X48 Motherboard Comparison, Part 2

Features
By Thomas Soderstrom
published

Benchmark Settings

Swipe to scroll horizontally
3D-GamesRow 0 - Cell 1
CrysisVersion: 1.1
Row 2 - Cell 0 Video Modes: 800x600 (low), 1920x1200 (high)
Row 3 - Cell 0 Video Quality: Low Details (low), Very High Details (high)
Row 4 - Cell 0 Anti-aliasing: Off (low), 8x (high)
Row 5 - Cell 0 Benchmark: Benchmark_CPU.bat
Supreme CommanderVersion: 3.220
Row 7 - Cell 0 Video Modes: 1024x768 (low), 1920x1200 (high)
Row 8 - Cell 0 Video Quality: Lowest Details (low), Highest Details (high)
Row 9 - Cell 0 Anti-aliasing: Off (low), 8x (high)
Row 10 - Cell 0 Graphics: Medium
Row 11 - Cell 0 Test Path: Options/Performance/Test Settings
Unreal Tournament 3Version: 1.2 (Dual-Core Patch)
Row 13 - Cell 0 Video Modes: 640x480 (low), 1920x1200 (high)
Row 14 - Cell 0 Video Quality: Lowest Details (low), Highest Details (high)
Row 15 - Cell 0 Post Processing: Default (low), Intense (high)
Row 16 - Cell 0 Benchmark: 16-bot botmatch (war-marketdistrict)
ApplicationsRow 17 - Cell 1
Grisoft AVG Anti-VirusVersion: 7.5.467
Row 19 - Cell 0 Virus Base: 269.6.1/776
Row 20 - Cell 0 Benchmark: Scanning 3.82GB Application Folder
Maxon Cinema 4DVersion: 10.008
Row 22 - Cell 0 Resolution: 1280 x 1024
Row 23 - Cell 0 Benchmark: Rose Drop, 8-bits (50 Frames)
Adobe Photoshop CS3Version: 10.0x20070321
Row 25 - Cell 0 Filtering from a 69 MB TIF-Photo
Row 26 - Cell 0 Benchmark: Tom’s Guide-Benchmark V1.0.0.4
Rarlab WinrarVersion 3.70 BETA 8
Row 28 - Cell 0 Compression = Best
Row 29 - Cell 0 Dictionary = 4096 KB
Row 30 - Cell 0 Uncompressed Folder Size: 642MB
VideoRow 31 - Cell 1
TMPEGEnc 4.0 XpressVersion: 4.2.10.211
Row 33 - Cell 0 Import File: Terminator 2 SE DVD (2 Minutes)
Row 34 - Cell 0 Resolution: 720x576 (PAL) 16:9
Row 35 - Cell 0 Audio: Dolby Digital, 48000 Hz, 6-Channel, English
Row 36 - Cell 0 Advanced Acoustic Engine MP3 Encoder (160kb/s)
DivX 6.6Version: 6.6.1
Row 38 - Cell 0 Profile: Home Theater Profile (720 x 576)
Row 39 - Cell 0 1-pass, 780 kb/s
Row 40 - Cell 0 Encoding mode: Insane Quality
Row 41 - Cell 0 Enhanced multithreading
XviD 1.1.2Version: 1.1.2
Row 43 - Cell 0 Target quantizer: 1.00 (maximum quality)
Clone DVD 2Version: 2.908
Row 45 - Cell 0 DVD "Terminator II SE" (English version)
Row 46 - Cell 0 Transcoding from DVD-9 to DVD-4.7
Row 47 - Cell 0 Audio: English Dolby AC-3/6 (surround) - DTS
Row 48 - Cell 0 Subtitles: None
SyntheticsRow 49 - Cell 1
SiSoftware Sandra XIIVersion 2008.4.14.20
Row 51 - Cell 0 Memory Test = Bandwidth Benchmark
Hard Drive PerformanceRow 52 - Cell 1
Low Level Performanceh2benchw 3.6 (by c’t Magazine)
I/O PerformanceIOMeter 2003.05.10
Row 55 - Cell 0 Fileserver Benchmark
Row 56 - Cell 0 Webserver Benchmark
Row 57 - Cell 0 Database Benchmark
Row 58 - Cell 0 Workstation Benchmark
AudioRow 59 - Cell 1
Rightmark Audio AnalyzerVersion: 6.0.6
Row 61 - Cell 0 Stream Quality: 16 bits, 44.1 KHz
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
9 Comments Comment from the forums
  • nihility
    I thought the major concern with overclocking was doing it with 4 GB or 8 GB of memory installed and with quad cores.
    Buying an overly expensive high end motherboard but installing a 65 nm dual core processor and just 2 GB of RAM seems a very odd combination to me.
    Reply
  • @ni

    Not so odd if you want to get the base foundation set up and then wait for lower prices on higher performance parts later on down the road.
    A quad core (3.0 GHz x 4) chip is coming down the pike by years end and DDR3 prices are on the slide. Building an E8400 / 2 GB base machine is exactly what I did to finally migrate from my 5 year old P4 Extreme Edition / Intel 875 based rig.

    That's the beauty of the X48 platform; longevity.
    Reply
  • The ECS offering has supposedly been out for around a month, but I can't find it for sale ANYWHERE!! can't even find a price. I used to turn my nose up at ECS products. Our company used Asus boards exclusively thinking they were a higher quality product. Evey one of our Asus boards failed within 4 years. This may be because the Chinese have studied the American business model... Make a product that is designed to either fail or need parts within a calculated period of time. ECS are much cheaper, and so far seem more stable than the Maximus Formula board we purchased recently. The Asus BIOS is for people who like to toy with settings. Unfortunately their BIOS has become complicated beyond their programmers ability too write stable code.
    Reply
  • Glad to see that gigabyte's board was so much more energy efficient than Asus', or any other board for that matter... especially while overclocking
    Reply
  • Fedor
    Arcolyte - lol. Did you fall asleep and dream up another page of the review which had power consumption whilst overclocking? :p

    For the record I'm using my first Gigabyte board (X38-DQ6) and overall I'm pretty happy with it, but having said that I haven't used Asus in at least 5 years. With these comparisons it often comes down to features since performance is pretty near (although the low memory speeds achieved by the Gigabyte surprised me!).
    Reply
  • " Intel covers all of its CPU VRM MOSFET?s with sinks. Our apologies for the alphabet soup that made up the last comment. " -> You could've gone with " Central Processing Unit Voltage Regulator Module Metal?Oxide?Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor's " , so it's ok =)
    Reply
  • frodbonzi
    I wonder how the Asus' Rampage Formula stacks up here? It supports DDR2 or DDR3 and is part of the RoG line... X48 as well...
    Reply
  • xanxaz
    asrock rocks....lol...although i'll keep my gigabyte... as i dont know where to say this, it's better say it here... your main page is eating my cpu cycles... between 25% up to 50% cpu utilization while viewing your site? please cut down in animated ads... running a c2d at 3.6 and still lags while surfing... dah... it's just your site... os is it me? i think it's the ad on the top right corner that is causing that...
    Reply
  • wozeus
    I see that Newegg has ECS X48T-A for under $200. Looks like it's a great deal...going to get one.
    Reply