HotHardware - The Shuttle AE25R Motherboard Review

HotHardware Test Systems

Zesty...

Intel Pentium III "Tualatin" 1.20GHz.

Global Win FOP38 7000RPM Cooler

256 Mushkin PC133 Rev. 3+ RAM

Shuttle AE25R Motherboard

Gigabyte GeForce 3 Video card

2-30GB WD300 7200 RPM ATA 100 (Striping)

Hercules Game Theater XP

Windows Millennium

Direct X 8.0a

nVidia reference drivers version 21.81

For our benchmarking of the AE25R, we've decided not to incorporate any performance comparisons from other motherboards previously tested. This is simply because the AE25R is the first R.A.I.D. capable motherboard that we've reviewed with the "Tualatin" processor and it is the first with the new 21.81 drivers from nVidia. Instead, the AE25R will be the new reference system for future motherboards until new driver releases require a change.

Content Creation and Business Winstone

Bring it on.

The first test we ran was Content Creation Winstone 2001, which stresses system performance with multimedia intensive applications such as Adobe Photoshop 5.5 and Sound Forge. We then ran Business Winstone 2001 to gauge the systems ability to run today's more intensive business applications.

Based on these scores, the AE25R is more than ready to take on the most difficult of programs. With the combination of the Tualatin processors and Promise R.A.I.D. controller configured for striping, the AE25R should prove to be an excellent system board in the workstation environment.

Now let us go ahead and see what we could do when we started playing with some BIOS settings, trying to squeeze even more performance out of an already quick system.

Overclocking The Shuttle AE25R Motherboard

Taking it to the limit...

With the AE25R, overclocking was a snap. The only thing stopping us was the 160MHz. FSB limit in the BIOS. In previous reviews, our "Tualatin" has hit a maximum of 163MHz., so we didn't anticipate any troubles with this board. Sure enough, once the FSB was set to 160MHz, we were running at a stable 1.44GHz., a system-wide gain of 20%. Although we were itching to push things higher, it wasn't meant to be, but who could complain about a stable 20% increase?

Now we'll move on to more benchmarks and work in some numbers while running the FSB at 160MHz. First up...3DMark 2001.

3DMark 2001

Simply Beautiful...

For our next round of testing we ran 3DMark 2001 to see how the system performs with DirectX8 applications. First, we ran at the default BUS-speed, and then we maxed the system out at 160MHz, pushing the processor up to 1.44GHz..

Normally, in previous reviews we've seen the 3DMark 2001 scores range in the low to mid 5000's, but with the new Detonator 21.81 driver's installed, the AE25R put up an impressive showing. There is no doubt that with a quality video card installed, the AE25R will burn through any game you may have both presently and in the near future. Now let us move on to the veteran OpenGL benchmark Quake 3 and see what kind of fragging we can expect...

Quake 3, Sandra and The Rating...