| ECS PN2-SLI2+ (V1.0) nForce 680i SLI Motherboard
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Testing and Benchmarking (continued):
HD Tach (3.0.1.0):
HD Tach is a tool used to verify hard disk performance. Three key results are reported upon the completion of a test: burst speed, average read speed, and disk access time. Arguably the most important indicator of real-world performance is the average read speed. As you can see in this chart, overclocking does not help improve hard disk performance. Speeds were practically identical for both the overclocked and non-overclocked cases. (higher is better for burst speed and average speeds, lower is better for disk access times)
3DMark 2006:
3DMark is above everything else an indicator of video card performance. If you are interested in playing games with your computer, pay attention to these scores. Keep in mind because this benchmark is severely video card dependent, a better video card will give higher numbers. 3DMark reveals a marginal 4% improvement with the test system overclocked. This simply signifies 3DMark is much more dependent on video card performance than raw processing power. The same conclusions can be drawn for some of the gaming performance benchmarks discussed in the next section. (higher is better).
Gaming Performance:
Once again we want to remind everyone that gaming performance can greatly depend upon the video card installed in a computer. The ATI Radeon X850XT 256MB used in these tests is by no means a slug, but it cannot compare to more modern (and expensive) video cards such as the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 series. Three games were tested to verify the 3D gaming performance of the test system, including; Unreal Tournament 2004, Half-Life 2, and Doom 3. All three games were tested with a resolution of 1280x1024 with all graphical settings set to high. V-sync was disabled for all tests.
For those of you who are interested in how the average frame rates were recorded for each of the games, our test methodology is described below. Unreal Tournament 2004 was benchmarked using software containing pre-recorded demos known as UMark 2.0.0. Once UMark is installed, set the graphical quality to maximum, set the number of bots to "16" and set map to "As-convoy," finally click "run" and note the average frame rate. Frame rates in Half-Life 2 were recorded similarly using HardwareOC HL2 Bench. This time set graphical settings to high, set the filtering mode to "trillinear" and the map to "HOC - Anticitizen." Record your results when the HL2 Bench is complete. The easiest game to benchmark is Doom 3 because time recorded demos are built into the game. Enable the console and type "timedemo demo1 usecache" to determine your system's average frame rate.
With the testing methodology explained, let's consider the results below. As you can see performance increases when overclocked depend upon the game you are playing. Unreal Tournament 2004 and Half-Life 2 showed increases in average frame rates of 32% and and about 10% respectively when the system was overclocked. However Doom 3, which appears to be much more dependent on video card performance, failed to yield any benefit to overclocking. (higher is better).
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