Benchmarking
Setup
Hardware
| CPU(s) |
AMD
Athlon XP 1800+ (1533 MHz) |
| Heatsink
& Fan | |
| Motherboard(s) |
Soltek
SL-75DRV2 |
| Memory |
256 MB DDR PC2100 (266 MHz) |
| Hard
Drive(s) | Western
Digital 27 GB ATA66 |
|
CD-ROM |
EPO
50x, Philips 8x CDRW |
| Sound
Card | On
board 3D Surround (AC97 Codec) |
| Video
Card | X-Micro
GeForce2 Pro |
Software
| Operating
System | Windows
2000 Professional SP-2 |
| Video
/ VIA Drivers |
nVidia 23.11 drivers / VIA 4.37(v) 4-in-1 drivers |
| | Benchmarking
Applications |
| OpenGL |
Quake
III Arena |
| DirectX |
Microsoft
DirectX 8.1 |
| Other |
Madonion
3DMark 2000 v1.1, 3D Mark 2001 |
Unforunately
the fastest video card I have to test with currently is still a GeForce2 variant.
I'd really like to turn the performance loose with a GeForce 3 Ti 500 but that
isn't in the cards right now.
Once
again Bart from 1COOLPC has stepped in and
sent us an awesome heatsink to use for our testing. My first experience with the
ThermoEngine was unsatisfactory due to a slight crushing incident (!) but luckily
Bart is stocking copper shims for the Athlon XP and it appears that ThermoEngine
has made a slight change to the heatsink clipping mechanism. This heatsink is
smaller than the unit I used in the original SL75DRV review but is more than adequate
for the heat production of the AthlonXP.
Every
time I tried to use some of the newer nVidia drivers I was thwarted with lockups
during Win2k's bootup. After I installed the 4.37 4-in-1 drivers I had no further
problems and went ahead and upgraded to the 23.11 nVidia drivers.
