Socket-A Chipset Comparison - April 2001

To kick off the real world tests we have SYSMark 2000.  Those that have been following our use of the benchmark know that we are critical of it simply because although it offers a great overall performance picture, it does so by measuring performance in no more than one application at a time.  While there is certainly a use for this type of benchmark when it comes to performance under specific applications, for overall system performance we do prefer to look at benchmarks that perform more multitasking tests. 

In any case, we did not omit SYSMark because it still does offer an interesting story to tell.  The most noticeable thing to point out here is that the ALi MAGiK1 is actually performing better than any other platform.  With PC2100 DDR SDRAM it is actually just under 4% faster than the AMD 760 with the same configuration. 

The MAGiK1 continues to do very well in this benchmark as the third place performer is the same chipset but running at 133/133 (FSB/memory) using regular PC133 SDRAM. 

The only other platform we have seen step ahead in SYSMark like this has been the Pentium III on the i815 which has generally commanded an impressive lead in this particular benchmark.  In fact, the MAGiK1 coming in at 227 is within 3% of the fastest 1GHz platform we have seen under SYSMark that was the 1GHz P3 on an ASUS i815E board. 

In spite of the leading performance the ALi platform offers with PC2100 DDR SDRAM, once you couple it with PC1600 DDR SDRAM the performance picture changes considerably as the performance goes from top notch to trailing behind even the PC100 solutions.  Judging simply from the behavior under SYSMark and under the memory bandwidth benchmarks we conducted earlier, it would be safe to say that there are some performance issues with PC1600 DDR SDRAM on the A7A266 and that configuration is one you will probably want to avoid.  Before we put the final stamp on that statement let's see how things stack up in a more real world test.

We have been praising Benchmark Studio ever since we introduced it in our ServerWorks III HEsl Review as the perfect overkill benchmark, representing a new way of measuring system performance called Constant Computing.  The theory is that if you run common business and SOHO applications while using some relatively bandwidth and processor hungry background applications, such as Windows Media Player and creating/maintaining various database and exchange server connections, you can really bring even the most powerful systems down to their knees.  The above benchmarks do provide the perfect example of that.

The incredible latency penalties the MAGiK1 chipset imposes on its memory accesses keep three of its configurations at the very bottom of the charts.  On the other side of the spectrum, the AMD 760's incredible bandwidth and very low latency operation makes it the perfect candidate for the top two positions in this comparison.  And as we would expect, the VIA KT133A comes in a close third place.  This illustrates that Benchmark Studio isn't necessarily all about memory bandwidth, but does favor low latency solutions as well as those with higher bandwidth memory subsystems.  If this weren't the case, the ALi solutions would've done much better.