Page 2: Testing, Conclusion
<B>Testing</B>:
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Here is my little test setup, the components are pretty standard. If you didn't know already, this unit is no speed demon at all. I testing alot more than just raw speed to really get a feel for what the board can do.
<B>Synthetic tests</B>:
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A nice 409 3Dmarks using a 32MB frame buffer, you can go up to 64MB, but it made no difference (I got 408 with it). There is the problem with this board, the integrated graphics are horrible for 3D. That leaves gaming out unless you hook this thing up with a good PCI video card, remember, no AGP slot here.
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Performance in arithmetic scores put it at around a P2 350, pretty sad for a 933Mhz, 133Mhz FSB, CPU. After this, I actually thought of the board as being an embedded solution, it gives you enough performance for the space... I guess.
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The multimedia scores are better only because the CPU can do 3DNow!, and AMD instruction set. Even so, a K6-3 450 is a bit faster, only because the floating point of the C3 is bad. Again, we aren't really looking for a speed king here.
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Here is another huge problem with the board. The internal cache speed of the CPU is very slow. Beyond that, the DDR Memory support is wasted totally on this CPU. Answer me this, how can you pair up DDR Ram with a SDR CPU? Yeah, that's what I thought. The CPU is the bottleneck in this system for the memory subsystem.
<B>Other Testing</B>:
I wanted to test more than just the normal slew of benchmarking, so I loading up some MP3s. A normal good bitrate MP3 will take around 10% CPU utilization, which is pretty high, but fine for this type of system. It didn't strain playing it at all. I also loaded up a DVD movie, which didn't sweat it at all given the fact that it has a hardware MPEG 2 decoder chip. Divx also played fine, running at 40% utilization. While this system may not have as much beef as a large one, you can still do browsing and mutlimedia functions with it. I also tried the TV out of the board on my TV. It works fine, but once the BIOS hands over control to the OS, you'll lose the picture, which is annoying if you only have a TV. You'll need to set the TV mode in the drivers before hand. The sound is 6 channels (5.1), but I couldn't test that, I only have 2.1 setups.
<B>Conclusion</B>:
This platform is a mixed bag. It is perfect if you need an extremely quiet solution and not a bunch of speed. When I say quiet, the CPU fan is BEARLY noticeable. And I had it opened up on the table. This board is not for people that want to do CPU intestive tasks, no gaming will be on this system. If you want a good, small multimedia board, this baby will fit the niche just fine. Just make sure you know what it can and can't do. The big this is the small size, you can make some unique system setups with it, and I hope to do that soon... (Actually, smartass will) It costs around $140 from various vendors.
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</center>Here is my little test setup, the components are pretty standard. If you didn't know already, this unit is no speed demon at all. I testing alot more than just raw speed to really get a feel for what the board can do.
<B>Synthetic tests</B>:
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</center>A nice 409 3Dmarks using a 32MB frame buffer, you can go up to 64MB, but it made no difference (I got 408 with it). There is the problem with this board, the integrated graphics are horrible for 3D. That leaves gaming out unless you hook this thing up with a good PCI video card, remember, no AGP slot here.
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</center>Performance in arithmetic scores put it at around a P2 350, pretty sad for a 933Mhz, 133Mhz FSB, CPU. After this, I actually thought of the board as being an embedded solution, it gives you enough performance for the space... I guess.
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</center>The multimedia scores are better only because the CPU can do 3DNow!, and AMD instruction set. Even so, a K6-3 450 is a bit faster, only because the floating point of the C3 is bad. Again, we aren't really looking for a speed king here.
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</center>Here is another huge problem with the board. The internal cache speed of the CPU is very slow. Beyond that, the DDR Memory support is wasted totally on this CPU. Answer me this, how can you pair up DDR Ram with a SDR CPU? Yeah, that's what I thought. The CPU is the bottleneck in this system for the memory subsystem.
<B>Other Testing</B>:
I wanted to test more than just the normal slew of benchmarking, so I loading up some MP3s. A normal good bitrate MP3 will take around 10% CPU utilization, which is pretty high, but fine for this type of system. It didn't strain playing it at all. I also loaded up a DVD movie, which didn't sweat it at all given the fact that it has a hardware MPEG 2 decoder chip. Divx also played fine, running at 40% utilization. While this system may not have as much beef as a large one, you can still do browsing and mutlimedia functions with it. I also tried the TV out of the board on my TV. It works fine, but once the BIOS hands over control to the OS, you'll lose the picture, which is annoying if you only have a TV. You'll need to set the TV mode in the drivers before hand. The sound is 6 channels (5.1), but I couldn't test that, I only have 2.1 setups.
<B>Conclusion</B>:
This platform is a mixed bag. It is perfect if you need an extremely quiet solution and not a bunch of speed. When I say quiet, the CPU fan is BEARLY noticeable. And I had it opened up on the table. This board is not for people that want to do CPU intestive tasks, no gaming will be on this system. If you want a good, small multimedia board, this baby will fit the niche just fine. Just make sure you know what it can and can't do. The big this is the small size, you can make some unique system setups with it, and I hope to do that soon... (Actually, smartass will) It costs around $140 from various vendors.