PCMark Vantage Tests

PCMark Vantage is the first objective hardware performance benchmark for PCs running 32 and 64 bit versions of Microsoft Windows Vista. PCMark Vantage is perfectly suited for benchmarking any type of Microsoft Windows Vista PC from multimedia home entertainment systems and laptops to dedicated workstations and hi-end gaming rigs.

Regardless of whether the person benchmarking is an graphic artist or an IT Professional, PCMark Vantage shows the user where their system soars or falls flat, and how to get the most performance possible out of their hardware. PCMark Vantage is easy enough for even the most casual computer user to use, yet supports in-depth, professional industry-grade testing.

Since our hardware configurations used 4GB or more of system memory, we decided that 64-bit Windows Vista would offer a glimpse of real perspective for the 6GB tri-channel DDR3 kit used testing. PCMark Vantage offers several scores for different areas of interest, but because the platform differences between X48 and X58 were so big it was best to keep the bias to a minimum.

Beginning with graphics, the Gigabyte GA-EX58-EXTREME pulled slightly ahead of the Intel DX58SO motherboard even though both utilized the 2.67GHz Core i7-920 CPU on their X58-Express platform. The Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6 did well, but still came in roughly 14% below the QPI-equipped motherboards. It may not be much, but this could be the proof we're looking for to show that gaming can benefit by the Core i7/X58 platform.

The PCMark Vantage 'HDD' score is a little misleading; primarily because we didn't use a hard drive for testing. Instead the Patriot Warp v2 SSD was used, which tests the SATA chipset for bottlenecks with solid state drive products. For all intents the playing field was quite even. The older GA-X48T-DQ6 offered the best score, if even by only a few small percent, but it also had to do so with the secondary JMicron JMB323 SATA controller. Intel's own ICH10(R) Southbridge was right behind, followed by the JMicron JMB322 SATA controller for the Gigabyte GA-EX58-EXTREME.

The last area of interest for PCMark Vantage was the 'memories' score, which I must admit is an unfair comparison of two very dissimilar platforms. Needless to say, the QPI technology gives triple-channel DDR3 a much greater bandwidth (and 8.5 GBps advantage) over dual-channel DDR3. The Gigabyte GA-EX58-EXTREME eeked out a score only a few points higher than Intel's SmackOver motherboard, but both dominated over the X48 platform.

In the next section, we test gaming performance between the platforms with Crysis.

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