Testing - Software: Continued



To accentuate our SiSoft Sandra performance numbers we're also including stats from the Everest Ultimate testing suite since many users also use this program to gauge their overall performance. Yet again, it's easy to see just how much a petty overclock can do to boost system numbers and reduce the latency across memory benchmarks.


Before getting to games we like to show off other parts of the system to give the motherboard a crack at an array of well rounded tests. As this is our AM2 reference system, we'll be testing each of these programs in the future and will replace them when necessary for optimal real world results comparison. Now if you're into content creation then you know Maxon is a major player in the 3D animation software realm and having something such as Cinebench that can show the performance difference a capable motherboard can achieve is nice to have. No surprise here, a pretty nice increase for a demanding benchmark is pretty good considering the overclock.


For our WinRAR test we took 990MB worth of images and compressed them using standard settings and timed how long each instance took. In a day and age of downloads and Bit Torrent, you may find yourself unpacking numerous archives and uploading long online matches for others to see after a night of competitive gaming. So you might say to yourself 20 seconds isn't that much, but those are 20 seconds that you might have to do on a weekly basis, or perhaps nightly depending on how much of an avid downloader you are, so don't take these numbers lightly, especially when considering this is just a mild overclock.


Continuing with our multimedia benchmarks is Nero Recode 2, a favorite among the staff for ripping DVDs into high quality movies for PC use. We took a trip back in time with Paul Newman and measured how long it took to rip Cool Hand Luke to our hard drive. Enhance ripping was disabled so as to have an even playing field when it came to ripping the DVD. Three seconds isn't a lot, but if you've got a library of DVDs you want on your system then you'll quickly realize that the time adds up.


For our Apple iTunes test, we took this popular app and let her rip a standard audio CD of Santana to the .AAC standard. As you can see, the difference isn't something to scoff at. Sure if you are ripping a disc once every few months you might not care, but if you're ripping your entire library of Vanilla Ice then you might be inclined to care.

For our Adobe Photoshop speed test we changed our history states to 1 and set our cache levels to 4. In addition, memory usage was set to 100% and we used a 3504 x 2336 image weighing in at 3.34 MB and ran a series of filters and effects to test how fast our system could pull these commands off. There doesn't seem to be that much of a difference, likely because the memory is the deciding factor over everything else, but it's still worth noting.