On today's computer industry is well spoke with Russian cosmonaut Andropov's name in the movie Armageddon. "Russian components, American components … All made in Taiwan!". In the second quarter of 2000, approximately 78.9% of the total amount produced worldwide payment were made in Taiwan. Adherents of the Intel board today is particularly interested in on-chip i815. They are engaged in the production of a huge number of companies. A well-deserved popular products ABit, ASUSTeK and MSI. After testing them, you can try to answer the question which of the cards has the best ratio of price to performance. I815 chipset is the successor i440BX, insanely popular chipset Processor Intel, which motherboard manufactured today. Let's look at the comparative table of the parameters of i815, i815e, and some other chips …
As can be seen from the table, i815e is completely up to date. At the level of VIA Apollo 133A chip looks quite competitive. With regard to specific boards, if considered from the SE6 Abit, we see that the company has gone towards the creation of a simplified high-performance motherboard designed for work and for work. The most popular boards from ABIT (just remember BH6) followed the same philosophy. In principle, ABit products have always been good assistants to those users who love to overclock their processors until blue in the face. Once the Soft Menu system revolutionized. They were not the invention of ABit, but that the company has raised the Soft Menu to a new level of popularity. Comparing this cost with others, we will try to identify for themselves the winner. As always, your opinion may not coincide with ours. The purpose of this paper – the possibility to compare the fees, the location of the components on them, BIOS, performance, stability, value for money.
Features cards
When choosing a card, you must first of all to find out its features. The main criteria – the number of slots are PCI, the frequency range of supported FSB, voltage, format the card. For the main criteria considered are similar to fees – all are 6 PCI slots, deprived of ISA, have the CNR. Traditionally, the latest products for ASUS – "ASUS CUSL2" has a slot AGP Pro, which gives the advantage, unless of course, the new interface will be used. And on the MSI board is a useful feature – the company continues to install on their motherboards so-called D-LED (Diagnostic LED). D-LED – that's four LEDs light up green or red light. This is very helpful. For example, if the system hangs at boot, you need to
look at the diodes and then look in the manual to the board. Most likely you will easily find out what the problem was.
For example, if the card is not inserted correctly, the first LED will be green, and everyone else – red. Finally you can stop to puzzle, trying to figure out what does not work on the board.
In previous motherboards from MSI D-LED has been close to the I / O ports. On the "MSI 815E Pro" D-LED located directly under the chip on the motherboard Intel 82801BA. This arrangement of D-LED is much more convenient, you no longer have to look at the back of the system unit to find out why the system does not boot.
Now, many motherboards come with integrated sound. Adding a decent sound card, you can disable the built-in kernel. However, ASUS does not sound side. Boards "Abit SE6" and "MSI 815E Pro" have audio outputs.
Finally, a few words about the BIOS update by applications running in Windows – with the "ASUS CUSL2" utility supplied LiveUpdate, but with "MCI 815E Pro" – Live BIOS. With utility MSI Fuzzy Logic II, users can set the FSB and set the CPU voltage directly from Windows.
Location of Components
When viewed from a new motherboard, as a rule, above all, look at the location of the socket. The most convenient location for the Socket 370 "MCI 815E Pro" and "Abit SE6". In "ASUS CUSL2" next to the CPU socket, there are a few capacitors, which can cause problems when trying to remove / put on the radiator. In our test bench is exactly takiya board, and change the processor tedious.
Plus and 815E Pro is the presence of four banks DIMM, but the maximum amount of memory still remained 512Mb. This is the maximum amount for the chipset 815/815E, and not to a specific motherboard. The presence of the four banks can
256MB modules to install 64MB, which is important for those who upgraded this old board system and did not want to communicate with the purchase of additional modules and sharing old memories.
The downside is the lack of i815E Pro heatsink on-chip memory controller, it can cause problems for those those who try to use the built-in video controller.
The BIOS interface
Choosing the best BIOS interface less subjective – the main parameter which was estimated for each board BIOS – easy to use.
Main menu and change the CPU frequency to the Abit SE6
However, some such approach seems unacceptable. A certain category of users like to change various settings to achieve optimal system performance.
Main menu and change the frequency of the processor on MSI 815E Pro
In terms of simplicity can be regarded as the best motherboard BIOS Setup MSI 815E Pro, which is both simple and convenient. Overclockers will like overclocking by changing a FSB frequency 1MHz.
