Beefed Up BX? - Five Boards with 815/Solano Chipset

Benchmark Results And Discussion

For the comparison of the five motherboards with Intel 815 chipset we exclusively used Windows 98 SE as the operating system. To allow a direct comparison with an identically equipped 440BX system, we added the benchmark results of the Asus P3B-F. The 440BX system is operated beyond specification limits to achieve a distinct comparison at 133 MHz (Front Side Bus as well as memory run at 133 MHz). The AGP bus runs at 89 MHz on the 440BX system, which could lead to crashes with some older AGP cards. However, the many of the new GeForce and GeForce 2 cards do not encounter to such problems.

Game Performance

In the OpenGL game benchmark Quake 3 Arena the Asus P3B-F with 440BX chipset clearly outperforms the candidates with 815 chipset. The MSI board achieves the best result among the Solano participants.

The game benchmark Expendable is an indicator for the Direct3D performance. Again, the Asus board with 440BX chipset is clearly in the lead, while the Abit SE6 with the Solano 2 chipset claims second place.