Benchmark Results: Synthetics
We're not expecting a whole lot of variance in the results, since the boards have identical chipsets and are employing the same CPU. However, there might be a few points of interest. Let's start with the synthetics and 3DMark Vantage:
The lowest score was 2,190 (the Foxconn Cinema Premium) and the highest was 2,308 (the Asus M4A785TD-V EVO). Note that the ECS, Foxconn, and Gigabyte models generated the three lowest scores in this benchmark. These are also the three boards that don't feature SidePort memory. Clearly, SidePort memory offers a benefit, though on the other hand, it doesn't appear to be significant.
With PCMark we're seeing fairly stable scores across the board, although the ECS 785GM-M board seems to have a slightly slower hard drive score.
The Sandra benches all show CPU prowess within one percent. The only notable difference is how the memory benchmark shows a bandwidth disadvantage for the Biostar and Foxconn boards, which are the only AM2/DDR2 models in the roundup. DDR3 is helping the AM3 models with the synthetic bandwidth scores, but we doubt it's going to make much of an impact on application and game benchmarks.
Boo @ Intel! i like the product, but my wallet & Girl do not like the cost!
Girl has more money for clothes!
How comes? Didn't we all agree a long time ago that ddr3 supposed to be more energy efficient out of the two? (Lower voltage and stuff?)