Testing - Software
As you may have noticed in our Test Setup we didn't include another system to test this against. It's not that we don't have available systems, but since this is our first AM2 motherboard review (of many) consider this our reference system from which future AMD motherboard reviews will be compared to. That being said we'll be showing you what just a modest overclock can do for some programs and what it doesn't really affect in others compared to stock settings. We don't have to tell you twice, but everyone knows that synthetics aren't indicative of real world performance but are still a valuable asset in determining the how well the system's performance scales. We are open to ideas around here and if you feel we should test something out shoot anyone on the staff a message. Let's begin with the renowned Futuremark Corporations' testing suite.


We want to let you know that everything was run on a fresh install with no background programs running and each score is an average of three runs. That being said, it's easy to see what a 200MHz boost can do, especially in PCMark where there was a 444 point difference. We understand you'd like to see some monster numbers, but this just goes to show you that this motherboard is mighty capable of pushing the edge if you can do a low level overclock with simply flicking a switch.


Some of you may be wondering, "what in the hell is Aquamark?". Well, it's an old DirectX9 benchmark from Massive Publishing which doesn't even exist anymore, but we figured we'd toss these numbers in anyway as the benchmark itself reminded us of Aquanox series with it's impressive visuals at the time. A 7284 point difference isn't something to scoff at even on this old benchmark.


Now we're getting to overall system performance benchmarks. SiSoft Sandra has been an industry favorite for many years and as you can see, a simple 10% OC is proving to immediately show good performance increases across the board. These days AM2 chips are being priced considerably lower and if you manage to snag a really great processor such as an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ then you'll really be in the position to see some monster performance numbers on the AM2 platform.

SuperPI is a favorite of OC junkies to show their level of performance by calculating digits of PI. Sure it isn't Counter-Strike, but it still shows what a system can do compared to others. On this front we see the overclock shaved just a few seconds already so imagine what you can do with excellent components. That's the thing, although the nForce 590 platform isn't the greatest overclocker, it still puts up quite a fight for the enthusiast crowd.