The Giga Test Systems
| Platform Information | |
|---|---|
| Graphics card for all tests | NVIDIA GeForce 256120 MHz Core, 300 MHz DDR-RAM 32 MB |
| Hard Drive for all tests | Seagate Barracuda ATA ST320430A |
| Giga Athlon | |
| CPU for all tests | Athlon 1 GHz |
| VIA Apollo KX133 Chipset | |
| Motherboard | VIA VT5249B1, BIOS January 2000 |
| Memory | 128 MB, Enhanced Memory Systems PC133 HSDRAM CAS2 |
| IDE Interface | Promise Ultra66 PCI card |
| Network | 3Com 3C905B-TX |
| AMD 750 'Irongate' Chipset | |
| Motherboard | Asus K7M, rev. 1.04, Chipset rev. C6, Super Bypass Enabled, ACPI BIOS 128 beta (02.03.2000), AGP2x enabled in GeForce driver (IrongateEnable2x=1) |
| Memory | 128 MB, Micron PC133 SDRAM CAS2 |
| IDE Interface | Promise Ultra66 PCI card |
| Network | 3Com 3C905B-TX |
| Giga Pentium III | |
| CPU for all tests | Intel Pentium III 1 GHz, 133 MHz FSB |
| VIA Apollo Pro 133A Chipset | |
| Motherboard | Asus P3V4X, ACPI BIOS 1002 final, March 2000 |
| Memory | 128 MB, Enhanced Memory Systems PC133 HSDRAM CAS2 |
| IDE Interface | Promise Ultra66 PCI card |
| Network | 3Com 3C905B-TX |
| Intel 440 BX Chipset | |
| Motherboard | Asus P3B-F, ACPI BIOS 1005 beta 01, March 2000 |
| Memory | 128 MB, Enhanced Memory Systems PC133 HSDRAM CAS2 |
| IDE Interface | Promise Ultra66 PCI card |
| Network | 3Com 3C905B-TX |
| Intel 820 Chipset | |
| Motherboard | Asus P3C-L, ACPI BIOS 1020 beta 05, March 2000 |
| Memory | 128 MB, Samsung PC800 RDRAM, RDRAM clock adjusted in BIOS |
| IDE Interface | onboard |
| Network | Onboard i82559 |
| Intel 840 Chipset | |
| Motherboard | OR840, special unreleased BIOS |
| Memory | 128 MB, Samsung PC800 RDRAM128 MB, Samsung PC700 RDRAM, running as PC600 RDRAM |
| IDE Interface | onboard |
| Network | Onboard i82559 |
| Driver Information | |
| Graphics Driver | NVIDIA 4.12.01.0508 pre-release |
| viagart.vxd for VIA Chipsets | 4in1 4.17AGP-driver 3.56 |
| ATA Driver | Promise Ultra66 driver rev. 1.43Intel Ultra ATA BM driver v5.00.038 |
| Environment Settings | |
| OS Versions | Windows 98 SE 4.10.2222 AScreen Resolution 1024x768x16x85Screen Resolution 1280x1024x32x85 for SPECviewperf |
| DirectX Version | 7.0 |
| Quake 2 | Version 3.20command line = +set cd_nocd 1 +set s_initsound 0Crusher demo, 640x480x16 |
| Quake 3 Arena | Retail Versioncommand line = +set cd_nocd 1 +set s_initsound 0Graphics detail set to 'Normal', 640x480x16Benchmark using 'Q3DEMO1' |
| Expendable | Downloadable Demo Versioncommand line = -timedemo640x480x16 |
| Unreal Tournament | Ver. 4.05bhigh quality textures, medium quality skins, no tweaks640x480x16Benchmark using 'UTBench'. |
NVIDIA's New Driver 5.08
In this test we used NVIDIA's new pre-release driver rev. 5.08, as available at www.reactorcritical.com . This driver vastly enhances GeForce's OpenGL-performance on all platforms and it removes the 'fast writes ' bug of the driver rev. 3.68. At the same time the 5.08-driver reduces Direct3D-performance though. I still decided to use it, because it shows a lot better performance on non-Intel platforms than previous ones. The frame rates of Quake 3 Arena, Quake 2 and SPECviewperf are up to 5% higher than before; the frame rates in Expendable and Unreal Tournament D3D are reduced however.
Office Application Performance Under Windows98SE
BAPCo's Sysmark2000 has become the de-facto standard for office application benchmarking. You can see it, Giga-Athlon does not score as high as Giga-Pentium III, but it's not too far behind. Athlon on KX133 is slightly faster than on Irongate with enabled SuperBypass. The Giga-Pentium III results are more interesting. They show once more that nothing can beat the good old Intel 440BX chipset even with Giga-Coppermine. VIA's Apollo Pro 133A is just as fast as Intel's i820 using the fast PC800 RDRAM, but both are far behind BX. i840 is rather close to BX, but it can't quite reach it. It's remarkable however, that i840 with PC600 RDRAM is still scoring better than i820 or Apollo Pro 133A.