Graphics Performance and Encoding

3DMark03 Performance

3DMark05 Performance

MPEG-4 Encoding Performance - 'Sum of All Fears' Ch. 9

The 3DMark graphics Benchmarks from FutureMark gave a few surprises in testing of the DFI RDX200. We expected the latest and fastest NVIDIA 7800GTX to have a substantial performance lead over the NVIDIA 6800 Ultra, but we did not expect such a strong performance for the ATI Crossfire X850XT. 3DMark05 and 3DMark03 are synthetic benchmarks, but they are designed to test the gaming elements of DirectX 9, using specially written gaming segments.

It has often been pointed out that encoding results should not be affected by the graphics card used during the encoding benchmarks. This is clearly demonstrated by the archive test results for AutoGK using an AMD 4000+ processor with a wide assortment of other components. The performance range of those encoding tests is just 48.1 to 48.9 - a difference form high to low of just 0.8 frames. Clearly, the biggest influence on this encoding benchmark is the CPU used for testing.

General Performance Gaming Performance
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  • JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link

    SATA2 actually only increases the bandwidth from 1.5Gbps to 3.0Gbps. Since sustained transfer rates are still maxing out at around 100MBps (0.8Gbps), and that's only with RAID-0 and two drives... well, SATA2 isn't a huge deal. I don't recall seeing whether the ATI chipset supports NCQ, which is of course in a similar boat.

    USB2.0 performance is only really important if you use an external HDD. Most flash cards and other USB2.0 devices don't come anywhere near 60MBps, as Anand's USB Flash Drive article showed. USB2.0 video devices might also have trouble, though - not sure what the throughput on those is. 150Mbps should be enough, really. Isn't 1080i only a 20Mbps stream? (Or is it 20MBps?)
  • haelduksf - Wednesday, October 19, 2005 - link

    Err...that's what I meant, 3 Gbps, not 300Mbps. in either case, it's quite useless, and will be for the forseeable future.
  • erinlegault - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link

    I would have been nice if DFI would have used the ULI southbridge. Maybe DFI will include the ULI M1575 for the DFI LANParty UT RDX200 Expert motherboard (that's if they do the same as they've done with the NF4 board).
  • DigitalFreak - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link

    Anyone else think this board is a bit lacking feature wise for the $230 asking price? If you REALLY want Crossfire, then you'll need this board. Otherwise, the Nforce4 seems to be the better choice. I just can't believe that DFI is asking so much $$$ for this!
  • mongoosesRawesome - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link

    price will likely come down pretty quickly. remember how much the nforce 4 sli boards were when they came out?

    I've also heard rumors that DFI is going to release a new board with an updated southbridge in a few weeks.
  • bob661 - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link

    quote:

    price will likely come down pretty quickly.
    Only if people buy these things otherwise there would be no reason to lower prices.
  • coomar - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link

    226-2-2-2-7-2T is going to be faster than 206-2-2-2-7-1T

    vdimm and vcore voltage choices were very impressive

    how good is azalia compared to good soundcards/ decoders?
  • muffin - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link

    DFI was not the first! EQS have had a board on sale at overclock.co.uk for a couple of weeks now. Its the same as the (as yet unreleased) Sapphire board, made by the same people.

    Linky: http://www.overclock.co.uk/customer/product.php?pr...">http://www.overclock.co.uk/customer/product.php?pr...

    Its been on sale for a while guys, pay attention. Theres an Inquirer story about it too :/
  • erinlegault - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link

    There is data for x850XT missing in the Half-Life 2, Wolfenstein, Aquamark and UT2004
  • Wesley Fink - Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - link

    Due to time constraints we did not run a full set of Crossfire benchmarks. We were mainly trying to confirm Crossfire worked as it should on the DFI. We therefore ran those benches where more powerful video makes a difference and left out those where the video power makes little difference. You can find a full suite of Crossfire, 7800GTX, and other graphics benchches in our Crossfire Graphics launch reviews under the Video tab at the top of the page.

    We did intend to run Half Life 2 but our benchmarks no longer work with the new build Steam forces on you. We are in the process of updating the HL2 benchmark unless some of you tech wizards know of an HL2 benchmark that will definitely work with the new HL2 version.

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