For the testing of this motherboard I really focused on the video aspect of it because I thought that was the most important thing. Even though the onboard video of the nForce motherboard is only comparable to a Geforce 2 MX and the other motherboards are using a Geforce 3 and the results are going to be really different I thought this would be better for comparison because I could have put the Geforce 3 into the nForce motherboard but the results would have been basically the same. This motherboard is pretty much intended for someone who doesn’t need a Geforce 3 but wants to be able to play some games and do other things with it. All of the testing was done at 1024×768 with all of the settings at the most aggressive with all of the eye candy on.
nForce Test Bed
- Asus A7N266-VM
- 1.2Ghz Thunderbird
- 256MB XtremeDDR 3200 RAM
- Onboard video
All other motherboards Test Bed
- 1.2Ghz Thunderbird
- 256MB XtremeDDR 3200 RAM
- 3D Power Geforce 3
I first benchmarked with 3DMark2001SE and as you can see the nForce motherboard does not do that well, only scoring 1713 points while the Geforce 3 is in the high 6000s to 7000s. The reason is because 3DMark2001SE requires Geforce 3 features and wants the card to be Direct X 8 compatible neither of which the onboard video of the nForce has. Then again this is just a benchmark which proves to others how powerful your video card is.
I then tested with Serious Sam using the Karnak Demo again the nForce is much lower than the Geforce 3, at 1024×768 the nForce board only gets about 23 FPS which when playing a game will look very choppy. Games become choppy when they drop below around 30 FPS, if I were to lower all of the detail in the options I am sure the nForce would get better scores but I tested them all at the highest settings.
With Quake 3 using the Demo001 timedemo the nForce motherboard with its onboard video got 36.7 FPS which is not as good as the 150ish FPS that the Geforce 3 spits out. Like I said 30FPS should be about the minimum that you get when playing games or it will look choppy. Even with all of the settings at the most aggressive this onboard video puts out enough to keep you happy while playing Quake 3.
