Date: October 31st, 2004
Article by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner, Head Editor & Hardware Reviewer)
Product was donated by: Intel
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SISOFT SANDRA 2003 PROFESSIONAL CPU ARITHMETIC & MULTIMEDIA BENCHMARK

Performance numbers in SANDRA were again a little disappointing. But seeing that the new core is optimized for the new iSSE3 instruction set which this benchmark doesn't take advantage of, the numbers will not reflect the true potential of the new hardware.

GLEXCESS v1.2V OPENGL SYNTHETIC BENCHMARK

As a benchmark gaining popularity in the hardware community, GLEXCESS is a great OpenGL benchmark which outputs numbers you can trust and reference without worrying about specific company's optimizations.

The results more or less speak for themselves, with OpenGL rendering landing more on the shoulders of the videocard than the CPU. This is the increase in OpenGL performance you will receive when upgrading to the new system with a new PCI Express 6800GT whether using the D925XCV or the AA8 or the D925XE motherboard.

AQUAMARK DIRECTX 9 BENCHMARK

Aquamark is now the only fully compliant DX9 synthetic benchmark available that I deem safe from "optimized" drivers from either company. 3DMark2003 is no longer an option seeing the amount of unfair optimizations coming from both graphic card chip manufacturers.

Performance differences whether overclocked, stock or using another manufacturer's Alderwood can be summed up being almost identical. Differences could be due to a margin of error but saying one motherboard is better than the other whether stock or overclocked just can not be legitimately done.

DOOM 3 HIGH QUALITY BENCHMARK

To really test this card to see if it can handle the latest games, I just had to include Doom 3 to really test this card's capabilities. I decided for continuity to keep the setting at High Quality and 4x AA for an even playing field for future reviewing and testing.

The D925XE * 3.46Ghz EE did come up short against the Abit AA8 and absolutely pummeled the now older D925XCV when benchmarking with the exact same graphics specifications. With the resolution increased, the reduction in the processor front side bus bottleneck does seem to help with an average increase of 2.4FPS.