915 Motherboard Roundup: Socket 775 for the Rest of Us

Standard Performance Test Configuration

If you are interested in more information comparing the LGA 775 Prescott, Athlon 64, P4, and P4EE, please see our in-depth comparisons in the recent reviews:

Intel's Pentium 4 570J - Will 3.8GHz do the trick?
Pentium 4 3.46 Extreme Edition and 925XE: 1066MHz FSB Support is Here
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ & FX-55: A Thorough Investigation
Intel 925X: Exploring the Overclock Lock
Intel's 925X & LGA-775: Are Prescott 3.6 and PCI Express Graphics any Faster?
Intel 925X/915: Chipset Performance & DDR2
Socket 939 Chipsets: Motherboard Performance & PCI/AGP Locks
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ and FX-53: The First 939 CPUs
Intel's Pentium 4 E: Prescott Arrives with Luggage

Performance Test Configuration
Processor(s):	Intel 560 (3.6GHz) Socket 775 AMD 3500+ (2.2GHz, 90nm) AMD FX55 (2.6GHz) Socket 939
RAM:	2 x 512MB Crucial/Micron DDR2 533 2 x 512MB OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev.2 (Samsung 2-2-2-5)
Hard Drive(s):	Maxtor MaXLine III 250GB (16MB Cache) Seagate 120GB 7200RPM SATA (8Mb buffer)
Video AGP & IDE Chipset Drivers:	Intel Chipset Driver 6.0.0.1014 Intel Application Accelerator 4.0.0.6211 NVIDIA nForce version 4.24
Video Card(s):	AMD X800 XT PCIe nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra PCIe
Video Drivers:	AMD Catalyst 4.11 nVidia 61.77 Graphics Drivers
Operating System(s):	Windows XP Professional SP1
Power Supply:	OCZ Power Stream 520W
Motherboards:	Abit AG8 (915P) Albatron 915P Pro (915P) AOpen i915Pa-EFRII (915P) Asus P5GD2 Premium (915P) Biostar P4TGP 775 (915P) DFI LANParty UT 915P-T12 (915P) ECS PF4 915P Extreme (915P) Epox 5epa+ (915P) Foxconn 915A01-P-8EKRS (915P) Gigabyte 8GPNXP-Duo (915P) Jetway 915 PDBG (915P) MSI 915P Neo2 Platinum (915P) Soltek SL-915GPro-FGR (915G) Intel 925XCV (Intel 925X) Socket 775 Gigabyte K8NXP-9 (nForce4) Socket 939 ATI Radeon Xpress 200 (RX480) Socket 939 nVidia nForce4 Reference Board Socket 939

915/925X memory tests with boards using DDR2 (AOpen, Asus, ECS, Foxconn, MSI) used either Crucial PC2-4300U or Micron PC2-4300U memory modules. These are basically the same memory. The Gigabyte and DFI boards, which run either DDR2 or DDR, were benchmarked with DDR2. DDR2 was run at 3-3-3-10 timings at default voltage, which are faster timings than the SPD 4-4-4-12.

915 boards that use DDR (Abit, Albatron, Biostar, Epox, Jetway, Soltek) were tested with OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev.2, which is based on Samsung TCCD memory chips, at 2-2-2-5 memory timings at JEDEC standard 2.6V. For consistency, OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev.2 was also used in tests of the FX55, using the fastest 2-2-2-10 timings on that board. OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2 is based on Samsung TCCD memory chips, which are used in many premium DDR400 2-2-2 memory brands.

The ATI X800 XT PCIe was used for all 915 and Athlon64 benchmarking, since we do not have a working nVidia 6800 Ultra PCI Express card in the motherboard test lab at the present time. Previous benchmarks of the 925X had been run with the nVidia 6800 Ultra PCIe and are included for comparison. Resolution in all benchmarks is 1024x768x32 unless noted otherwise.

General Performance Benchmarks

Winstones from PC Magazine were used for testing Mutimedia Content Creation and Business Software performance. PCMark2004 from FutureMark is also included as a General Performance benchmark. PCMark2004 is also used in First Look reviews so results will be included in future motherboard tests to provide a consistent database for performance comparison.

Workstation Benchmarks NOT Included

Workstation benchmark results were run on all boards using SPECviewperf 8.01. However, as we found on tests with the earlier SPECviewperf 7.1.1, results were extremely variable on the 925X/915 chipsets. Results are inconsistent, with up to 100% variation from one board to another using the same configuration. Therefore, Workstation benchmarks will be excluded from 925X/915 reviews until we can discover and fix the inconsistent results or we can establish a new suite of Workstation benchmarks.

Updates to Performance Tests

AutoGK (Auto Gordian Knot) media encoding tests were run with the latest version 1.60 combined with the latest DivX codec 5.2.1. Results of the 2-pass encoding are lower than earlier tests with AutoGK 1.25/DivX 5.1.1 and are not directly comparable to earlier results.

Halo has been updated to Version 1.06 for these benchmarks. Far Cry was updated to Version 1.3 in all 915 benchmarks.

Coding for Performance Results

Since the 915 chipset is capable of supporting DDR or DDR2 memory (and either on the Gigabyte and DFI boards), this becomes an important consideration for many buyers. Owners of fast DDR memory may be interested in minimizing the costs of upgrading by using that memory in a 915 motherboard. Others may be specifically looking for DDR2 memory, or the ability to use both. For those reasons test results are color-coded by memory type. All 915 boards supporting DDR are color-coded yellow gold in the test graphs. Boards supporting DDR2 use orange as their color code in the graphs. Boards that support both DDR and DDR2 are colored dark gold in the graphs, but all performance tests on the dual boards were run with DDR2 memory.

Reference benchmarks for Athlon 64 are green - FX55 is dark green and 3500+ is light green - and Reference benchmarks for Intel 925X are blue.