Our testing methods
Apart from woefully underpowered EPIA motherboards, the KI51PV has few direct competitors. In fact, we couldn't find any other Mini-ITX systems that support Athlon 64 processors.

Without direct competition, we've compared the KI51PV's performance to that of a handful of full-size Socket AM2 boards. Obviously, the AM2 boards have the edge; they have dual memory channels, faster dual-core processors, more memory, and high-end graphics cards. However, we wanted to see just how close a reasonably well-equipped Mini-ITX board could come to the performance of a standard ATX system. The KI51PV shouldn't be at a disadvantage in our peripheral performance tests, and it will have an ace in the hole when it comes time to test power consumption.

The KI51PV's integrated GeForce 6150 was configured with a 128MB frame buffer for testing, leaving the system with a little less than 1GB of usable memory. Unfortunately, the KI51PV doesn't support 2GB DIMMs.

All tests were run at least twice, and their results were averaged, using the following test systems.

Processor Turion 64 ML-40 2.2GHz Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 2.6GHz
System busHyperTransport 16-bit/800MHzHyperTransport 16-bit/1GHz
MotherboardAlbatron KI51PV-754 Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition Foxconn C51XEM2AA-8EKRS2H Shuttle XPC SN27P2 MSI K9N SLI Platinum ECS KA3 MVPMSI K9A Platinum
Bios revisionKI51100603612W1P20SN27S00S1.20demo2A7280AMS
North bridgeGeForce 6150nForce 590 SLI SPPnForce 590 SLI SPPnForce 570 UltranForce 570 SLICrossFire Xpress 3200CrossFire Xpress 3200
South bridgenForce 430nForce 590 SLI MCPnForce 590 SLI MCPSB600SB600
Chipset driversForceWare 8.26ForceWare 9.35ForceWare 9.35ForceWare 9.16ForceWare 9.16Catalyst 6.7Catalyst 6.7
Memory size1GB (1 DIMM)2GB (2 DIMMs)2GB (2 DIMMs)2GB (2 DIMMs)2GB (2 DIMMs)2GB (2 DIMMs)2GB (2 DIMMs)
Memory type Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400PRO DDR2 SDRAM at 400MHz Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400PRO DDR2 SDRAM at 742MHz
CAS latency (CL)2555555
RAS to CAS delay (tRCD)3555555
RAS precharge (tRP)2555555
Cycle time (tRAS)6121212121212
Command rate2T1T1T1T1T1T1T
Audio codecIntegrated nForce 430/ALC655 with Realtek 3.91 driversIntegrated nForce 590 SLI MCP/AD1988B with 6.0.0.61 driversIntegrated nForce 590 SLI/ALC882D with Realtek HD 1.39 driversIntegrated nForce 570 Ultra/ALC882 with Realtek HD 1.39 driversIntegrated nForce 570 SLI/ALC883 with Realtek HD 1.39 driversIntegrated SB600/ALC883 with Realtek HD 1.39 driversIntegrated SB600/ALC883 with Realtek HD 1.39 drivers
GraphicsIntegrated GeForce 6150 with ForceWare 91.31 drivers GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB PCI-E with ForceWare 91.31 drivers
Hard drive Western Digital Caviar RE2 400GB
OS Windows XP Professional
OS updatesService Pack 2

Thanks to Corsair for providing us with memory for our testing. 2GB of RAM seems to be the new standard for most folks, and Corsair hooked us up with some of its 1GB DIMMs for testing.

Also, all of our test systems were powered by OCZ GameXStream 700W power supply units. Thanks to OCZ for providing these units for our use in testing.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

The test systems' Windows desktop was set at 1280x1024 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests. Most of the 3D gaming tests used the Medium detail image quality settings, with the exception that the resolution was set to 640x480 in 32-bit color.

All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.