Asus A7V333 Motherboard

Name: Asus A7V333 Motherboard - Page 3
Brand: Asus

by HH Editor — Tuesday, August 13, 2002, 12:00 AM EDT

The Asus A7V333 Motherboard - Page 3

The Asus A7V333 KT333 Motherboard
Asus Perfects The VIA Flagship Athlon Line

By, Robert Maloney
August 13, 2002

Ok, we?ve seen what the system is capable of, but what about gaming? What kind of 3D performance are we looking at? Well, let?s find out.

Performance Comparisons with 3DMark 2001SE

Synthetic Gaming

MadOnion?s other creation, 3DMark 2001 SE, is a good comparison of the graphic capabilities of a system. However, since we are looking for more system related scores, and not looking to test the video card only, we used lower resolutions than you would normally see in a graphics card review.

The results were very close, too close to call a real winner at this resolution, although the Soyo board was a bit off of the pace.

At the higher resolution, the A7V333 paired with the Chaintech GF4 Ti 4600 really outshined the other two boards, each of those also with a GF4. In fact, if you look at both of the graphs, the score from the Asus A7V333 at 1024x768 is almost equal to the Soyo at 800x600.

Performance Comparisons with Quake 3 Arena v1.17

Low-Res Fraggin'

Time to bring out the ol? fan favorite ? Quake 3 Arena. Once again, we set Quake to its fastest setting, 640x480x16 bit color, with lowest graphic settings. At these settings, the game is more or less dependent on the CPU performance rather than the video card.

All three of the test systems were pumping out some healthy framerates, with the A7V333 holding a small lead over the other two. At overclocking speeds, we were able to gain another 15 frames per second, topping out at 273.1 fps.

"Real World" Performance with the Stones

Simulated Application Performance

Last, but not least, are two benchmarks from Ziff Davis ? Business Winstone 2001 and Content Creation Winstone 2002.

Business Winstone is an application-based benchmark, which runs through a series of scripts using business programs such as Microsoft Office 2000, Frontpage 2000, Lotus Notes and Netscape. It attempts to emulate a business system load, and then give a rating. We left the default setting so that these scripts were done five times and the final score given on the left.

The A7V333 has a clear advantage over the Soyo and Abit boards beating them by 4-5%. It is becoming quite apparent that this board is a performance champion.

Content Creation Winstone 2002 is another application-based benchmark, this time using popular content creation programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Premiere, Macromedia Director and Dreamweaver, and Microsoft Windows Media Encoder. It keeps these multiple applications open and switches among them while running scripts.

Probably the closest scores in any of the tests I performed, the Asus A7V333 just narrowly beat out the Soyo KT333 Dragon, by a mere 0.1! The Abit board was a close third. The scale on this graph might make the differences appear marge, but they were all within a 0.6 range.

CONCLUSION:

Across the board, we have seen that the Asus A7V333 outperformed two other board from their main competitors. The only benchmark that it did not shine on was the PC Mark 2002 hard drive score, but once again it should be noted that these are synthetic scores and cannot be quantified in real-world performance. We did not see any performance drops when running other applications or benchmark routines.

As for included features, Asus has provided just about everything the discerning PC builder/user could look for. It comes with ATA133 RAID support combining the (theoretically) fastest transfer rates with Promise?s RAID 0/1 technology. 6 channel audio comes onboard, and it does an admiral job for those not willing or wanting to layout another $50-100 for a sound card. USB 2.0 and Firewire ports allow for quick data transfer from external hard drives, CD-burners, and cameras. Normally, these alone would round-out a feature-rich board, but then Asus goes and adds some finishing touches with the C.O.P. overheating protection, Q-Fan speed/noise control, and the ability to customize your system using My-Logo and Post Reporter.

Is this board for everyone? Well, those who are currently using KT266A motherboards probably don?t need to upgrade, although they surely would not be disappointed with the Asus A7V333. Those building a new system however, would be looking at one of the finest boards we?ve have seen in the Athlon camp.