Tuesday, March 23, 1999

The performance tests results

All tests were all performed under Windows98.

The system setup was as following:

Motherboard: Abit ZM6 Intel 440ZX
CPU: Intel Celeron 300A PPGA
Memory: 64mb PC100 SDram (LGS)
IDE first channel Primary port: Quantum Fireball EIDE ST 3.2A
IDE second channel Primary port: AOpen CD-ROM drive CD-936E
PCI slot number 2: STB VElocity 4400 TNT 16Mb SDRAM AGP
OS: Win94 built 4.10
DirectX 6

Winbench99 CPUmark

A very interesting Overclocking experiment has been conducted with this test. We performed this test on an Intel Celeron 300A clocked at its standard operating frequency of 300Mhz and we Overclocked the processor to make it run at an operating frequency of 450Mhz. As we can see by the above results displayed, the Overclocked Celeron, outperformed the 300Mhz Celeron by a margin of more than 50%. In comparison, an Intel Pentium II 350Mhz processor, averaged a score of 27 on the same benchmark. This is about 12.5% better than the Celeron 300A clocked at 300Mhz but 34.8% lower than the Celeron 300A Overclocked at 450Mhz. Impressive, isn't it...

Winbench99 FPU Winmark

On this benchmark, I ran the same experiment once again. In other words, the test were performed with the Celeron 300A clocked at both 300Mhz and 450Mhz. Again, we can observe a performance increase of around 50% in favor of the Overcloked Celeron. A pentium II 350Mhz processor gives usually 1800 pints of this score. So, the Pentium II is outperforming the 300Mhz Celeron 300A but about 12.5% but the 300A overcloked at 450Mhz is beating the PII 350Mhz by almost 34% !

Winstone99

Once again, we can see a very good performance increase between the Celeron 300A running at its standard clock frequency of 300Mhz and Overclocked at 450Mhz. The same test applied to a Pentium II 350Mhz gave an average score of 18.4 or 14.3% faster that a Celeron 300A clocked at 300Mhz but 10.1% slower than the Celeron 300A Overclocked at 450Mhz.

Safbench 2.51 Memory Sub-system test

Safbench v2.31 is a computer speed/operation test program. It runs in 32bit protected mode (using DOS32 v3.3 by Adam Seychell). Safbench is programmed completely in assembly, because FOR EXAMPLE mixing integers with FPU code like it's done in Safbench isn't possible in other languages (Simple Arithmetic FPU and Mixed FPU&CPU contain the same FPU instructions, but Mixed one has some integer between FPU operations).

Testing the memory sub-system of the ZM6 gives us a lot of very interesting information. As we can see here, the memory access speed is highly dependent of the processor speed and increasing the processor speed has a very noticeable impact on this sub-system. For the benefit of the comparison, I also included the results obtained with a Pentium II system using the Intel PII 350Mhz processor as well as the results obtained with the Celeron 300A Overclocked at 450Mhz.

Video Sub-system test

All the tests have been performed 3 times each and the mean value obtained is the value indicated in the above table. The rendering used was the Quake2 default OpenGL. Again, we can see that the Celeron 300A Overclocked at 450Mhz is outperforming an Intel Pentium II 350Mhz.

Hard Disk drive sub-system tests

The hard disk drive susb-system is a very importent component in a computer system and I used HD Tach 2.52 to measure its performance. The score obtained by the ZM6 motherboard is very good especially when we compare it against results of the Pentium II 350Mhz obtained on several motherboards that I have tested before.

The same Benchmark has been used once again, but, this time, the Celeron 300A has been Overclocked at 450Mhz.

As you can see, only the Read Burst Speed gained a small performance increase on this test.

The below evaluation table is showing the strong points and the weak points of the tested motherboard. No need to remember to you that we never buy a motherboard only for its performances. Most of today's motherboards are exhibiting performances very close to each others, so, we need additional information in order to help us distinguish what are the real advantages of a motherboard compared to the others and this is exactly where is coming into help this evaluation table.

The score obtained by this motherboard is 96 points out of 100. Geezzz... we have a close to perfect motherboard here... This is a pretty impressive score we have here and I really wonder which motherboard will beast it...

The strong points

The strong points of this motherboard are: its very expendability provided by its 2 ISA and 5PCI slots, the very high quality of its components layout, its excellent users manual and before all its great and unsurpassed Overclockability.

The weak points

It's pretty tough to find a weak point on such a high quality motherboard but personally the only thing I regretted was a fourth memory bank...

Conclusions

Now doubts in my mind that the ZM6 is promised to a great success. This is a more than excellent motherboard and I have no hesitation to recommend thos board to anyone wishing to get the more bang for their bucks. Using the ZM6 in combination with a Celeron 300A PPGA is actually probably the best price/quality ratio available on the market at this moment. I loved this motherboard on every aspects. Even when using a Celeron 300A Overclocked at 450Mhz, the system operated as rock solid and flawlessly. All my congratulation goes to Abit for this great product they've done with the ZM6 !

For any additional information, please visit Abit web site.