790GX Showdown: Gigabyte vs. MSI

TEST METHODOLOGY

Test Setup:

• AMD Athlon X2 4850e processor - 2.5GHz, 2x512KB L2 cache, 65nm, 45W
• Corsair XMS2 memory 1GB, DDR2-800
• Western Digital Scorpio notebook hard drive - 250 GB, 5400RPM, 8MB cache, SATA
• Asus BC-1205PT Blu-ray drive - SATA
• Seasonic SS-400ET ATX power supply
• Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 operating system - Home Premium, 32-bit
• ATI Catalyst 9.1 graphics driver

Measurement and Analysis Tools

• CPU-Z to monitor CPU frequency and voltage.
• CPUBurn K7 processor stress software.
• Prime95 processor stress software.
• ATITool artifact scanner to stress the integrated GPU.
• FurMark stability test to stress the integrated GPU.
• QuickTime Alternative to decode Quicktime.
• Cyberlink PowerDVD to play H264/VC1/Blu-ray video.
• SpeedFan to monitor temperature and fan speeds.
• 3DMark05 as a 3D benchmark.
• 3DMark06 as a 3D benchmark.
• Seasonic Power Angel AC power meter, used to measure the power consumption of the system.
• Custom-built, four-channel variable DC power supply, used to regulate the CPU fan speed.

Our main test procedure is designed to determine the overall system power consumption at various states (measured using a Seasonic Power Angel). To stress Intel Pentium E/Core 2 CPUs we use Prime95 (large FFTs setting) to maximize heat and power consumption. For AMD X2 CPUs we use CPUBurn K7 as it seems to tax AMD processors more. To stress the IGP, we use ATITool artifact scanner, ATITool 3DView, or FurMark, whichever application is found to be more power hungry.

We also test platform's proficiency at playing back high definition videos. Standard Blu-ray movies 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.

Our main video test suite features a variety of 1080p H.264/VC-1 encoded clips. The clips are played with PowerDVD and a CPU usage graph is created by the Windows Task Manger for analysis to determine the approximate mean CPU usage. High CPU usage is indicative of poor video decoding ability on the part of the integrated graphics subsystem. If the video (and/or audio) skips or freezes, we conclude the board's IGP (in conjunction with the processor) is adequate to decompress the clip properly.

Cool'n'Quiet was enabled (unless otherwise noted). The following features/services were disabled during testing to prevent spikes in CPU/HDD usage that are typical of fresh Vista installations:

• Windows Sidebar
• Indexing
• Superfetch

Video Test Suite

1080p | 24fps | ~10mbps

H.264: Rush Hour 3 Trailer 1 is a H.264 encoded clip inside an Apple Quicktime container.

1080p | 24fps | ~8mbps

WMV-HD: Coral Reef Adventure Trailer is encoded in VC-1 using the WMV3 codec commonly recognized by the "WMV-HD" moniker.

1080p | 24fps | ~19mbps

VC-1: Drag Race is a recording of a scene from network television re-encoded with TMPGEnc using the WVC1 codec, a more demanding VC-1 codec.

1080p | 24fps | ~33mbps

Blu-ray: Disturbia is a short section of the Blu-ray version of Disturbia, the motion picture, played directly off the Blu-ray disc. It is encoded with H.264/AVC.