Futuremark 3DMark05

It’s the same in 3DMark05, but there are narrower gaps between the platforms. The RD480 wins again, but the RD580 is a mere 58 points behind. We didn’t run the CPU test from 3DMark05 as it was unstable with the dual-core CPU and produces unrepeatable results.

Futuremark 3DMark06 build 120

As opposed to 3DMark 2001 and 2005, the new 3DMark06 gives you quite a different picture: both the platforms on ATI’s chipsets are far ahead of the Nvidia nForce4 SLI X16. We used only one graphics card in the theoretical tests, so the lower results of the Nvidia platform make us suspect that ATI’s chipsets have a more efficient PCI Express controller.

WinRAR 3.51

The speed of WinRAR greatly depends on the hard disk drive controller. The Nvidia nForce4 SLI X16 proves it has the most efficient one and wins the test. Both the mainboards on chipsets from ATI Technologies have similar results, yet the newer chipset is a little worse. So, the Serial ATA-II controller from the ULi M1575 South Bridge is probably less efficient than the one in the ATI SB450 chip, although the latter supports only the first version of the Serial ATA interface and is in fact a version of the popular Silicon Image SiI3112.