Round Up - Integrated 3D Graphics Motherboard Shootout

Review by Edward Chang, call sign: Big_E

September 22, 2002

System Performance Benchmarks:

SiSoft Sandra 2002

The FIC AT31 and MSI K7N420 are AMD motherboards. Although the AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (actual clock speed of 1466 MHz) is on par with the Intel Pentium4 1.8A Northwood, it has a clear processing performance advantage. It is surprising to see that the VIA P4M266 beats the Intel 845G on Intel's turf.

Technically, Intel has a memory performance superiority over AMD motherboards, but the NForce's dual-channel DDR really helps. The AT31 lacks this nice feature and falls back. The VIA P4M266-powered Shuttle MV24N is the last of the pack.

Madonion PCMark2002

The fixed FIC AT31 is running strong as ever. Again, Shuttle's VIA P4M266 lags behind, but still puts up a good fight.

ZiffDavis Content Creation Winstone 2002

We received a sample of FIC's newly revised AT31. It runs this benchmark fine. The performance crown goes to MSI's Nforce-based motherboard, with a 10% lead over the EPoX i845G runner-up.