Conroe Buying Guide: Feeding the Monster
by Gary Key & Wesley Fink on July 19, 2006 6:20 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
High-Resolution Gaming Performance
We are using the same game benchmarks in our standard gaming performance section that consists of Serious Sam 2, Half Life 2: Lost Coast, F.E.A.R, Quake 4, and Battlefield 2. All boards were tested with the EVGA 7900GTX using NVIDIA 91.31 WHQL drivers. The Intel 975X boards were also tested with a single ATI X1900XTX card with the Catalyst 6.6 driver. The SLI results on the ASUS P5N32-SLI SE utilized two EVGA 7900GTX cards and the 91.31 drivers with profiles enabled for each game. The CrossFire results on the Intel 975X boards utilized our ATI X1900XTX and X1900 CrossFire Edition cards with the 6.6 Catalyst driver.
The single card 1600x1200 results with the EVGA 7900GTX card shows the ASUS P5N32-SLI SE taking a clean sweep of the benchmarks. The performance of the 7900GTX and nForce4 Intel Edition chipset made a small but measurable difference at the higher resolutions as the boards started to become GPU bound. Due to the strength of the NVIDIA SLI setup along with obvious ATI issues in the Half Life 2: Lost Coast and Quake 4 benchmarks this same board sweeps our multi-GPU tests.
However, we also noticed where the ATI cards made a very strong showing in our standard benchmarks in F.E.A.R. and Serious Sam 2 by finishing first, they fell behind the SLI setup when running CrossFire indicating a lack of optimizations or possible driver issues in our tests. The performance percentage drop of the ASRock board compared to the other boards when moving to 1600x1200 was even greater than at 1280x1024 indicating that X4 PCIe operation is certainly hampering its performance.
We are using the same game benchmarks in our standard gaming performance section that consists of Serious Sam 2, Half Life 2: Lost Coast, F.E.A.R, Quake 4, and Battlefield 2. All boards were tested with the EVGA 7900GTX using NVIDIA 91.31 WHQL drivers. The Intel 975X boards were also tested with a single ATI X1900XTX card with the Catalyst 6.6 driver. The SLI results on the ASUS P5N32-SLI SE utilized two EVGA 7900GTX cards and the 91.31 drivers with profiles enabled for each game. The CrossFire results on the Intel 975X boards utilized our ATI X1900XTX and X1900 CrossFire Edition cards with the 6.6 Catalyst driver.
The single card 1600x1200 results with the EVGA 7900GTX card shows the ASUS P5N32-SLI SE taking a clean sweep of the benchmarks. The performance of the 7900GTX and nForce4 Intel Edition chipset made a small but measurable difference at the higher resolutions as the boards started to become GPU bound. Due to the strength of the NVIDIA SLI setup along with obvious ATI issues in the Half Life 2: Lost Coast and Quake 4 benchmarks this same board sweeps our multi-GPU tests.
However, we also noticed where the ATI cards made a very strong showing in our standard benchmarks in F.E.A.R. and Serious Sam 2 by finishing first, they fell behind the SLI setup when running CrossFire indicating a lack of optimizations or possible driver issues in our tests. The performance percentage drop of the ASRock board compared to the other boards when moving to 1600x1200 was even greater than at 1280x1024 indicating that X4 PCIe operation is certainly hampering its performance.
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mongoosesRawesome - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
Im curious, can you go into some detail as to how you determine each memory's stable speeds at the various timings you reported?Did you test any of the value ram up to 1067 or would they not work at all?
shabby - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
Too bad you guys didnt test the asrock conroexfire, its basically similar to the one you tested now but with a 16x pcie slot and only ddr2 support.Gary Key - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
We have more boards coming, the flood gates are getting ready to open from the motherboard suppliers over the course of the next four weeks. Although the press embargo release was moved up to last week, the motherboard suppliers were still targeting 7/27 for hardware releases into the market. We will review and post articles on Conroe capable boards as soon as we receive them. We still have some very good AM2 boards to review also. ;-)
jones377 - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
Can you guys run a few benchmarks with DDR1 on this board? It doesn't have to be the full suite, just some to get an idea of DDR1 performance with Conroe. Thanks!Gary Key - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
We are testing another DDR1 board shortly and will have those results up in the near future. Bios version 1.3 on this board improved DDR1 performance and we are expecting another bios spin shortly.
jones377 - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
What board is that? Another ASROCK? They have quite a few Conroe compatible ones based on VIA, ATI and the i865G chipsets.
Gary Key - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
Yes, we will be testing the ASRock 775i65G, there might also be a i865 board coming from PC Chips. We should see some additional value based boards in the near future from other suppliers based on the 946PL and SIS662 chipsets.yacoub - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
Lists chipset as: Chipset Intel 975X + ICH8RI thought it was 965?
yacoub - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
And on the same page:"Despite the similarity of the ASUS 975X and 965 top boards, a closer look at options does tell you 965 is targeted a bit lower than 965. "
JarredWalton - Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - link
Fixed - as you can imagine given the length, there will probably be a few more typos than normal. Our heads are all spinning a bit after putting this together. ;)