

Results

Dhrystone ALU: 7027

Whetstone FPU/iSSE2: 1563/3654

Again, we see some great results.  Our overclocked 2.4GHz Pentium 4 results exceeded those of the P4 2.66Ghz and was a close call with the 2.8Ghz test system given for comparion.

Sandra CPU Multi-Media Benchmark

Results

Integer iSSE2: 11064

Floating-Point iSSE2: 13996

In these tests, our system once again surpassed that of the 2.66Ghz test system and even exceeded the 2.8Ghz test system in the Floating-Point test.

Overall, our Sandra scores were top notch!

PCMark 2002 CPU & Memory Tests

CPU Tests
The CPU tests stress above all the CPU, even though they are also somewhat dependent on the memory speed. The CPU tests do a number of small processor intensive tasks typical for applications in home and office PC usage. There are tests doing both integer and floating point operations.

Memory Tests - Overall
The Memory tests measure the performance of the memory subsystem. Read, write, read-modify-write, and random access operations are tested on the system memory, L2 and L1 cache. These tests are implemented in the same manner as memory accesses in normal applications, and are not optimized to achieve maximum throughput. However, since no other tasks are run while performing the memory transfers, quite high throughput numbers can be expected.

And the results:

CPU & Memory test scores were excellent.

PCMark 2002 Crunch Test

The Crunch test runs 3 tests simultaneously:

• CPU Test - JPEG Decompression, stressing mostly the CPU and somewhat also the memory subsystem.
• Memory Test - Raw 3072 kB Block Modify, stressing mostly the memory subsystem, but also somewhat the CPU.
• Memory Test - Video - 1 scanline, stressing mostly the graphics card memory bandwidth and the AGP bus.

The results:

During our testing, the PX845PEV Pro remained stable throughout the testing process.  Again, overclocking was performed using the stock Intel Heatsink/Fan with no modifications to the board or it's stock cooling.

Next: Conclusion