For this test we encrypt some precious data with the help of the CPU. Since this is a very memory dependant operation, and combined with our earlier mention memory issue... the mainboard is slightly slower. But really, slightly. Again overclocked it hauls ass though.

CPU-Bound 3D Rendering

We recently stumbled onto this great little tool called Kribi bench. It is a 3D rendering benchmark produced by the people at Adept Development. Kribi bench is an SSE aware software renderer where a 3D model is rendered and animated by the host CPU and the average frame rate is reported. Now the great thing is, it therefore bypasses the GPU... so everything is in direct relation to your memory and CPU.

We used two of the included models with this benchmark: a 'Sponge Explode' model consisting of over 19.2 million polygons and the test suite's 'City' model that is comprised of over 107 billion polygons. The score is the time in seconds needed to finish a rendered sequence.

We always see the multiple cores kick in very well with this test, this is why we like it so much. The lead here goes to Intel's Q6600 on the GF9300 surprisingly, but in all honesty the differences are extremely marginal.