Review Date: 14th June 2002 Reviewed By: Michael "Hughesey" Hughes Product: Gigabyte 8SIML SIS650 Motherboard Rating: 95% Manufacturer: Gigabyte Supplier: N/A

Real World (Game) Benchmarks

TEST Setup:
CPU: Pentium 4 1.6A
RAM: 512MB PC2100 Cas2.5
VIDEO: Nvidia Geforce 4 MX 420 - 28.32
HDD: Western Digital ATA100 5400rpm
PSU: Generic 300w P4 Supported
OS: Windows XP Professional

SOFTWARE: Sisoft Sandra 2002, PCMARK 2002, 3DMARK 2001SE, Quake 3 Arena, Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast

MadOnion 3DMARK 2001SE

A DirectX benchmark VERY widely used to test many different products such as Video Cards, CPU's Motherboards, and more. We will be using this benchmark to see how the motherboard affects video performance. In the benchmark below, the default settings were used (1024x768x32bit).

Identical performance (allowing for margin of error). The onboard video also performs rather well considering its is an OEM targeted chipset.

Quake 3 Arena

Another widely used banchmark, which is OpenGL accelerated. We used the "High Quality" setting and bumped the resolution to 1024x768 for these benchmarks.

Both the boards performed extremely well when coupled with the Nvidia GPU, but notice how the onboard video managed > 20FPS in high quality mode.

Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast

This benchmark is based on the Quake3 Engine, but with much more sophistaced pixel/shader engines. We used the High Quality settings with the resolution on 1024x768 as we did in the Quake 3 Benchmarks.

The onboard video struggles in this game, but at lower resolutions (800x600x16) the game was entirely playable (35fps).

Onboard Video Results

After seeing how well the onboard video held up to the most grueling settings, we decided to see how it would perform at all different resolutions/settings to determine if the onboard video could be used for gaming. We used Quake3Arena to benchmark, and the results were surprising.

With the "Fast" Settings, we experienced an absolutely playable framerate of 42.2FPS in 1024x768. If you would prefer detail, however, 800x600 in "Normal" mode provided a playable 49.5fps, while at 800x600 in "High Quality" mode it pulls in just under 40fps. It all depends on what kind of framerate you consider playable, and what kind of detail levels/resolutions you like, but for the MILD gamer, this board is an excellent solution.