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Sandra CPU, Multimedia, and Memory Results

The Soyo 7VDA makes for an interesting comparison against the single CPU, Win98 scores of the DVD266-R as both boards use the same chipset (the Apollo Pro266). These are also the only two to use DDR SDRAM in the tests.

In the Sandra tests, both mobos are quite close to one another, a fair amount ahead of the other boards. The most significant difference comes in the memory test which shows the 7VDA coming on top of the DVD266-R by 40 points in the FPU numbers.

The 2CPU tests under Win2k reveal just how much more number crunching can be done with a dual CPU system. In both the CPU and CPU multimedia tests, the dual processor motherboards pull ahead by almost 100% over the single chip solutions. The 2 CPUs were also able to squeeze out slightly higher memory performance in the memory tests, but still not quite up to the SY-7VDA.

The single CPU numbers show the DVD266-R to be on the top end of the scale in the Winstone tests, again roughly on par with Soyo 7VDA. The dual CPU numbers illustrate a different story. Compared to the single CPU results, the Business Winstone score is only about 3 points greater, whereas the Content Creation Winstone score is close to 8 points greater. This suggests that there are other limitations in the system that come into play such as disk performance, most notably in the Business test. The Content Creation test is much more dependant on CPU performance which is why it does much better with 2 processors.

Winstone 2001 & Quake Timedemo

Since I wasn’t able to tweak the memory settings to the max, the Windows 98 Quake III score is somewhat disappointing. This test is very CPU and memory dependant which is why the Soyo 7VDA performed so well (remember it did very well in the Sandra Memory tests). The 2 CPU tests are quite impressive though with 143.6 fps, but still not as good as the Soyo offering, proving that two processors can only perform as well as the memory bandwidth will allow.

Conclusion

The Iwill DVD266-R is a solid dual socket 370 solution. With the standard memory settings, stability was quite good, but as I noted, some of these tweaks can cause some wanted stability issues – especially for a server or workstation.

The box contents are definitely a strong point thanks to the included coolers. Overall the performance is good and the difference between the single and dual configurations is definitely apparent. This is certainly a sweet choice for those in the market for a dual PIII (or FCPGA Celeron) solution.

Bottom Line

Overall Score: 84%