Content Creation is the only "real world" application benchmark that is currently in my benchmark suite for using with motherboards. For the most part application benchmarks tend to vary a little bit too much for me.

A 5.5% increase in performance from the applications listed above is a very welcome boost. Content creation does enjoy lots of memory bandwidth but it of course is not the #1 bottlekneck for these apps. I believe the bus speed and hard drive access speed are considerably more important to these types of applications.

Quake 3

If you need an explanation of what Quake 3 is you need a good slap. It's a GAME! What stresses a system better than a game? My reasoning for running this benchmark at such a low resolution is to truly have the memory and CPU as the bottleneck. If I were to use say 1024 or higher the video card is starting to be a limitation. We of course turned off all eye candy and use 16bit color even. It looks horrible but approaching 300 frames per second is quite a sight!

Good old 640x480 Quake 3 stresses the CPU and memory system about as well as anything that I know.

Only a 3.7% boost was seen in Quake 3 which further Solidifies what Sandra showed.

3DMark 2001 SE

Probably the only benchmark with groupies. This is a graphical benchmark that relies heavily on your CPU, Memory, and video card. The last of which is the biggest factor. Using Remedy Entertainment's acclaimed MAX-FX Technology, 3DMark2001 SE takes advantage of DirectX 8.1 and demonstrates some of the sweetest looking graphics and scenery that is possible using today's hardware. The scenes will be CRAWLING unless you have a good 3d accelerator.

3DMark 2001 SE is a synthetic gaming environment that is used by many to determine their Direct3d performance.

With a 1.8% increase in 3DMark It really makes you wonder where this 25% increase in memory bandwidth is going.

Results

Basically what we expected. The 25% increase in bandwidth brings a very small performance boost but isn't such a big improvement that you need to run out and upgrade. With the biggest improvement being only 5.5% you can't justify an upgrade from the performance standpoint alone. The CPU simply can't get the data through it's bus fast enough to process it and show a real performance boost. If you were to run your system bus at 166 you would see a considerably bigger performance boost. Unfortunately this board just can't run that kind of bus speed stable enough for me to show you.