Test Setup

Well, we have covered a number of features on the XPC SB61G2 and it is time we moved on to the system performance. Since the SB61G2 is endowed with the new 865G chipset and supports the latest processors with an 800MHz PSB, we used a new P4 2.4GHz supporting this new bus speed as well. This CPU is also commonly referred to as the P4 2.4C, while the P4 2.4GHz that we normally use is referred to as the P4 2.4B and supports a 533MHz PSB only.

The main comparisons in this review would be other previously tested SFF PCs based on the Intel 845G and 845GV, which are the Gigabyte G-MAX FB2CB and Shuttle XPC SB52G2 respectively. Since the Gigabyte system is the better of them both in terms of chipset type, we will pay close attention to this system. For a more complete performance profile, we have also included the SiS 651 platform SFF PCs such as the ECS EZ-Buddie (D1, S4-2) and the MSI MEGA651.

Of course, all these systems were only tested with the P4 2.4B while the XPC SB61G2 was tested with the P4 2.4C; this will allow you to better appreciate the gains obtained by the new platform. Additionally, the XPC SB61G2 used Kingston DDR 400 since it supported PC3200 memory, while the SIS 651 and Intel 845G/GV platforms used only Kingston DDR333 and DDR266 respectively. Since the Intel Extreme Graphics engine automatically resizes its frame buffer needs, we had to standardize the frame buffer parameters for the SiS 651-based systems; 16MB for SYSMark benchmarks while all other tests were set to use 64MB.

Results – SYSmark 2002 & SPECViewPerf

With the increase in memory speed and PSB, the XPC SB61G2 obtained a 12% gain ahead of the Gigabyte FB2CB system in SYSmark 2002. Not bad considering that we are still riding on the same processor frequency and yet obtained such large gains via the increment in PSB and memory bandwidth.

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  Thanks to the new Intel Extreme Graphics 2 and dual channel DDR400, SPECViewPerf exhibited a 22% increment in the XPC SB61G2 when contrasted to the Intel 845G platform.

   

1. Introduction - Shuttle XPC SB61G2
2. The XPC SB61G2 - Exterior
3. The XPC SB61G2 - Interior
4. The XPC SB61G2 - more Interior shoots
5. Test Setup - Results – SYSmark 2002 & SPECViewPerf
6. Results – 3DMark 2001SE
7. Conclusion