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Hardware and Software Used

Now we begin the benchmark portion of this article, but first let me show you our test system plus the software we used.

Mainboards

ECS G31T-MJetway 966PDAG-PB
Jetway M2A692-GDG
NVIDIA NFORCE 590 SLI Intel Edition mainboard (reference)
NVIDIA NFORCE 590 SLI AMD edition mainboard (Foxconn C51XEM2AA-8EKRS2H)
NVIDIA NFORCE 680i LT SLI Intel eVGA mainboard

Processors

AMD64 Athlon FX-62
Core 2 Duo E6600 clocked at 2.4 GHz

Graphics Card

GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB (SLi)

Memory

2048 MB (2x1024MB) DDR2 CAS5 1142 MHz Dominator Corsair

Power Supply Unit

Enermax Galaxy 1000W

Monitor

2x Dell 2405FPW - up-to 1920x1200

OS related Software

Windows XP Professional SP2
DirectX 9.0c End User Runtime April 2007 update
NVIDIA ForceWare 91.33
NVIDIA nForce 680 platform driver 9.37

Software benchmark suite

PCMark 2004
SiSoft Sandra
MPEG Encoding
DiVX Encoding
WMV Encoding
Virus Check
File Encoding/Decoding
Everest
AquaMark 3
Doom 3
Ghost Recon: AW
F.e.a.r.
Serious Sam 2

A prologue

We'll have a look at generic performance first, then graphics performance.

Our goal today is to have a look and see if this mainboard can perform just as well as the expensive 590i/680i mainboards from NVIDIA. Not 100% fair for sure as these boards overclock much better and have way more features. But isn't it interesting to learn how a mainboard that is three times cheaper is performing?

First a couple of synthetic benchmarks followed by games. We'll take a few older games that show off CPU limitation, and secondly we'll take a look at a couple of modern games.