Futuremark PCMark2004 – All tests (excluding graphics) – From Futuremark, the makers of the popular 3DMark graphical benchmarking series, PCMark focuses on the application side of benchmarking. It is a synthetic benchmark that tests an overall systems performance in operations such as file conversions, scientific calculations, web page rendering, memory read/write and file transfers. This program outputs a raw number score which can be used to compare different systems overall performance in applications (graphics tests disabled). Higher scores are better.
The Asus nForce4 board took quite a hit versus the MSI nForce3 GB board. Lets see the score breakdown between components and see where PCMark04 find the Asus board to be lacking.
We can see here that CPU scores very slightly lower with the Asus board. Memory as expected came out marginally better as previous tests would hint. Though the drop in SATA hard drive transfer speed we saw earlier made a significant 8% drop in hard drive performance from the MSI Neo2 Platinum. What this means is you may see a similar hit if you use a SATA drive as your system drive like in our test setup. Hopefully Asus can apply some tweaks to the BIOS and nVidia can help with a new chipset driver release.
dBPowerAmp – WAV to MP3 Lame Conversion – A real world test to compare a systems ability to perform file conversions to any other system. In our tests a 50MB WAV file is used and converted to 128kbps MP3 with very high quality setting. Lower times are better.
Both systems performed on par. Neither showed a weakness in this test against the other.
3D System Tests
These tests are completed using low resolutions, sound disabled, no V-Sync, no Anti-Aliasing, and no Anisotropic Filtering. This is done to try and isolate total system performance without much influence from the graphics card. Tests are run twice and the average frames per second determined from the second test.
Novalogic Commanche4 Demo Demo Benchmark – 640×480
Commanche4 is a CPU limited game. Both boards perform on par with each other in this test. Note however that because we are using different generations of graphics cards, there should be some room for error in a direct 1 on 1 motherboard comparison in these tests.
Epic Games Unreal Tournament 2004 – Benchemall Recorded Demo – 640×480
UT2004 is a CPU limited game. Here we see roughly a 10 FPS performance dip by the Asus nForce4 board.
iD Software Doom 3 – OCmodshop Guardian Demo – 640×480
Doom3 is a GPU limited game. Again we see both boards perform on par with each other. A very slight edge goes to the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe.
Valve Half-Life 2 – OCmodshop Coastal Firefight Demo – 640×480
Half Life 2 is a CPU limited game. We see a similar drop in FPS as we did earlier in the UT2004 tests. About 6 FPS dip by the Asus nForce4 board.
Overall I would have to choose the MSI Neo2 platinum as the overall winner in the 3D System Tests, but again note the difference in graphics cards even if they are not a major contributing factor to these tests. The results in the GPU limited Doom 3 test would hint at an even playing field between both setups, and the significant drop in performance in two Direct-X CPU limited games would hint at the MSI board being the overall better performer in these tests.
