ASUS P4S8X SiS 648 Motherboard
 AGP 8X, Serial ATA and More!

By: Chris Angelini
December 16, 2002

The Hot Hardware Test Systems
Powered By The Pentium 4

 
Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz (533MHz)
 

ASUS P4S8X (SiS 648)

ABIT SR7-8X (SiS 648)

Intel D845PEBT2 (Intel i845PE)


512MB Corsair XMS3200C2

NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti 4600 (40.71 Drivers)

IBM 30GB ATA-100 7200RPM

 

Windows XP Professional with SP1

Intel Chipset Drivers v.4.04.1007

Intel Application Accelerator v2.2.2

 

 

 
All of the motherboards we tested, utilized PC3200 memory.  However, in the interest of achieving maximum performance, each board was configured to run at DDR333 speeds with optimized timings.  Each platform features Windows XP with Service Pack 1.  In configuring the operating system, we disable System Restore and the Automatic Updating feature.  Finally, we set all of the graphical enhancements to "Performance" in the Windows XP properties.  It should also be noted that we disabled audio and Ethernet in order to minimize the effects of these subsystems on overall performance.

 

It is important to note that the RADEON 9700 Pro would not work with the ASUS P4S8X.  We went through several BIOS upgrades, AGP drivers, video drivers and power supplies but still, it suffered major compatibility issues. 

Performance Comparisons with SiSoft SANDRA
Synthetic Action

CPU Integer @ 2.80GHz                          CPU Float @ 2.80GHz

                   

Memory Integer @ 2.80GHz                   Memory Float @ 2.80GHz

                   

Multimedia Integer @ 2.80GHz                 Multimedia Float @ 2.80GHz

                   

All three motherboards seem to be well-matched, as there are no large discrepancies in performance.  Even the memory bandwidth tests prove to be relatively even.

Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo
Platform Testing UT2003

Despite the fact that we're using two different platforms and three different motherboards, performance between the systems is very similar.  The P4S8X is less than a percentage point slower than ABIT's SR7-8X.  Furthermore, it performs on par with Intel's own i845PE board, the D845PEBT2.

Comanche 4
DirectX 8

Even at 640x480, there is very little difference between the competing boards despite the fact that Comanche 4's performance is heavily dependant on processor performance.

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