IX. IntelŪ PentiumŪ D 840ES@820 (3.2GHz@2.8GHz/2x1MB/800MHz/DC)

In this next round of test, the goal is to test the capability of the motherboard to support IntelŪ's latest processor offering: Dual Core technology. To be honest, I thought the board would not even boot, let alone complete the benchmarks. However, the motherboard proved me wrong, it accepts the new processor without any hassle, and I am up and running in Microsoft* Windows XP* in no time.

With this processor, I did a little bit of "burning" in before I actually ran the benchmarks. This is to ensure that I will not encounter sudden shutdown, since I am only using a 320w power supply. Besides, I am also concerned about the CPU voltage regulation and strain that the dual core processor might put on the motherboard. While IntelŪ says that Dual Core is supported, again, due to the fact that it is a 3rd-party-chipset equipped motherboard, I feel some sort of skepticsm. However, and to my relieve, I am proven wrong again and after running two instances of Prime95 for an hour, I started my benchmarking.

However, since the purpose of this test is to just prove proper operation of dual core, I decided to forego some benchmarks, and just focused on a single instance of test of PCMark02, and 3DMark and not covering Sandra results.

::Subsystem Test::

PCMark02

PCMark04

PCMark05: N/A

Sandra-CPU: N/A

Sandra-Multimedia: N/A

Sandra-RAM Bandwidth: N/A

::3D Test::

3DMark01SE

3DMark03: N/A

3DMark05: N/A

3DMark06: N/A

As with PCMark02 on processor with IntelŪ Hyperthreading, there seems to be any significant improvement on the processor result. However, an interesting result is with memory results, the dual core showing even improved score versus the IntelŪ PentiumŪ 4 520ES. Dual Core is the natural evolution of HT, and as such, the improvement is noticeable.

With PCMark04, the single core processor are outshined significantly. With HT, only 12% improvement has been noticed, but the Dual Core processor has reached an almost 32% increase. Now, that definitely is a good performance boost.

This motherboard is truly amazing in terms of stability, compatibility, and support for broad range of processor. With such an affordable price tag, I failed to see why this motherboard isn't going to be a top seller for those people who wish to achieve great performance at a low budget. I am very pleased with my experience with the board, and I can't wait to start cranking up the FSB to see if this is any good. But a food for though: can an IntelŪ board, and even targetted at the value segment, even have any overclocking capability? Stay tuned for the next installment!