ABIT KV7 - ABIT KV7

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KV7

 

 

Benchmarks

Okay, first let me state that due to the weak divider options provided by the BIOS (6/2/1 being the highest) I could not really stretch this BIOS out without gagging the AGP bus. Also, ABIT has equipped this board with a Realtek RTM560-266R clock generator. This clock generator is supposed to be capable of supporting up to 250Mhz FSB in 1Mhz interval. My only problem is that the FSB readings in CPU-Z, WinCPUID and Sisoft Sandra all showed a 2 to 3 MegaHertz increase from what was set in the BIOS. So I took measurements for the Athlon XP 2500+ at stock(166MHz x 11) high overclock(220MHz x 11) and stable overclock(200MHz x 12). The BIOS FSB settings for the high and stable overclocks were actually set to 218 and 198 respectively. I was able to run PCMark2002 scores at all three settings but was only able to run the 3D benchmarks at default and stable overclock settings. Today I'll be comparing the default and stable overclock results of this motherboard with those of a motherboard it is supposed to challenge for performance, the FIC AU13 MAX Chameleon nForce2 Ultra 400.

 

 

My software bundle for today is:

• Sisoft Sandra (OCA™ edition)

• PCMark2002

• 3dMark2001 SE v330

• 3dMark2003 v320

• Comanche 4 Demo

• AquaMark Demo

• CodeCreatures Demo

• CPU-Z

And again, here is the hardware setup being tested:

• ABIT KV7 KT600 (BIOS upgraded from KV7_10 to KV7_11, VIA Hyperion 4in1 drivers v4.49)

• AMD Athlon XP 2500+ (333MHz Barton)

• Vantec Aeroflow CPU Cooler

• Kingston HyperX DDR PC3500 (2 x 256MB Dual Channel)

• ATI Radeon 9700 PRO 128MB (Catalyst 3.6, default settings)

• Maxtor 20GB HD 7200rpm 2MB buffer

• Generic floppy drive

• Enermax 350w PSU (EG365P-VE FC)

• Windows XP Pro (SP1, DX 9.0b)

• Senfu Tech Station

and the comparison system:

• FIC AU13 Chameleon MAX (TFA42 BIOS, nVidia nForce2 UDP 2.03 drivers)

• AMD Athlon XP 2500+ (333MHz Barton)

• Vantec Aeroflow CPU Cooler

• Kingston HyperX DDR PC3500 (2 x 256MB Dual Channel)

• ATI Radeon 9700 PRO 128MB (Catalyst 3.4, default settings)

• Maxtor 20GB HD 7200rpm 2MB buffer

• Generic floppy drive

• Enermax 350w PSU (EG365P-VE FC)

• Windows XP Pro (SP1, DX 9.0a)

• Senfu Tech Station

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Sisoftware Sandra Standard

CPU Arithmetic

Sandra shows that the KV7 is dead even with the FIC nForce2 Ultra 400 board at default settings. It does pull away on the overclock due to a 224MHz advantage.

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CPU Multimedia

(click on pictures to enlarge)

Here you see the ABIT board actually lose out to the FIC board at default settings on the integer mark but pull ahead on the floating point mark. Again the ABIT board wins out while overclocked as is to be expected.

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Memory Bandwidth

 

(click on pictures to enlarge)

Here you see the definitive advantage the nForce2 boards maintain due to their dual channel memory architecture. The ABIT board takes a beating at default and overclocked settings. Remember that the KV7 was actually able to run at a full 400MHz on the FSB but the FIC board was only able to achieve a FSB of 380MHz.

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PCMark2002

PCMark2002 shows that at default the KV7 loses out to the AU13 in all three categories. Overclocked, the KV7 wins out on the CPU mark but gets slapped around on the memory test. Now let's take a look at some game demo benchmarks. Remember that the ABIt KV7 is using a newer set of drivers for the Radeon 9700 and is running Direct X version 9.0b instead of 9.0a

Next: ABIT KV7 >>
 

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