Analysis, Testing & Benchmarking Cont...

Next on our list, the synthetic benchmark suite we are using is none other than SiSoft Sandra. Sandra will give us details of the ABIT AN8 SLI mainboard and to find out how well it performs. MVKTech has been using SiSoft Sandra for a base line in hardware performance as the entire software package offers a common wealth of information. So we will use the benchmarks included to get to the bottom of the performance on this ABIT solution.

While running the CPU Arithmetic Benchmark we get full details on the abilities of the CPU used as well as details on what processor we have installed on the ABIT AN8 SLI motherboard. The AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ puts down the fastest results. Coming in with a Dhrystone ALU of 19880 MIPS and 8982 MFLOPS under iSSE3 Whetstone.

When looking at the memory performance by using the Memory Bandwidth Benchmark there is only one word that says it all... Wow! The memory is just outperforming all others and clocks down the fastest score. The ABIT AN8 SLI just gives the memory the extra punch and easily beats a Intel 955X based configuration. We are seeing mid 50,000MB/s and this proves the nForce4 SLI chipset is performing above and beyond the competition.

But what about the integrated test results between data transfer and bandwidth between CPU, cache, chipset and memory. The AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ one again shows to be an excellent performance and combination with the ABIT AN8 SLI mainboard. And when moving larger amounts of data is comes out on top. With a combined index of 6120MB/s we are looking at above average results from such a cost effect solution.

Another vital piece of hardware is of course the hard drive. The performance of a computer does depend a lot of CPU, cache, chipset and memory, but in the end when the hard drive isn't working at decent speed then all is an effort for nothing. But no worries here the ABIT AN8 SLI solution just does it all. The performance is just awesome and with an index of 92Mb/s you can't complain. The benchmarks seen here are dependent on the storage device used, so we can say that this portion of the test is more dependent on our hardware configuration than the motherboard.

And lastly as with all computers currently a DVD-ROM is something you must have so also here the performance and speed will come in handy. Our DVD-ROM drive is able to put down some great speed in the benchmark both on DVD and CD data transfer levels. Again this is extremely dependent on the peripheral and not so much the motherboard itself. However on another note, the scores and marks we see here are excellent. You can't go wrong with such a great price with excellent features and extremely good performance.