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TESTING
Measurement and Analysis Tools
A Seasonic Power Angel was used to measure the overall system power consumption
at various states including Off, Sleep, Idle, with 2 instances of CPUBurn
K7 running, and with ATI Tool's artifact scanning running in conjunction with
CPUBurn.
We also tested the integrated graphics' proficiency at playing back high
definition videos. Standard HD-DVD and Blu Ray discs can be encoded in three
different codecs by design: MPEG-2, H.264/AVC and VC-1. MPEG-2 has been around
for a number of years and is not demanding on modern system resources. H.264
and VC-1 encoded videos on the other hand, due to the amount of complexity
in their compression schemes, are extremely stressful and will not play smoothly
(or at all) on slower PCs, especially with antiquated video subsystems.
Since we did not have a HD-DVD or Blu Ray drive at our disposal, we instead
used a variety of H.264 and VC-1 video clips encoded for playback on the PC
for testing. The clips were played with Windows Media Player 11 and a CPU
usage graph was created by the Windows Task Manger for analysis to determine
the approximate mean and average CPU use. High CPU usage is indicative of
poor video decoding ability on the part of the integrated graphics subsystem.
If CPU usage reached extremely high levels and the video skipped or froze,
we concluded the board (in conjunction with the processor) failed to adequately
decompress the clip.
128MB was assigned to video memory and Aero Glass was disabled during testing.
Video Test Suite
1280x720 | 24fps | ~6.1mbps |
720p H.264: BBC's
HD in Full Bloom is encoded with H.264. It features time-lapsed
photography, mainly of various flowers blooming with vibrant colors
and high contrast.
|
1920x816 | 24fps | ~9.9mbps |
1080p H.264:
Rush Hour 3 Trailer 1 is encoded with H.264. It has a good
mixture of light and dark scenes, interspersed with fast-motion
action and cutaways.
|
1440x1080 | 24fps | ~7.5mbps |
WMV3 VC-1:
Coral Reef Adventure trailer is encoded in VC-1 using the
WMV3 codec (commonly recognized by the moniker, "HD WMV").
It features multiple outdoor landscape and dark underwater scenes.
|
1280x720 | 60fps | ~11.9mbps |
WVC1 VC-1: Microsoft Flight Simulator X trailer
is encoded in VC-1. It's a compilation of in-game action from a
third person point of view. While the source image quality is poor
compared to the other videos in our test suite, it is encoded using
the Windows Media Video 9 Advanced Profile (aka WVC1) codec —
a much more demanding implementation of VC-1.
|
Test Results
|
CPU Usage & Power Consumption
|
|
Activity
|
Mean CPU Usage
|
Average Peak CPU Usage
|
System Power (AC)
|
|
Core 0
|
Core 1
|
Average
|
|
Off
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
2W
|
|
Sleep (S3)
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
3W
|
|
Idle
|
0-6%
|
0-6%
|
3%
|
N/A
|
~59W
|
|
720p H.264
|
20%
|
21%
|
20.5%
|
51%
|
~77W
|
|
1080p H.264
|
32%
|
33%
|
31.5%
|
69%
|
~79W
|
|
WMV3 VC-1
|
41%
|
45%
|
43.0%
|
79%
|
~80W
|
|
WVC1 VC-1
|
78%
|
77%
|
77.5%
|
98%
|
~84W
|
|
CPUBurn
|
100%
|
100%
|
100%
|
100%
|
97W
|
|
CPUBurn
+ ATI Tool
|
100%
|
100%
|
100%
|
100%
|
104W
|
All the test clips played back smoothly though during playback of the most
demanding WVC1 video, peak CPU usage almost reached 100%, meaning the system
was just barely able to decode it properly. Increasing the amount of video
memory to 256MB helped a small amount — ultimately the IGP and CPU clock
speed determined the performance.
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