Date: December 13th, 2002
Article by: Burt Carver (Hardware Reviewer & Newsposter)
Product was donated by: VIA Technologies
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Benchmarks

Let me start by stating this:

These benchmarks have no bearing on the boards overall performance.

I am sure that some people who live their lives hoping to squeak another 50 points out of 3dmark might take offense to that statement. Let them. This board is not designed for the overclocking / bleeding edge buyer. This board, in my opinion, is a niche product that blurs the line between computer and consumer electronics. In essence, this is a DVD player, surround sound decoder, and computer all in one. It is rated down to as low as an 80 watt power supply. Do NOT confuse or compare this $200 USD system with everything but the kitchen sink thrown in to a P4 3.06 Ghz machine with a $400 Radeon 9700 Pro in it.

Now that the rant is out of the way... The board performed as expected in 3dmark. It turned in a score of about 400 and did not complete many of the tests. It is not a DX 8 graphics compliant, and this is reflected in the score. If you want to play Doom III on this board, you have rocks in your head.

The board fared little better in Sandra's memory benchmark.

The scores reflected above reflect a 'synthetic' testing procedure that can be extremely beneficial in gauging the performance of your system depending on the primary use of the machine. If you are wanting to pound out 200 FPS in Doom III, then every 3dmark point counts. However, despite what sales people tell you, most commonly used applications do not require a powerhouse of a computer. Due to the hardware decoding of the video stream, which can be cpu intensive through hardware, this board should be up to most tasks including being a media server, for checking email, and most common business tasks. This is an ideal SOHO / Media / Kids computer board it is feature rich at a bargain basement price.

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