Test Setup
Athlon XP 2700+ Thoroughbred-B
Corsair XMS 3200 2x256 megabytes
ATi Radeon 9700 Pro
Thermaltake Silent Boost
Seagate Barracuda IV 80 Gb
Motherboards tested:
FIC KT-748 (SiS 748)
Gigabyte 7VAXP (KT400)
Asus A7N8X (nForce2)
Here we will compare the SiS 748 chipset against an older generation (and therefore cheaper) chipset, as well as a high-end chipset that we can find today. Is it worth it to get SiS' latest chipset or is an older motherboard just as good as this?
Synthetic Benchmarks
In all three cases, the FIC KT-748 nudges ahead of both the KT400 motherboard as well as (surprisingly) the nForce2 motherboard. The difference was anywhere from 1% to 5% across the board, whether it was CPU, memory or multimedia. Particularily surprising is the memory, as the nForce 2 should theoretically have the advantage there. In this case, apparently not.
