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 | | Benchmarks and Comparisons Continued | | Content Creation 2002 & Business Winstone 2001 | |
Business Winstone 2002: Business Winstone is a benchmark that measures a PC's overall performance when running applications that are commonly found in the everyday workstation environment. Some of the programs it runs to determine a Business Winstone 2002 rating are: -
Lotus Notes® R5 -
Microsoft® FrontPage® 2002 SP-1 -
Microsoft® PowerPoint® 2002 SP-1 -
Microsoft® Excel 2002 SP-1 -
Microsoft® Access 2002 SP-1 -
Microsoft® Word 2002 SP-1 -
Microsoft® Project 2000 -
WinZip® 8.0 -
Norton AntiVirusTM from Symantec -
Netscape® 6.2.1 | With Business Winstone 2002, the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe was the top performer. The system beat the KT4 by a 1.5 point margin while increasing that gain an additional .7 points with DualDDR enabled. On a whole, the nForce2 based system performed quite well, beating the KT400 nicely, although the gains of DualDDR were minimal at best.
After much anticipation, we've finally had our chance to take a look at the nForce2 chipset on a variety of different motherboards. With a series of new technologies and design improvements over the original nForce, nVidia has come up with a potent alternative to the norm. We were pleased to see one of the top motherboard OEMs in the industry, ASUS, take the steps to quickly incorporate NVIDIA's new design into their product line. Not only was this a great decision for ASUS, it was also a solid vote of confidence for nVidia. With a majority of motherboard manufacturers hesitant to adopt NVIDIA's first offering, it seems that they've earned themselves a solid position in the Athlon chipset industry. Asus has put together a great motherboard that offers the user a lot of positives. With proven performance, excellent integrated features and overclocking potential, the A7N8X Deluxe is a winner in our eyes. Compared to the high-end KT400 based KT4 Ultra FISR from MSI, the A7N8X Deluxe beat it in virtually every test we ran. We were hoping to see a larger difference in overall performance with DualDDR enabled, but the strength of that technology truly lies with on-board graphics. Yes, we saw some nice gains here and there. However, Dual Channel DDR will show far greater differences in gaming performance on an nForce2 board with an IGP. Certainly it is just a matter of time until one of these products finds its way into our labs, but until then, you'll need to take our word for it.
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