Our testing methods
As ever, we did our best to deliver clean benchmark numbers. Tests were run at least twice, and the results were averaged.
Our test system was configured like so:
| Athlon XP | |
| Processor | AMD Athlon XP 2200+ 1.8GHz |
| Front-side bus | 266MHz (133MHz double-pumped) |
| Motherboard | Shuttle AK35GT2/R |
| Chipset | VIA KT333 |
| North bridge | VT8367 |
| South bridge | VT8233A |
| Chipset drivers | VIA 4-in-1 4.38(2)v(a) |
| Memory size | 512MB (2 DIMMs) |
| Memory type | Corsair XMS3000 PC2700 DDR SDRAM |
| Sound | Creative SoundBlaster Live! |
| Storage | Maxtor DiamondMax Plus D740X 7200RPM ATA/100 hard drive |
| OS | Microsoft Windows XP Professional |
| OS updates | None |
We used Matrox's 2.25 drivers, which are purportedly the release revision, for testing. For comparison, we used an Abit Siluro GF4 Ti 4600 128MB AGP card with NVIDIA's new 29.42 drivers, plus an ATI Radeon 8500 128MB with ATI's new CAYALYST 7.72 drivers.
I want to give a big thanks to Corsair for providing us with DDR333 memory for our testing. Their XMS3000 DIMMs allowed us to run the memory on our Shuttle AK35GT2/R test motherboard at CAS2 timings at 166MHz (that's 333MHz DDR, kids). If you're looking to tweak out your system to the max and maybe overclock it a little, Corsair's RAM is definitely worth considering. Using it makes life easier for us as we're dealing with brand-new chipsets and pre-production motherboards, because we don't have to worry so much about stability and compatibility. The stuff flat works.
The test systems' Windows desktops were set at 1024x768 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests.
We used the following versions of our test applications:
- MadOnion 3DMark 2001 SE build 330
- Codecreatures Benchmark Pro
- Serious Sam SE v1.05
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.
