 EPoX 8KHA+ |
 Gigabyte 7VTX-H |
KR7A Performance
Given ABIT's long-standing reputation as a manufacturer of performance
boards we expected the KR7 to perform at least as good as the
top-performing competition, if not as best in class. We benchmarked
the KR7A against the EPoX 8KHA+ and the Gigabyte 7VTX-H, two KT266A
boards known for their solid performance.
|
EPoX 8KHA+ |
Gigabyte 7VTX-H |
We started benchmarking with "Performance Test 3.5". This is a suite of 30 tests benchmarking all subsystems, namely CPU, HDD, 2D and 3D Graphics, Memory and Multimedia. It runs just 2 minutes, the scores are only "synthetic" and certainly not in-depth, but it's an interesting test for a first glance comparison. Ziff Davis Content Creation and Business Creation are time consuming, comprehensive professional benchmarking programs. They use real-world applications like MS Office, Macromedia, Adobe Premier, Lotus Notes, WinZip, Netscape Navigator, Photoshop and others to benchmark a system productivity. If properly used, with at least 5 consecutive runs, automated HDD defragging before each next run, and prior completion of system idling tasks, both programs need at least 2 hours to complete. 3Dmark 2001 is a well-known synthetic benchmark aiming at nVidia GF3 video cards and therefore not much valid to measure motherboard performance. The FPS result in the Quake III with low resolution is a better indicator for the KR7A 3D performance. Sandra again is a synthetic benchmarking tool; we used it to show memory bandwidth and CPU performance. We run all tests 5 consecutive times and listed the best of the results. Each of the 3 boards got a clean installed and updated Windows XP. We defragged the HDD before each test run. We used the native XP drivers for the KT266 chipset, not the VIA 4-in-4 provided on the installation disk.
The results table from PerformanceTest is huge, so it is provided for your perusal as a 228kb GIF with nice colourful graphs, or this HTML page which isn't as pretty but downloads a lot faster.
At a first glance it is obvious that the 3 tested KT266A boards are performing very similarly. That of course does not come as a surprise, because they are based on the same chipset. The differences are all far below 10% and too small to make a difference in real-world performance. A BIOS revision can easily reverse them. Also, these so-called "benchmark" results and the way they are obtained is in no way comparable with true scientific experiments. Their reliability and validity should therefore not be overestimated. However, although the variation is very small, we can see that the KR7A is generally slightly ahead. That makes it clear that the KR7A is currently a tick better tweaked and timed than the 8KHA+ and the 7VTX-H. We also have to consider that the other two boards are mature products with some time in the market and several BIOS revisions, whereas the KR7A is brand-new and has probably more potential for further BIOS improvements.
For us the most astonishing result to see was the very high memory bandwidth we achieved with the KR7A. It's the first board we ever tested that delivered a FPU memory score of more than 000 out of the box at the stock frequency of 10 x133 MHz. Please keep in mind that we used PC2100 RAM stock rated at CL 2.0 and that all memory timings in the BIOS were set to the most aggressive values.
Another interesting point is the better graphic performance the KR7A showed in Quake III, 3DMark 2001 and the 3D subtest of "Performance Test". Maybe the KR7A liked our Hercules TI 500. More likely is that the KR7A's higher memory bandwidth is coming through here, because 3D applications depend heavily on memory throughput. Probably this also the reason for the slightly better KR7A score in Content Creation. This benchmarking program includes A/V editing tasks, which again depend very much on memory bandwidth.
The comparison below shows that KT266A boards give around 20% more bandwidth than AMD 760 boards. The memory bandwidth data for the 7DXR, the 8K7A and the A7M266 were taken from our previous AMD 760 shoot-out with exactly the same CPU and NANYA PC2100 CL 2.0 RAM.
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