DDR400 for Athlon: A Comparison of 9 Motherboards

Test Setup

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Test Hardware
Processor AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.8 GHz)
RAM 256 MB PC3200 CL2, Corsair Micro
Hard Drive IBM DeskStar 60GXP, IC35040, 40 GB, 7.200 rpm
Graphics Card nVIDIA GeForce 4 TI 4600, 128 MB DDR
Other Hardware
Network Card 3COM 3C905-TX
Hard Drive IBM DeskStar 60 GXP / IC35, 40 GBUltraATA/100, 7.200 rpm, 2 MB Cache, NTFS
Drivers, Software & Settings
Graphics Driver Detonator 4 Serie Version 30.82
Chipset and AGP Driver VIA 4in1 4.43
DirectX Version 8.1
Resolution 1024x768x16, 85 HzSPECviewperf : 1280x1024x32, 85 Hz
OS Windows 2000 Professional SP3
Benchmarks
Quake III Arena Retail Version 1.16command line = +set cd_nocd 1 +set s_initsound 0Graphics detail set to ’Normal’Benchmark using ’Q3DEMO1’
Unreal Tournament 2003 Official Demo
Comanche 4 Official Demo
WinACE 2.11, 178 MB Wave file, Best Compression, Dictionary 4096 kB
SPECviewperf Version 7.0
mpeg4 encoding Xmpeg 4.5DivX 5.02 Pro (YV12)Compression/quality : SlowestData Rate : 780 kBitFormat : 720x576 Pixel@25 fps150 MB VOB-Datei, no Audio
Sysmark 2002 Internet Content Creation
Lame Lame 3.91 MMX, SSE, SSE2, 3DNow !

We ran all of the benchmarks twice : once with DDR400, the second time with DDR333. For this reason, we reduced the benchmarks to a reasonable number and also changed some parts. In lieu of Unreal Tournament, we are now using Unreal Tournament 2003, as this requires significantly more performance and also utilizes DirectX 8 features. Instead of the synthetic benchmark 3DMark, we have begun using Comanche 4.

Patrick Schmid
Editor-in-Chief (2005-2006)

Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.