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Comanche Bench

Comanche 4 Bench results are similarly impresive. If the GNB didn't have dual channel memory support, we'd all be yawning right now since the board shows a shocking 3FPS deficit compared to the 850 board. Remember, in Comanche benchmarks, 1FPS differences are very significant - upgrading from a 2100+ to a 2200+ will usually give you around 1FPS increase on this benchmark, all things given equal. Now knowing that, look at the ridiculous 5FPS jump when we plugged in our Dual Channel OCZ memory into the GNB Max! Now, suddenly, the GNB is ahead of the Intel reference RDRAM board by 2FPS!

3Dmarks 2001SE

The results here are no cause for excitement, since they're a letdown after the Comanche and UT2003 results. Yet the fact that the GNB Dual Channel results can come so close to the 850/RDRAM pair really is a cause for celebration.

Conclusion.

We witnessed the power of Dual Channel memory before in our FIC AU11 Nforce2 board review, and here that lesson is repeated, but with even greater emphasis on the amazing performance benefits of operating in Dual Channel mode. We were never expecting the GNB to outperform the RDRAM setup, so it was quite a surprise to find that in Dual Channel mode the GNB Max could outperform the 850/RDRAM system in PCMark, Sysmark, UT2003, Comanche, and Sisoft Sandra. I think wider spectrum of benchmarks would have shown that the GNB Max (and other Granite Bay boards) in Dual Channel mode would hold their own against an RDRAM setup... and this alone makes the GNB a very impressive board.

Performance wise, the board is really strong. However, the lack of options in the BIOS make this an undesirable option for hardcore users and tweakers. Regardless, the array of features, support for AGP8X, Dual Channel memory, USB2.0, and high performance make this an ideal board for a workstation, or for users who have no need for any overclocking features and want the best stock performance bang for the bug.