Hardware Roundup Benchmarketing on Boot Camp
THERE'S a smorgasbord - whatever that means - at
Macologist.Actually, they tested Intel Mac's, Motorola Macs and an AMD A64 running at 2GHz with a Geforce 6600GT. Games from Quake to DOOM 3 and software like Cinebench were part of the test. At the end of the test though, there are some thoughts that pop to mind. Firstly, it is a comparison of oranges to apples as far as platforms are concerned and secondly, it is only a matter of time before benches using Bootcamp are done.
French website PC Inpact
compares the X1900XTX and the 7900GTX - from Gigabyte and XTX respectively - video cards under Oblivion - one of the better games of the year so far. They use a Gigabyte K8N-SLi as Rig machine and they've managed to get two videos of the cards in action to show you how noisy the X1900XTX is as compared to the 7900GTX. ATI now has a challenger for the FX5800 Ultra as far as noise is concerned but it is the card to buy if you are an Oblivion fan.
GDHardware tests the
MSI K8N Diamond Plus X16 motherboard. Duane overclocked an FX57 to 2.9GHz without hiccups. Thee BIOS is full of tweaks and should keep the enthusiasts busy. The integrated audio is not the SB Live this time but the heatpipe based chipset cooler is still there - but it does emit more heat than usual. There are quite a few tools and utilities, it is obviously a top of the range motherboard, right below the platinum series.
Bjorn3D reviews the
Powercolor X1600Pro AGP video card with 512 Memory. As you can guess, the 512MB DDR2 memory is there more for the marketing rather than for the performance. The card does support HDTV and TVO as well. There's no game bundle and the number of accessories is paltry to say the least. There are better cards there but Bjorn3D has had a new BIOS which allowed the card to run at a higher speed. But that' said, it is not that bad, considering that it is almost on par with a X800GT.
Bit-tech checks the
Biostar TForce4 U 775 motherboard which as one might suggest tackles the LGA775 platform. Biostar is one of the lesser known motherboard makers but nonetheless one that packs a lot of punch. The TForce for example is a mATX board with the Realtek ALC850 audio chipset and uses the nForce 4 Ultra Intel Edition. As such you do get goodies like SATAII RAID, loads of USB 2.0 connectors but only a 10/100Mbps LAN. Performance is more than superb but no overclocking here.
Tweaktown reports on the Asus
A8R32-MVP motherboard which ships with a Xpress 3200 Crossfire Chipset. All MVP's motherboard have the reputation of being lightning fast but the A8R was known for its bugs as well. Specs are what you would expect. Twin GbE ports, eight SEP ATA ports and a similar number of USB ports as well as support for 7.1 Audio. Testing shows that it is a remarkable board with better performance than anything else. It should however have a little more voltage options. Watch the price though.
The INQuirer
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