Benchmark Results: Synthetic
All else equal, the GeForce 9300 and G45 motherboards score similarly, with Intel edging out Nvidia just slightly. The 790GX and its less-capable Athlon 64 X2 5400+ Black Edition trail overall.
For the most part, we see the same pattern over and over in PCMark Vantage. Intel holds a bit of a lead, Nvidia follows, and AMD brings up the rear. One test bucks the trend: gaming. When it’s 3D performance on the line, Nvidia takes a commanding lead, the RV610 core inside AMD’s 790GX steps into a second-place role, and Intel’s G45 pulls into last place, despite its processing advantage.
Our 3DMark Vantage tests include results for integrated graphics-only and the AMD/Nvidia hybrid modes, which is why you don’t see any green bars for Intel. Nvidia very clearly has the advantage here. In the Overall Score, its superior GPU and PhysX support lends the GeForce 9300 a commanding lead that grows when you add an 8500 GT in GeForce Boost mode.
In the pure GPU score, it establishes a lead and then extends it through GeForce Boost yet again. AMD naturally comes in second on this one, with exceptional scaling as you add a Radeon HD 3470 card in for Hybrid Graphics.
Finally, the CPU score helps demonstrate the benefit of accelerated physics in applications optimized for the feature—otherwise, you’d expect the Core 2 Duo E7200 to place similarly with Intel’s G45.
The Sandra Arithmetic scores fall fairly close to each other, but the Multimedia scores are much further off, given the SSE 4 optimizations applied to the Intel Core 2 Duo E7200. Conversely, memory bandwidth tests very much favor AMD. Its integrated memory controller is able to push more than 7.6 GB/s of throughput running DDR2-800. Intel’s G45 achieves just over 5 GB/s and the GeForce 9300 falls under 5 GB/s.
