We have standardized our motherboard test platform for both AMD and Intel platforms. Every test is run with an ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB video card running the latest Catalyst 9.3 drivers. For purposes of this review I tested the 710 CPU with an ASUS M4A79 Deluxe for the DDR2. The tests have also undergone a slight evolution over the previous AMD platform. The latest 3DMark, Sysmark, and PCMark have been incorporated into the test platform to show performance in two areas: overall DirectX performance and overall system performance. The 710 CPU from AMD gives a valiant effort but does not have the performance of its bigger brother the 940 on the ASUS motherboard which is to be expected from a CPU that costs half as much.
Test System
- ASUS M4A79 Deluxe motherboard running latest AMD chipset drivers
- ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB video card running Catalyst 9.3 drivers
- 2GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR2-1066MHz DDR2 memory
- 2 74GB WD Raptor SATA HDDs in RAID 0 mode
- LG 16X DVD-RW drive
- AMD Reference cooler
- AMD Phenom II X3 710 CPU running at 2.6GHz
- Windows Vista 32-bit Business with SP1
Tests
- Sysmark 2007 Preview with Patch 5 installed
- 3DMark06
- 3DMark Vantage
- PCMark Vantage
- PCMark05
- SpecViewPerf
- wPrime95
- x264 HD Encoding benchmark
- CPUBench 2003
- Crystalmark 2004
- PiFast
