Test Motherboards

We are more or less forced to include results of two different motherboards into the benchmark charts this time, as we found performance differences that could not be explained by either of the two manufacturers. The first board we used is the Asus A8V, the second one comes from MSI (MS-6702E) and was part of the review package that AMD handed over to media all over the world. Unfortunately, the third big manufacturer (Foxconn is not in the Athlon business yet), Gigabyte, was not able to submit a motherboard in time.

Strangely enough, the MSI board would sometimes clearly outperform the Asus board, although both products use VIA's K8T800 Pro chipset. Then again, there are some benchmarks that are obviously dominated by Asus. Since the differences are quite substantial and redound in favor or against both manufacturers, we cannot simply declare one board faster than the other one.

Our only comment to the unexpectedly scattered results is that maybe there was just a bit too much pressure to launch Socket 939 to coincide with Computex, and the effect shows. Our benchmarks speak for themselves. Meanwhile, we will continue to test Socket 939 motherboards as they arrive in our labs.