Main menu and change the frequency of ASUS CUSL2
Stability
It is difficult to assess a fee for this criterion. The computer should not hang at all, but a law – "the device is complicated, the lower its stability" on modern boards, structurally very complex, fully justified. The boards from ASUS has always been known for its stability and reliability. MSI – a young company, but their products are already proven to be reliable. I was surprised that the board from ABIT has been less stable, and the system is based on the SE6 worked somewhat less stable than sASUS and CUSL2 815E Pro. We would not call SE6 unreliable, but in terms of stability, it loses the boards from ASUS and MSI.
Performance
Measure the performance of the motherboard is difficult. The difference in the speed varies so little that, as a rule, subject to measurement error. The performance of all three boards are very close. Specify the winner in this category can not be ..
But if you look at the speed of the chipset as a whole, i815e, which is the latest chipsets from Intel, not the most high-performance solution. I440BX chipset still does not die just because the wins in the tests with the same frequency of the processor. Such advantages as support i815e AGP4x and AC'97 integrated sound controller is not always relevant, and support UltraATA-100 can be implemented by special external control on any modern PCI motherboard, and then, too, is not critical. Therefore, the main advantage is i815e integrated support for ATA-100, reduces the cost and work with the AGP divider 1/2, which may be useful to overclockers. Approaching the issue of upgrading the motherboard to i440BX i815e need to be extremely careful. Sometimes it is easier to purchase an additional IDE controller, and anything else of the "attachment" of the equipment.
In addition, we have serious doubts about the future i815e, since for the Pentium IV and Tualatin Pentium III will require new motherboards with other chipset.
With regard to specific boards, one thing is certain – a system with ASUS CUSL2 is easiest to configure for maximum
performance (that is, to disperse it.)
Testing
For testing we used the following configuration:
We used the following benchmarks are:
The results for the package Ziff-Davis
CPUMarks:
FPUMarks:
Business Disk Winmarks:
High-end Disk Winmarks:
Content Creation Winstone:
Winstone 99:
As can be seen from the graphs, ASUS CUSL2 more faster than their competitors in the synthetic tests, processor (CPUMark and FPUMark). SE6 showed the best result in the test Business Disk Winmarks, but in the High-End Disk Winmarks system SE6 showed the lowest results.
All three boards showed almost identical results in tests of Ziff-Davis. Given the
that they are based on the Intel-reference design, it is not too surprising.
SiSoft Sandra 2000
SiSoft Sandra Whetstone
SiSoft Sandra Dhrystone
SiSoft Sandra CPU Memory Test
SiSoft Sandra FPU Memory Test
SiSoft Sandra 3DNow!
SiSoft MMX
SiSoft Hard Drive
In synthetic tests, processor again wins ASUS CUSL2 for integer operations and floating-point, but slightly behind SE6. In tests to measure memory bandwidth results 815E Pro proved to be somewhat lower than the competition.
3DMark 2000
The results of testing in 3DMark just very slightly different:
According to the results of testing in 3DMark 2000, the board MSI i815E Pro bypasses the competitors in the high resolutions and with 32 bit color, but the ASUS CUSL2 SE6 and slightly behind. However, as mentioned earlier, the gap is a fraction of percent, and it is not relevant. In real games you will not notice any difference between the performance of these
boards.
Unreal Tournament
The results of measurements on the Unreal Tournament once again prove that the game is too rough benchmark for comparison
performance motherboards. Measurement error in a system with 128MB of memory can be up to 2-3 FPS at the expense
disk during the scrolling demo file. Thus, we can not talk about any superiority of any fee.
From the graph above it can be concluded that the Unreal Tournament – not a very good game benchmark, and that he was wrong in the test suite is included. The graphs for this test show the same speed 933MHz processor on any motherboard with a chipset i815e.
MDK2
As in the case of Unreal Tournament, the performance results for MDK2 are subject to error. The difference in performance in the minimum permit a maximum of 0.5 FPS.
At higher resolutions the difference is already about 1 FPS, and if you try to evaluate the performance of boards, then MDK 2. MSI 815E Pro ASUS CUSL2 several bypasses and SE6 .. In the resolutions above 1024×768 video game speed limits, so all systems showed almost identical results.
Quake III fastest
As in previous tests, Quake III showed that the game can not be a complete benchmark of the motherboard.
Findings