For comparison with the IC7, we have 875 based solutions from Soyo and Asus, and for reference an 865 based solution from Albatron. The Abit board was flashed to the latest 1.6 BIOS, which provides "game accelerator" functions in the BIOS, superior memory comparability and better performance. The CPU is a 3.0GHz C, memory is set to 1:1 with some OCZ Dual Channel PC3200 Platinum (Cas 2, 5-2-2).
First up, sysmark office productivity. Its a useful benchmark as it uses real-world applications and times a preset series of operations returning an arbitrary "sysmark" score for comparison to other systems. With the latest bios, the IC7 is a couple of points ahead of the competition, with the 865 predictably falling a little short.
Unreal Tournament 2003 has become a bit of a defacto standard in a modern PC review, and I have chosen the subsystem dependant flyby benchmark, courtesy of the highly useful [H]ard|OCP benchmarking tool which you can grab here.
Once again the IC7 is highly competitive with the opposition, a 1fps spread covers the 875 competition, which is well within the benchmarks margin for error.
3DMark 2001SE is a useful test as it stresses not only the graphics subsystem, but also the CPU and memory busses as well, unlike its replacement 3DMark 2003, which is a pure graphics card benchmark.
The difference is once again minimal across the board, all well within the margin for error in this benchmark.
Finally, Sisoft Sandra. We don't use the CPU tests any more for the simple reason that any fluctuation is due to slight FSB differences between the competition. In the memory bandwidth test we can see the new BIOS helps the IC7 to out do the former king, the Asus P4C800, by an unnoticeable margin.
Any more benchmarks would be a waste of your bandwidth, and hours of my time. It seems an 875 motherboard is an 875 motherboard, with no noticeable differences across any of the contenders. Let's move on to the fun stuff.
