Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > Components > Motherboards > Tom's Socket AM2 Motherboard Summer Slam

Test Setup

01:19 - Tuesday 19 September 2006 by Don Woligroski

System Hardware
Socket AM2	AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 (Windsor 90 nm, 2.80 GHz, 2x 1 MB L2 Cache)
RAM	2x 1024 MB DDR2-800 (CL 4.0-4-4-8) Corsair CM2X1024-6400C4 XMS6404v1.1
Graphics Card	MSI RX1900XTXVT2D512E GPU: ATI X1900XTX (650 MHz) RAM: 512 MB GDDR3 (1550 MHz)
Hard Drive I (read)	1x 150 GB 10.000 rpm, 8 MB cache, SATAII Western Digital WD1500ADFD
Hard Drive II (write)	1x 150 GB 10.000 rpm, 8 MB cache, SATAII Western Digital WD1500ADFD
DVD-ROM	Gigabyte GO-D1600C (16x)
Software
ATI Graphic	Catalyst 6.8
ATI Chipset	Catalyst 6.8
Nvidia nForce 500 Series	Forceware 9.35
DirectX	Version: 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
OS	Windows XP, Build 2600 SP2

Nothing too fancy here, but it is no slouch either: an Athlon 64 FX-62 CPU and 2 GB of DDR2-800 RAM with a CAS latency of 4. Not too shabby, indeed.

What are our expectations? Well, frankly we'd be surprised if any board pulls ahead at any particular task. With the memory controller on the Athlon 64 die, performance shouldn't deviate that much at all. The only real wildcard in the suite is the single Radeon Xpress 3200 chipset, and we'll be surprised if any leads by any particular board falls outside the margin of error.

Benchmarks And Software

Benchmarks and Settings
3D-Games
F.E.A.R	Version: 1.0 Retail Video Mode: 1024x768 Computer: High Graphics Card: medium Options/Performance/Test settings
Quake 4	Version: 1.2 (Dual-Core Patch) Video Mode: 1024x768 Video Quality: default THG Timedemo waste.map timedemo demo8.demo 1 (1 = load textures)
Video
TMPEG 3.0 Express	Version: 3.0.4.24 (no Audio) 182 MB VOB MPEG2-source (704x576) 16:9
DivX 6.25	Version: 6.25 (4 Logical CPUs) Certification Profile: High Definition Profile Multipass, 3000 kb/s Encoding mode: Insane Quality
XviD 1.2.0	Version: 1.2.0 SMP Beta Encoding type: Twopass - Single pass Profile @ Level: DXN HT PAL Target size (kB): 570000
Audio
Lame MP3	Version 3.97 Beta 2 (11-29-2005) Audio CD "Terminator II SE", 74 min wave to mp3 160 kbps
OGG	Version 1.1.2 (Intel P4 MOD) Version 1.1.2 (Intel AMD MOD) Audio CD "Terminator II SE", 74 min wave to ogg Quality: 5
Applications
Winrar	Version 3.60 BETA 4 (Dual-Core) (303 MB, 47 Files, 2 Folders) Compression = Best Dictionary = 4096 kB
Autodesk 3D Studio Max	Version: 8.0 Characters "Dragon_Charater_rig" rendering HTDV 1920x1080
Adobe Photoshop CS 2	Version: 9.0.1 VT-Runtime Script Rendering from 5 Pictures (66 MB, 7 Filters)
Synthetic
PCMark05 Pro	Version: 1.1.0 CPU and Memory Tests Windows Media Player 10.00.00.3646 Windows Media Encoder 9.00.00.2980
SiSoftware Sandra 2007	Version 2007.5.10.98 CPU Test = CPU Arithmetic / MultiMedia Memory Test = Bandwidth Benchmark Memory Latency Test = ns
Other
Windows Media Player 10	Version: 10.00.00.36.46