System setup and testing notes
System setup
At the time of writing, in the HEXUS.pipeline we've got a uATX Socket AM2 board from ECS. It's a similar kind of effort to the RS482-M, so we'll be comparing the benchmark results of this board, with that one. You'll be able to check out that board in full soon enough, but you'll get a sneaky peek at how it performs right here.
The boards have similar names... today we're reviewing the blue one!
| ECS RS482-M | ECS RS485M-M | |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | AMD Athlon 64 3500+ S939 | AMD Athlon 64 3500+ AM2 |
| CPU speed | 2199.5MHz - 200MHz FSB | 2199.7MHz - 200MHz FSB |
| Memory | 2 x 256MiB Corsair VS512MKIT400 PC3200 (DDR1) | 2 x 256MiB Crucial CT3264AA53E PC4200 (DDR2) |
| Memory speed | 2.5-3-3-8 1T @ DDR-400 | 4-4-4-12 1T @ DDR2-488.8 |
| Graphics card(s) | ATI Xpress Radeon 200 256MiB HyperMemory (301/500) | ATI Xpress Radeon 1150 256MiB HyperMemory (401/500MHz) |
| ATI Radeon X1300 PRO 256MB DDR2 PCIe 16x (594/792MHz) | ||
| Graphics driver | 8.243-060404a-033273E-ATI | |
| Chipset driver | Catalyst 6.2 Southbridge driver package | |
| BIOS | Beta version dated 03/07/06 | Beta version dated 28/06/06 |
| Hard drive | Seagate 160GB SATA (ST3160812AS) | |
| Optical drive | Sony DDU1615 | |
| PSU | FSP 300-60THN-P(PF) 300W | |
| Monitor | AG Neovo E-17A 17in TFT | |
| OS | Windows XP Professional SP2 | |
Both boards have the same rating CPU, albeit in different packaging and with different memory controllers on-die. RAM is therefore different too, although the same overall capacity. The only remaining difference is the integrated graphics; the rest is the same for both test subjects.
Testing software
- ScienceMark Memory Bandwidth
- ScienceMark Memory Latency
- Pifast calculation to 10M places
- HEXUS Cryptography
- KribiBench
- HEXUS WAV encoding
- HEXUS DivX encoding
- Cinebench 2003
For 3D performance we used our HEXUS custom benchmarks:
- Far Cry v1.33
- Quake 4 v1.04
- Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05
We also ran HDTach version 3.0.1.0 on the system for read and burst speeds over the SATA interface. Further, we tried out its USB2.0 and IEEE1394 connections in conjunction with a 160GB Western Digital IDE drive in an external Akasa enclosure.
Notes
It must be noted that the integrated graphics on the RS482-M is limited in its support for certain features. We had to use slightly lower quality settings in Quake 4 and Splinter Cell than we usually do. Further, in Far Cry the SM2.0 code path was used by the integrated graphics, rather than the SM3.0 path.
It's still possible for us to give you performance comparisons, but please be aware that the integrated vs. X1300 numbers aren't like-for-like directly comparable due to the above discrepencies. In fact, both integrated graphics solutions tested had the same issues, so the integrated solutions can be compared directly with each other.
