ECS P55H-A motherboard review - Performance - 3DMark06 | Vantage

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 09/14/2009 02:00 PM [ ] 0 comment(s)

3DMark 06 CPU test

Well, everybody loves 3DMark06, and nowadays, it's CPU limited, making it an okay application to check CPU performance. The scores that you see are obviously the CPU test itself, not overall 3DMark06 scores.

3DMark Vantage (DirectX 10)

3DMark Vantage focuses on the two areas most critical to gaming performance: the CPU and the GPU. With the emergence of multi-package and multi-core configurations on both the CPU and GPU side, the performance scale of these areas has widened, and the visual and game-play effects made possible by these configurations are accordingly wide-ranging. This makes covering the entire spectrum of 3D gaming a difficult task. 3DMark Vantage solves this problem in three ways:

1. Isolate GPU and CPU performance benchmarking into separate tests,
2. Cover several visual and game-play effects and techniques in four different tests, and
3. Introduce visual quality presets to scale the graphics test load up through the highest-end hardware.

To this end, 3DMark Vantage has two GPU tests, each with a different emphasis on various visual techniques, and two CPU tests, which cover the two most common CPU-side tasks: Physics Simulation and AI. It also has four visual quality presets (Entry, Performance, High, and Extreme) available in the Advanced and Professional versions, which increase the graphics load successively for even more visual quality. Each preset will produce a separate, official 3DMark Score, tagged with the preset in question.

The graphics load increases significantly from the lowest to the highest preset. The Performance preset is targeted for mid-range hardware with 256 MB of graphics memory. The Entry preset is targeted for integrated and low-end hardware with 128 MB of graphics memory. The higher presets require 512MB of graphics memory, and are targeted for high-end and multi-GPU systems.

The results are all done with a BFG GeForce GTX 280 OC graphics card.

3DMark Vantage also has a standalone CPU test. It's very multi-core and multi-threading aware, it was no surprise to see the Hyper Threading Core i7 processors kick in real hard.

What is interesting in the overall P test is everything that you see above is based off the same graphics card, same driver, same operating system. The only difference is memory and processors. We use a BFG GeForce GTX 280 OC graphics card and focus on the overall score (P - performance).

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ECS P55H-AK review
We test and review the ECS P55H-AK. It is with the release of this P55H-AK motherboard that ECS finally reaches a state in product development where they can address the enthusiast consumer market. A board loaded with features, great looks and quite decent overclockability. A motherboard where ECS went excessive on everything, dual GIGe Ethernet NICs, not one but two USB 3.0 controllers for 4 ports, integration of a SATA 3 (6G) controller, and even a NVIDIA NF200 bridge chip to enable three-way SLI. All in all a terrific P55 motherboard with excellent features and just really hot looks.

ECS P55H-A motherboard review
In a somewhat lower price segment you however can always find ECS, originally being an OEM supplier that slowly penetrated the retail market they make really nice gear these days, but always with a lower budget in mind. Face it, the high-end market is crowded and as such ECS always tries to deliver a product that certainly can compete at a baseline level, yet at a better price. Today as such we'll have a look at yet another P55 motherboard, ECS is launching their P55H-A which is a Black Edition that comes with some nifty additional features and really tasty looks.