Date: October 31st, 2004
Article by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner, Head Editor & Hardware Reviewer)
Product was donated by: Intel
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BAPCO SYSMARK2004 BENCHMARK

SYSMARK2004 is a great overall benchmark that tests how a certain hardware configuration will perform day to day internet content creation and office productivity.

As a very good benchmark to show just how well your system benchmarks with the latest internet and office content creation software, SysMark 2004 is a real tough test in many ways. For one, the benchmark takes about 45 minutes to initially install and one single benchmarking cycle (office and internet) takes about two hours.

When it came to real world applications and multitasking, a small increase in performance was noted when using internet content applications such as Macromedia Dreamweaver and Flash MX, Windows Media Encoder 9 etc. but where the real performance improvement came through the creation of office content through Office XP and various other programs as you can see immediately above.

3DMARK2001SE BENCHMARK

Everyone knows this DirectX 8.1 benchmark. Still to this day, it is one of the most used benchmarks worldwide. With the latest trouble circling 3DMark2003, you will never see me use it as a feasible, honest benchmark.

With the 1066Mhz FSB, no real improvement was recorded when running a synthetic DX8 benchmark. In fact, the results were practically identical.

3DMARK2005 BENCHMARK

3DMARK2005 is Futuremark's latest incarnation of its infamous synthetic videocard benchmarking suite which not only will stress your DX9 based videocard to its limits, it will also spitting framerates so slow you will be thinking you are gaming with a 12meg Voodoo 2. I mean seriously, take your US$3000 new system and try this benchmark out. The frames will stutter by like playing Unreal Tournament 2003 on a 486DX.

With the results seen above when comparing to the 3.4EE installed on the Abit AA8 Alderwood, the same net results can be seen even through a synthetic DirectX 9 benchmark.

PCMARK2004 BENCHMARK

As a good overall quick benchmark for any system, PCMARK 2004 also uses several real world applications to obtain its' PCMARK score. Results above do show a small improvement in CPU and memory performance with the 1066Mhz FSB.