| |
 |
|
Date |
: Jan 22nd, 2002 |
| Category |
: Motherboards |
| Manufacturer |
: DFI |
| Author |
: Jin-Wei Tioh |
|
We'll let the AK76-SN prove its worth...
| Platform
Information |
| CPU/s |
AMD
Duron 800MHz |
| Motherboard |
DFI
AK76-SN |
| 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
|
For the results below, the AK76-SN 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) |
| DFI
AK76-SN (AMD760 / 133 MHz /
DDR-SDRAM) |
71.2 |
4380 |
565 - ALU
706 - FPU |
3675 |
123.5 |
| Motherboard |
Crashes |
makeworld -j4
(FreeBSD) |
Stability Test
+
HotCPU Lite
|
RAM Stress Test |
3DMark 2001
(640x480x16) |
Quake III Arena
(Normal) |
| DFI
AK76-SN (AMD760 / 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.
We managed to ramp up the FSB to 146MHz, a 10% FSB overclock with the processor running at 803MHz (5.5 x 146). Stepping even 1MHz beyond that resulted in drastic instability, with none of our benchmarks being able to be completed successfully. Though this is certainly an above average figure for AMD760 motherboards, we can only speculate how much farther the AK76-SN will go if VIO and DIMM voltage adjustments were present.
|
|
