HOW WE CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEM:

Before we started benchmarking the ST61G4, we entered its system BIOS and set the board to its "Optimized Defaults".  We then configured the RAM to run at 200MHz (DDR400), with the timings set by the SPD.  The hard drive were then formatted, and Windows XP Professional (SP1) was installed.  When the installation was complete, we hit the Windows Update site and downloaded all of the available updates, with the exception of the ones related to Windows Messenger.  Then we installed all of the necessary drivers, and removed Windows Messenger from the system altogether.  Auto-Updating. System Restore, and drive indexing were disabled as well, and we set up a 768MB permanent page file on the same partition as the Windows installation.  Lastly, we set Windows XP's Visual Effects to "best performance", installed all of our benchmarking software, defragged the hard drive and ran all of the tests.

Over the course of testing the ST61G4, multiple sets of drivers and a few different BIOS revisions had been released.  Shuttle had to work out a few kinks with regard to memory timings, PCI performance and USB 2.0 compatibility.  The latest BIOS seems to have solved the USB compatibility issues - we tested multiple mice, card readers, an external WD USB 2.0 hard drive and a Wireless 802.11G Network adapter from D-Link and didn't experience any problems whatsoever.  The memory timing issues still exist, however, and may not be "fixed" with the current revision of the RS300 chipset.  In an effort to ensure our numbers paint the most accurate picture of the ST61G4's performance as it stands today, we used the latest BIOS and drivers currently available, including ATi's brand new Catalyst 4.1s.

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SiSoft Sandra 2004 Benchmarks Some Synthetic Scores

SANDRA (the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information and diagnostic utility developed by the good folks at SiSoftware. Beyond benchmarking, SANDRA also provides a host of other useful information about your hardware and operating system. We began our testing with three of the built-in tests that partially comprise the SANDRA 2004 suite (CPU, Multimedia and Memory). We ran these tests with a Pentium 4 3.2GHz CPU installed on the ST61G4 using the Radeon 9100 IGP configured to use 128MB of shared system memory, and again with a Radeon 9800 Pro installed. We'll be comparing the ST61G4's performance to the i875P powered MSI 875P Neo2 Motherboard throughout the benchmarks.

SANDRA CPU TEST ST61G4 / 9100 IGP CPU @ 3.2GHZ	SANDRA CPU TEST ST61G4 / 9800 PRO CPU @ 3.2GHZ	SANDRA CPU TEST I875P / 9800 PRO CPU @ 3.2GHZ
SANDRA MEMORY TEST ST61G4 / 9100 IGP MEM @ DDR400	SANDRA MEMORY TEST ST61G4 / 9800 PRO MEM @ DDR400	SANDRA MEMORY TEST I875P / 9800 PRO MEM @ DDR400
SANDRA M.M. TEST ST61G4 / 9100 IGP CPU @ 3.2GHZ	SANDRA M.M. TEST ST61G4 / 9800 PRO CPU @ 3.2GHZ	SANDRA M.M. TEST I875P / 9800 PRO CPU @ 3.2GHZ

SANDRA's CPU benchmark shows the ST61G4 performing on par with our Canterwood based test system, when using both the Radeon 9100 IGP and an add-in Radeon 9800 Pro.  There were some slight differences in performance between the three configurations, but they fall well within the margin of error in this test.  The same held true in the Multimedia benchmark, where less than 400 points separate the first and third place finishers.  SANDRA's memory bandwidth benchmark tells a somewhat different story, however.  When using the Radeon 9100 IGP, available memory bandwidth hovered around the 4GB/s mark.  Installing a Radeon 9800 Pro gave the system a performance boost, bringing the available memory bandwidth to just below 4.2GB/s, but it couldn't quite hang with the i875P which came in at just over the 4.8GB/s mark.  The fact that we couldn't run the ST61G4 with aggressive memory timings certainly had an impact on its performance in this test.

PCMark2004 Benchmarks The New "Swiss Army Knife"

We also ran a complete set of benchmarks using all of the performance modules built into the recently released PCMark04 suite.  Each of these modules runs through a set of system level and component level tests, which are then translated into a final "scores".  For a more detailed explanation into each of the specific tests, we'll quote Futuremark directly.

System Test Suite: There are 12 system tests - each one is designed to represent a certain type of PC usage. By running these tests, PCMark04 stresses the components in a similar manner as they are stressed in real life home usage. Three test pairs are run concurrently in separate threads. More information on the selection of these tests can be found on the PCMark04 White Paper. Overall PCMark04 score is calculated based on tests in the system test suite.

Memory Test Suite:  The memory test suite is a collection of tests that isolate the performance of the memory subsystem. As it is difficult to find applications that only stress the memory, we explicitly developed a set of tests geared for this purpose. The tests are written in C++ and assembly.

Graphics Test Suite: The graphics test suite is a collection of tests that isolate the performance of the graphics subsystem of the PC.

Hard Disk Drive Test Suite: The hard disk drive test suite is a collection of four tests that isolate the performance of the hard disk. For these tests we use RankDisk, an application developed and copyrighted by Intel. RankDisk is used to record a trace of disk activity during usage of typical applications. These traces can then be replayed to measure to performance of disk operations for that usage.
 

Out i875P powered test system swept all of the PCMark04 tests.  Disregarding the Graphics test, the ST61G4 / Radeon 9100 IGP combo was outperformed by the i875 by 3.9% in the CPU test and 18.3% in the Memory test, which isn't too bad considering system memory is shared by the OS and the integrated graphics controller.  When we installed a Radeon 9800 Pro into the ST61G4, the overall PCMark04 score went way up, as did the Graphics test, but there were no discernable gains in the CPU and strangely the Memory tests.  Unfortunately, the Hard Drive test would not even run on the ST61G4, hence the "N/A" in the graph above.  It seems like ATi still has a bit of work to do with regard to their IDE drivers. 

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