ASUS STRIKER EXTREME
Article Index:
1-5 (Previous Page)
6. Test Setup & Benchmarks
7. Business Winstone & Content Creation
8. WinRAR & HDTach
9. Lame MP3, TMPGEnc & Xvid
10. Call of Duty & Comanche 4
11-15 (Next Page)
To test the ASUS Striker Extreme Edition motherboard, we once again turn to our standard selection of motherboard testing hardware and software. Here's the list for you to ponder over briefly.
A very good selection of parts, and all of the most recent applicable driver packages. As for the motherboards the Striker will engage in combat with, I've picked some of our recent top preformers.
A good selection of competitors. Both the Gigabyte 6-Quad N680SLI-DQ6 and the Abit IN9 32X-MAX utilize the Nvidia 680i SLI chipset, so I thought it to be a fair comparison of different 680i chipset implementations. Both of these boards are pretty good performers too. The Gigabyte P35-DS3R is relatively fresh-faced, and just happens to be host to the latest Intel chipset, the P35 Express. The ASUS P5B-E, an Intel P965 chipset based board, is a very capable overclocker (and pretty sweet at stock too).
A list of the benchmarks employed:
Time to start testing!
VII. BUSINESS WINSTONE & CONTENT CREATION
Good performance on the business application side, but a lesser standing for the multimedia apps. But, these scores are incredibly close.
A decent showing for WinRAR. It appears that about 560 kilobytes per second is the norm for the 680i chipset. Both of the Intel chipsets are way out infront, suggesting that no one can beat Intel for sheer FSB speed performance.
There is an issue with the NVIDIA 680i chipset, which appears to also plague the latest Intel P935 Bearlake chipset. With our 680i based boards, there is some difficulty in SATA communications, despite trying on multiple occasions and in multiple fashions to install the SATA drivers. For some reason, it appears that these drivers don't want to stick. And it appears to be the same with the new Intel P935 chipset.
It is frustrating, but unavoidable. All it would require though is a major BIOS update (a good hunk of it written by NVIDIA) to help facilitate SATA driver/chipset communications. Oh well, we'll have to live with what we've got.
Pretty good IDE speeds.
Unfortunately, when the Gigabyte P35-DS3R motherboard was being reviewed, no HDTach USB speed tests were preformed due to it not recognizing our USB drive. But, based upon past experience with Intel based chipsets, and for the figures we see with the ASUS P5B-E motherboard running the Intel P965 chipset, we could expect the Gigabyte P35-DS3R to perform about the same. Then again, USB speeds aren't the end all and be all of motherboard performance.
The results are pretty close for MP3 encoding.
A neck and neck race for last place.
But great results for XViD, nipping at the heels of Intel.
One added note with regards to the RightMark Audio testing phase of his review. I had run the RightMark Audio tests, but for some odd reason came back with nothing but zeroes for my CPU utilization for the 2D, 3D, and 3D+EAX for the encoding tests. Yes, zero CPU load would be so perfectly sweet a score, but also quite impossible. There were also some issues with regards to Dolby DTS audio. Specifically, a number of NVIDIA 680i chipset owners have complained of popping and hissing sounds when having DTS enabled. Disabling DTS eliminates this problem of course.
To put it bluntly, the 680i needs some major BIOS revisions for both audio and SATA devices. We'll just have to wait and see what NVIDIA rolls out, and what ASUS does with a new BIOS.
Pretty average performance.