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Our benchmark system (and competitors) consisted of the following:

• Intel Pentium 4 560 (Prescott 3.6 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, LGA775)
• 2*512 MB OCZ PC4000 Gold Edition VX @ 2.5-3-3-8-1T
• 2*512 MB Corsair XMS2 PC5400UL @ 3-2-2-7-2-1T (DDR2 motherboards)
• Abit AA8XE (Intel 925XE)
• Gigabyte GA-8ANXP-D (Intel 925X)
• NVIDIA nForce 4 for Intel reference board
• Soltek SL-915GPro-FGR (Intel 915G)
• Leadtek WinFast 6600 GT 128 MB PCIe
• Western Digital WD1200JD/JB SATA/IDE hard drives

As you can see, we’ve got a nice selection of boards lined up for comparison. As the P5RD1-V is a cost-oriented product, we’re focusing less on the feature-filled and enthusiast-oriented motherboards, and rather more on the simpler and cheaper ones. We have thrown in the top-notch nForce 4 for Intel reference platform so you can get a view of how the P5RD1-V compares against a high-end performer. When it comes down to it all, the Radeon XPRESS 200 chipset targets Intel's 915G and similar series, as opposed to the enthusiast nForce 4.

Driver versions used were Intel Chipset Software version 6.2.1.1001 for the Intel 915/925 motherboards, NVIDIA nForce 4 platform drivers version 6.39, and NVIDIA Forceware version 66.93.

Note: I was unable to perform any audio-related tests on the P5RD1-V, as I could not get the Realtek audio drivers installed. I spent a total of about 1.5 hours attempting to get the audio working, both with the drivers provided on the CD as well as updated ones off the Internet. Not even a fresh installation of Windows made things budge. Every single time, the driver setup program reported that it could not find any compatible hardware on the system. The on-board audio was enabled in the BIOS throughout all of my attempts.

Note #2: I was also unable to get Windows installed on our usual Western Digital 120 GB SATA hard drive. Neither the SATA driver disk image provided on the CD, nor anything downloaded off ASUS’ site worked – I would press F6 during the Windows XP setup process, it would ask me for a driver disk, it would find the txtsetup.oem file and list the appropriate drivers, and it would even load the drivers. When it came time to copying the drivers over to the hard drive, the setup process complained that it was unable to find the driver files. I tried three different floppy disks with two different floppy drives. I even made a custom XP installation CD with the SATA drivers integrated into the setup – no dice. I resorted to using a Western Digital 120 GB IDE hard drive as the system drive, and then later installed the WD SATA hard drive for HDTach testing.

A list of benchmarks performed is as follows:

• Business Winstone 2004
• Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004
• HDTach
• LAME MP3
• NTTCP
• Rightmark Audio
• SiSoft Sandra
• TMPGEnc MPEG2 Encoding
• XviD Encoding
• Call of Duty
• Comanche 4
• Doom 3
• Half-Life 2
• Halo
• Jedi Knight 2
• Unreal Tournament 2004
• X2 Rolling Demo

Enough delays ... let's see what the P5RD1-V has in store for us!