| ASUS P5N7A-VM GeForce 9300 mATX Motherboard
|
Testing:
» Motherboards: ASUS P5N7A-VM, Zotac 630i-ITX, ASUS P5K-Premium w/ GeForce 8500GT.
» Processor: Q6600 g0
» Memory: 2 x 1GB Patriot CAS 4 DDR2 667MHz
» Hard Disk Drive: Seagate Barracuda ES 250GB
» Optical Drive: LG GGC-H20L 16X Blu-ray/HD DVD
» Operating System: Windows Vista 32-Bit SP1
I chose the hardware listed above because it worked with all three motherboards in this review. By pairing the P5K-Premium with a GeForce 8500GT that featured an HDMI port, I was able to test all 3 systems at 1080p on a Mitsubishi WD60735 DLP TV. I could have easily used a much faster video card in my P5K-Premium, but the 8500GT should give performance similar, but slightly faster than the 9300 chipset, so it seemed appropriate for this comparison. For testing purposes and fairness I used multi-channel analog audio during the Blu-ray playback testing because the Zotac 630i-ITX was unable to output digital audio. However, I didn't have any trouble getting the P5N7A-VM to output 7.1 LPCM audio to a Harman Kardon AVR 254 receiver via the HDMI cable.
For benchmarks I chose Everest Ultimate Edition, PCMark Vantage, Performance Test, and 3DMark06. I chose 3dMark06 instead of the more current 3DMark Vantage because the Zotac 630i is not DX10 compatible and was unable to run the benchmark. In addition to these common benchmarks, I used a Kill-A-Watt P3 to measure total system power consumption while the systems were in 3 states, Idle, Loaded, and during Blu-ray playback. For the Blu-ray playback test I chose to use PowerDVD 8 and Batman: The Dark Knight. I monitored CPU usage during playback of the first fifteen minutes of the movie as well as CPU core temperatures and the highest wattage observed on the Kill-A-Watt meter.
There are a couple additional tests I performed on the P5N7A-VM that were not performed on the other two motherboards. 3DMark06 was run with the GeForce 8500GT installed and GeForce Boost enabled in the BIOS, power consumption, and CPU load and temperature with the Q6600 underclocked to 1800MHz (9x200) and 1.1v vcore.
Here we see exactly why integrated graphics solutions aren't recommended for gaming. All three motherboards performed similarly in the CPU portion of the test, but the Zotac 630i-ITX with it's integrated GeForce 7100 GPU lags behind the GeForce 8500GT and GeForce 9300 by quite a large margin. Notable here is the 3DMark06 score with the GeForce 8500GT installed in the P5N7A-VM and GeForce Boost enabled in the BIOS. It's clear that Nvidia's GeForce Boost does offer a performance advantage.
|
|
|
|
