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Date |
: Oct 22nd, 2001 |
| Category |
: Motherboards |
| Manufacturer |
: ASUS |
| Author |
: Jin-Wei Tioh |
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The TUA266 put through it's paces...
| Platform
Information |
| CPU/s |
Intel
Pentium III 733MHz |
| Motherboard |
ASUS
TUA266 |
| Cooler |
Spire
5P53B3 |
| Interface
Material |
Arctic
Silver II |
| Memory |
2
x 128MB PC-150 CAS 3 (Kingmax)
1 x 256MB PC2100 CAS 2 DDR (Apacer)
|
| Hard
Drive |
Seagate
U10 10GB 5400rpm U-ATA 66 |
| CD-ROM
Drive |
AOpen
36x |
| Network |
RealTek
8139A |
| Video
Card/s |
ABIT
Siluro MX400 64MB (default clock - 200/166) |
| Operating
System |
Windows
2000 Professional (Service Pack 2) |
| DirectX
Version |
8.0a |
| Video
Drivers |
4.13.01.1241
(ver 12.41) |
| Benchmarks |
ZDLabs
WinBench 99
SiSoft Sandra 2001te Professional
3DMark 2001 Pro
Quake III Arena (Retail) -
demo001 |
| Stability Tests |
FreeBSD 4.3 - makeworld -j4
StabilityTest + HotCPU Lite
Ultra-X RAM Stress Test
3DMark 2001 Pro
Quake III Arena (Retail) - demo001
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For the results below, the TUA266 was run with standard parameters (ie. no overclocking) at 733MHz (5.5 x 133 FSB), CAS 2. Please note however, that you shouldn't compare the results obtained here to rate a Socket-A motherboard and vice versa.
| Motherboard |
Benchmarks |
CPUMark
(WinBench 99) |
FPUMark
(WinBench 99) |
Memory
Benchmark
(Sandra 2001 Pro) |
3DMark
2001
(640x480x16) |
Quake
III Arena
(Normal) |
| ASUS TUA266 (Aladdin Pro 5T / 133 MHz / SDRAM) |
68.7 |
4000 |
351 - ALU
452 - FPU |
2952 |
112.93 |
| AOpen AX3S Plus (i815E / 133 MHz / SDRAM) |
68 |
3880 |
386 - ALU
432 - FPU |
3015 |
115.87 |
| ASUS TUA266 (Aladdin Pro 5T / 133 MHz / DDR) |
68.4 |
4000 |
339 - ALU
467 - FPU |
2927 |
112.47 |
| Motherboard |
Crashes |
makeworld -j4
(FreeBSD) |
Stability Test
+
HotCPU Lite
|
RAM Stress Test |
3DMark 2001
(640x480x16) |
Quake III Arena
(Normal) |
| ASUS TUA266 (Aladdin Pro 5T / 133MHz / SDRAM) |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| ASUS TUA266 (Aladdin Pro 5T / 133MHz / DDR) |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
We would like to take a moment to thank the sponsors that have made this review possible. The Spire 5P53B3 was supplied by ByteCom Fanner B.V., the Artic Silver II TIM by Arctic Silver LLC, and the Siluro MX400 by ABIT. The TUA266 was loaned to us by ASUS.
In addition to tests using standard parameters, we performed overclocking tests to ascertain the highest FSB speeds the system could sustain. We started by setting the CPU to run at 133MHz FSB with a multiplier of 5.5 (for a speed of 733MHz) and verified its stability via informal testing using Ultra-X's RAM Stress Test, Stability Test and HotCPU. The FSB was gradually increased the tests repeated. All tests were done BIOS default memory settings with the CAS latency set to 3, to minimize the chances that the RAM was the limiting factor. Ultra-X makes some of the best professional PC diagnostic tools on the market, and quite a number of people use them on a regular basis including some of our acquaintances. Their RAM Stress Test has proven quite effective in ferreting out any memory instability problems, which is one of the things that is evaluated when increasing the motherboard's FSB.
ASUS has set a much more conservative FSB ceiling of 166MHz, compared to the AOpen AX3S Plus' unbelievable 248MHz. We reached the stability limit at 160MHz, with the processor running at 880MHz (5.5 x 160). This is a full 21% increase in FSB, which is a good showing by any standard. The multiplier on non-engineering sample Intel CPUs are locked, which does make our overclocking tests somewhat questionable. However, until we can acquire an engineering sample CPU, we can only assume that 160MHz is the limit for the TUA266.
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