Doom 3 is
the most advanced game to date. it takes advantage of the latest videocard
technology and pushes the processing power of the CPU to its absolute limit. At
its highest setting, Ultra quality, texture sizes pass the 500MB mark which
means even tomorrow's videocards will have a hard time running everything. The
frame rates in the game itself are locked at 60 fps so anything above that point
is wasted. Each test is run three times with the third run being
recorded.
| Doom3 |
| LQ 640x480: |
FPS |
Ranking |
| Foxconn 955X7AA-8EKRS2 (955X 200/533) |
96.9 |
   |
| MSI P4N Diamond (NF4 SLI 200/667) |
97.3 |
|
| Epox 5NVA+ SLI (NF4 SLI 200/667) |
96.2 |
|
| Foxconn 945P7AA-8EKRS2 (945P 200/533) |
94.3 |
   |
All systems perform within 3 fps of each other, and it's
nice to see that performance is good no matter what board/chipset you
choose.
A decent budget board for
sure!
Workstations and servers benefit from
multiple processors, so turning towards dual core CPUs in the future was the
next logical choice. Those of you looking to upgrade to Intel's latest and
greatest will most likely need a new motherboard, and the Foxconn 945P7AA-8EKRS2
is an excellent option. Despite the lower official model number, the 945P is no
slouch in terms of performance and the board supports all Socket 775 Pentium
4/D/XE processors.
The board comes with a whole load of onboard features
such as dual Gigabit NICs, an IDE/RAID controller, IEEE 1394 and Intel’s Azalia
audio controller. Three 32 bit PCI slots as well as two PCI Express x1 slots and
a PCI Express x16 slot also open up a wide number of expansion
possibilities.
The overall layout of the motherboard is good
and I found it quite easy to work with. About the only thing I have to complain
about is the fact that Foxconn did not label the front panel I/O header and that
it uses a PCI Gigabit controller for the second network card. Dual PCI Express
NICs would have been more ideal.
In terms of performance the Foxconn 945P7AA-8EKRS2 was pretty good. Sure it came in
last in many of the benchmarks but the difference between boards is often less
than 1%. Those of you who like to overclock will be pleased to hear that I was
able to take the board to 254 MHz FSB and the Pentium D 840 retail test sample
past the 4 GHz mark!
With a retail price of $131 CDN ($111 US), the Foxconn
945P7AA-8EKRS2 is an absolute steal. Dual core compatibility goodness, lots of
integrated features and excellent performance/overclocking, what more could you
ask for from a motherboard?
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