Testbed and Methods
To test the performance of the new Socket AM2 chipsets we used the following hardware:
- CPU: AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 (Socket AM2, 2.8GHz, 2x1MB L2).
- Mainboards:
- ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe (Socket AM2, NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI);
- ATI Sturgeon (Socket AM2, ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200).
- Memory: 1024MB DDR2-800 SDRAM (Corsair CM2X512-8500, 2 x 512 MB, 4-4-4-12).
- Graphics card: PowerColor X1900 XTX 512MB (PCI-E x16).
- HDD: Maxtor MaXLine III 250GB (SATA150).
- OS: Microsoft Windows XP SP2 with DirectX 9.0c.
We tested both mainboards with identical BIOS settings adjusted for maximum performance.
Performance
General Performance
We decided to start with the least interesting results: the performance of ATI Sturgeon and ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe based on ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 and Nvidia nForce 590 SLI chipsets respectively in traditional benchmarks.
No wonder that the testing participants based on different chipsets demonstrate very similar results. Contemporary chipsets for Athlon 64 systems do not contain any critical units that can affect the general performance scores. The memory controller is in the CPU, that is why the slight difference between ATI Sturgeon and ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe in some applications can be explained by different secondary settings of the memory controller.
In most cases ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe mainboard on Nvidia nForce 590 SLI chipset is faster than the competitor, which is not surprising at all, as this is a mass production mainboard made by one of the market leaders. Of course, the developers paid more attention to optimizing this product, so it showed slightly better performance than the reference solution from ATI.
