Quake 3 is one of the most widely used real word benchmarking tools used among enthusiasts. Like with most of the synthetic benchmarks the onboard audio does really well and in this benchmarks case far surpasses that of the other two setups. Not only does it surpass the Radeon 9200SE on both motherboards but it does so in a fashion that would keep any gamer happy during those late night frag sessions.
Serious Sam 2 is much more graphic intensive than Quake 3 however the onboard video shows no signs of weakness. Once again the onboard video does better than the Radeon 9200SE on both motherboards by a good margin. At 1024×768 the results are quite impressive but with the resolutions above that you will start to see some choppiness when gaming.
Unreal Tournament 2003 is the final benchmark of this review which does a flyby and bot match test when the benchmark runs. With this final test we see the same kind of results as we did with the others, with the onboard video doing the best. Both motherboards using the Radeon 9200SE got basically identical results with both the flyby and bot match tests which shows that my methodology of testing worked exactly how I wanted it to. I really wanted to show the difference between two good systems with low end video cards so that people were able to make a good purchasing decision; hopefully I have.
Overclocking
Overclocking was somewhat of a task with this motherboard because of the inability to change the multiplier. Because of this factor I was not able to get the FSB higher than 166MHz which isn’t a very good overclock. The good thing about the BIOS is that it allows you to change the DDR:CPU ratio which will allow you to get more out of your memory but again this is somewhat limited due to the overclocking ability.
Even by changing the DDR:CPU ratio I was unable to get more than 400MHz which is again somewhat unimpressive. This board is not intended to be a powerhouse overclocker it is a microATX board with a totally different purpose. With this in mind the overclockability of the board is good for what is designed to do.
Conclusion
With everything taken into consideration with this motherboard I have to say that I do like it. Compared to the first nForce motherboards this board far surpasses what I thought that it was going to be able to do.
This board is microATX with everything onboard that you would need to build a full system along with a lot of extras which other boards just don’t provide. Not only does this board have a ton of features that are integrated into such a small package but it is also able to perform very well. This board would be great for a LAN box, budget system, or small project system.
The only cons that I would really point out is the fact that the multiplier is unable to be changed, there is no SATA or firewire, and there is no 5.1 audio. Overall I am going to give this motherboard a 9.5/10 and awarding it the OCmodshop Seal of Approval. I would like to thank Albatron for sending me this motherboard to review.
Pros
- microATX form factor
- Onboard GeForce 4 MX440
- Onboard NIC
- Onboard sound
- Dual channel capability
- TV-out cable included
- Blue PCB
- Onboard LAN
- AGP 8x
Cons
- Inability to change the CPU multiplier
- Lack of SATA and firewire
- No onboard 5.1 audio
2 comments
Why did you choose a ten year old post to comment on?
FOr me it won’t turn out good even if your mother board is good then your fiber optic cables is garbage. You want all things part of it have the quality.
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