AOpen AX4GE Tube-G

Review by Harry Lam on 03.13.03
Motherboard provided by AOpen

Performance:

Test System:

Hardware:

Intel P4 2.4 Ghz, 400Mhz FSB, 512K L2 Cache CPU
AOpen AX4GE Tube-G and AOpen AX4B-533 Tube Motherboards (Provided by AOpen)
ATi Radeon 8500DV Video Card
Crucial 512 MB PC2700 DDR RAM (Provided by Crucial)
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 60GB D740X Hard Drive
Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1

Drivers:

Intel Application Accelerator 2.22
Intel Chipset Drivers 4.20
ATi Radeon 6.14.01.6255 drivers
 

3DMark2001SE:

In 3DMark 2001, the AX4GE Tube-G has a hefty margin over the AX4B-533 Tube-G.  Even when the two motherboards are run head to head running the exact same CPU and memory timings, the AX4GE Tube-G has a 8.47% lead over the AX4B-533 Tube.  The overclocked AX4B-533 fails to overtake the AX4GE Tube-G.

SciSoft Sandra CPU Arithmetic:

For the SciSoft Sandra 2003 CPU Arithmetic test, the numbers showed slightly different results than what 3DMark 2001 put forth.  The two overclocked boards placed first and second, and then came the stock boards.

The differences in performance between the stock AX4GE Tube-G and AX4B-533 Tube are insignificant (and within the standard margin of error of <3%).

SciSoft Sandra CPU Multimedia:

The SciSoft Sandra 2003 CPU Multimedia test continued the trend put forth by the CPU Arithmetic test.

The exact same performance demonstrated by the CPU Arithmetic difference reappears in the CPU Multimedia test, with the two stock boards putting out the exact same performance.

SciSoft Sandra 2003 Memory Bandwidth:

The performance trends are repeated with the memory bandwidth tests.  The SciSoft Sandra 2003 tests seem to be influenced by CPU speed than other factors.

Again the two stock boards are running at the exact same performance, and the 5% difference in comparison to baseline between the overclocked boards re-appears (note that the difference in CPU speed between the two overclocked boards is 4.46%).

Unreal Tournament 2K3, [H]ard|OCP Benchmark v1.0: CPU Test:

The UT2K3 CPU Test results are relatively inconclusive, with all the boards lying within the same performance range.  Any differences in performance are insignificant and are much too close to declare any setup faster than another.