Foxconn Black Ops - Raw, Unadulterated Power
by Rajinder Gill on July 30, 2008 11:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Standard Performance Results
Futuremark's PCMark Vantage is probably the single most diverse set of benchmarks that can be run on a system to mimic real world usage scenarios. The TV and Movies, Gaming, and Music Suites can be frighteningly difficult to pass when a system is overclocked. We've had boards in the labs that will pass hours of Prim95 torture test or OCCT that fail even the basic 30 minute run of PCMark Vantage let alone the full 1 hour and 30 minutes test run. We used similar components for both stock 9.5x333FSB and absolute maximum stable settings at 8x500FSB to see how the Black Ops compares to the ASUS P5E3 Premium.
PCMark Vantage scores
Due to its tight setup, the Black Ops surges ahead in almost all areas, with the Communications suite showing an especially large gain over the P5E3 Premium. It's still unlikely that one would really notice the difference in real world applications, especially in those apps that spend most of their time waiting for user input. We had some additional questions about our ASUS Striker II Extreme and MSI P45 Diamond results that should be cleared shortly. We will update our benchmarks at that time to include these chipsets.
Crysis Benchmark
The Crysis graphics engine remains the standard by which all new games, 3D engines, and graphics cards are judged. Highly detailed environments present massive loads to the PCI-E lanes and saturate the MCH and memory banks with a flood of data. Any system weakness or instability is often uncovered within the first loop of the Assault Demo.
UT3 Benchmark
The highly addictive Unreal Tournament 3 remains a favorite lab game to unwind from the rigors of putting products through their paces. The UT3 engine is highly sensitive to memory access latency, often showing gains favoring a tighter performance level (tRD) setting over outright FSB speeds. A fun and frantic online playing experience demands smooth frame rates with no slowdown under load. We chose to run the Coret_Fly demo due to its back-to-back performance accuracy between runs.
Game Comments
It's the usual story at the end of the regular benchmark runs: all the boards are within a couple of percent of one another, with the DDR2 based DFI board trailing only by virtue of reduced memory performance on the older platform. The remaining factor is that both the Black Ops and ASUS P5E3 Premium are inherently more stable at 500FSB than any of the competitors in the graphs, making them a better choice if you can't live without reaching 500FSB.
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yyrkoon - Monday, August 11, 2008 - link
You sir have obviously not heard of the term of "being slash-doted", but lets just say many hosts dread having links to their machines being on slash-dot because of the sheer volume of traffic that is caused on the host end.Either way, I never said anything about slash-dot so . . .
DrMrLordX - Thursday, July 31, 2008 - link
Seriously:http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/25/...">http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/25/...
Rajinder Gill - Thursday, July 31, 2008 - link
And in response,http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...">http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...
read post 61.
regards
Raja
DrMrLordX - Thursday, July 31, 2008 - link
This matter isn't settled, but it is being argued by others in other forums where such things will be discussed in greater detail than they will here. Don't expect it to go away so easily.whatthehey - Thursday, July 31, 2008 - link
In order for it to go away, it just needs to be fixed. That shouldn't be too difficult. And then all the millions of Linux enthusiasts that run top-end $400 motherboards with heavy overclocking can rest easy.Wait! What's that you say? Most home Linux users are running hand-me-down $200 systems? Hmmm.... Can't imagine why they aren't a priority.
DrMrLordX - Thursday, July 31, 2008 - link
I put Xubuntu on my X2-3600+ system when it was brand new and pushed the chip to 3.2 ghz (stable) at one point. $200 hand-me-down? Nah.The fact that there are fully-suported flavors of Linux out there that can run on a cheap-as-in-free system from ten years ago is a plus, but it doesn't mean you have to run Linux on a system like that.
yyrkoon - Thursday, July 31, 2008 - link
I think you're a bit confused. Nothing like stereotyping whole groups for our own enjoyment though eh ?yyrkoon - Thursday, July 31, 2008 - link
Those threads are bogus. There is NOTHING innocent regarding pointing 5 versions of Windows to the right tables, while having the Linux table point to an invalid region of memory, thus causing lock ups and instabilities.yyrkoon - Saturday, August 2, 2008 - link
FOXCONN has seen the error in their ways whether intentional or not. This is a boon for both FOXCONN, and linux users a like.http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=877721">http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=877721
Regardless of whatever OS/Hardware I choose, it is very good to know that a company such as FOXCONN is a company that listens to its customers(eventually).
MamiyaOtaru - Thursday, July 31, 2008 - link
Yeah, they screwed up. But seriously, follow the threads. The one on Ubuntu forums where it all seems to have started lead to someone from the company replying, saying someone screwed up and that they would be fixing it.The initial tech support guy's response was not what one would want to hear, but in the end it was just a lowly tech support guy.
Seriously, it was good to get steamed when it looked like they were deliberately screwing people over, but the need has passed. Keep some pressure on to make sure they actually follow through, but perpetual nerdrage isn't doing any good now that the issue is acknowledged and scheduled for a fix.