Foxconn MARS: Lab Update

Synthetic Graphics Performance-

The 3DMark series of benchmarks developed and provided by Futuremark are among the most widely used tools for benchmark reporting and comparisons. Although the benchmarks are very useful for providing apple to apple comparisons across a broad array of GPU and CPU configurations they are not a substitute for actual application and gaming benchmarks. In this sense we consider the 3DMark benchmarks to be purely synthetic in nature but still valuable for providing consistent measurements of performance.



In our 3DMark06 test, all of the boards are within 1% of each other. We did not notice any real differences in this benchmark between the two BIOS releases, what surprised us was the difference between the DDR2-1066 and DDR2-800 scores on the Foxconn board. The results were consistent between test runs and after reviewing the individual scores, the primary differences occurred in the SM3.0 Canyon Flight and the first CPU test.

In the more memory and CPU throughput sensitive 3DMark01 benchmark the total spread between boards is under 1%. The P06 BIOS provides a small increase in performance in this particular test with both memory configurations.

Gaming Performance-

Battlefield 2

This benchmark is performed using DICE's built-in demo playback functionality with additional capture capabilities designed in house. During the benchmark, the camera switches between players and vehicles in order to capture the most action possible. There is a significant amount of smoke, explosions, and vehicle usage as this a very GPU intensive Battlefield 2 benchmark. We run Battlefield 2 using medium quality graphics settings available in the video settings. The game itself is best experienced with average in-game frame rates of 35 and up.


Prey

Prey offers some superb action sequences, unique weapons and characters, and is a visually stunning game at times. It still requires a very good GPU to run it with all of the eye candy turned on. We set all graphic settings to their maximum except for AA/AF and utilize a custom timedemo that takes place during one of the more action oriented sequences. We generally find the game to be enjoyable with an average frame rate above 35fps.


Gaming Summary

The P06 BIOS provides a slight improvement in both benchmarks although the differences are very minor. This is to be expected since the memory performance numbers indicated the same differences. In Prey, there is a slight separation in performance between DDR2-1066 and DDR2-800, but the differences are so minor that you will never notice while gaming.