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Date |
: Dec 24th, 2001 |
| Category |
: Motherboards |
| Manufacturer |
: AOpen |
| Author |
: Jin-Wei Tioh |
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We'll let the AK77 Plus cut its teeth on our standard suite of benchmarks...
| Platform
Information |
| CPU/s |
AMD
Duron 800MHz |
| Motherboard |
AOpen
AK77 Plus |
| Cooler |
ThermoSonic
Thermoengine |
| Interface
Material |
Arctic
Silver II |
| Memory |
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 |
8.1 |
| Video
Drivers |
6.13.10.2311
(ver 23.11) |
| 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 AK77 Plus was run with standard parameters (ie. no overclocking) at 800MHz (6 x 133 FSB), CAS 2. Please note however, that you shouldn't compare the results obtained here to rate a Socket-370 motherboard and vice versa.
| Motherboard |
Benchmarks |
CPUMark
(WinBench 99) |
FPUMark
(WinBench 99) |
Memory
Benchmark
(Sandra 2001 Pro) |
3DMark
2001
(640x480x16) |
Quake
III Arena
(Normal) |
| AOpen
AK77 Plus (KT266 / 133 MHz /
DDR-SDRAM) |
70.9 |
4380 |
514 - ALU
652 - FPU |
3565 |
122.8 |
| Motherboard |
Crashes |
makeworld -j4
(FreeBSD) |
Stability Test
+
HotCPU Lite
|
RAM Stress Test |
3DMark 2001
(640x480x16) |
Quake III Arena
(Normal) |
| AOpen
AK77 Plus (KT266 / 133MHz /
DDR-SDRAM) |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
We would like to take a moment to thank the sponsors that have made this review possible. The Thermoengine was supplied by ThermoSonic Technology, the Artic Silver II TIM by Arctic Silver LLC, and the Siluro MX400 by ABIT.
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 (a pencil-unlocked Duron 800) to run at 133MHz FSB with a multiplier of 6 (for a speed of 800MHz) 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 2.5, 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.
As mentioned earlier, the clock generator on the AK77 Plus is capable of cranking out 248MHz. We reached the stability limit at a cool 157MHz, with the processor running at 785MHz (5 x 157). This is a full 19% increase in FSB frequency, no slouch by any standard. The lack of VIO and DIMM voltage adjustments clearly has no bearing on the AK77 Plus' overclockability, though it begs the question : How much harder can it be pushed with these adjustments?
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