Tuesday, May 04, 1999

The performance tests results

All tests were all performed under Windows98.

The system setup was as following:

Motherboard: ECS P5SS-Me
CPU: AMD K6-2 400Mhz
Memory: 64mb PC100 SDram (LGS)
IDE first channel Primary port: Quantum Fireball EIDE ST 3.2A
IDE second channel Primary port: AOpen CD-ROM drive CD-936E
OS: Win98 built 4.10
DirectX 6

Winbench99 CPUmark 99

Not good, not bad, the above CPUmark 99 test results are just averaging the preceding results obtained by the other socket 7 motherboards tested before.

Winstone99

The results of this test are showing much lower performances for the P5SS-Me but you must remember that all other motherboard were tested with the STB Velocity 4400 Riva TNT graphic card...

Video sub-system tests

As we can see, the ECS P5SS-Me onboard graphic card can't really compete against the high end graphic card STB Velocity 4400 TNT. The Sis 530 C onboard graphic card of the ECS P5SS-Me is of course much slower than the Riva TNT graphic card used on the other Super 7 motherboards tested but bear in mind that the price tag of the Velocity 4400 alone is more that this motherboard ! By the way, there are new drivers released by Sis and they are said to be supporting OpenGL as well as a possibility to adjust the screen refresh rate. The new drivers are version 1.02 and they are supposedly 20%- - 30% faster in D3D according to Peter Missel who gave this information to me. Click here to get Sis 530 C drivers version 1.02. Thanks Peter, we sure all appreciate this info :).

Hard disk drive sub-system tests

Instead to use HD Tach 2.52 as usual for this test, I had to use Winbench99 hard disk drive test because HD Tach 2.52 doesn't seem to respond correctly with the chipset used on this motherboard.

The below evaluation table is showing the strong points and the weak points of the tested motherboard. No need to remember to you that we never buy a motherboard only for its performances. Most of today's motherboards are exhibiting performances very close to each others, so, we need additional information in order to help us distinguish what are the real advantages of a motherboard compared to the others and this is exactly where is coming into help this evaluation table.

The score obtained by this motherboard is 78 points out of 100 points. This is probably the score representing a product aimed to the beginners market. The fact that there are both a soundcard and a graphic card already built-in on this motherboard is a good indication that this product is specifically designed to meet the needs of those looking for a cost effective system and this motherboard is a very good representation of such a product.

The strong points

The strong points of the ECS P5SS-Me are: a good Overclocking and a great versatility offered by its jumpers settings and the fact that a graphic card and a soundcard are already built-in.

The weak points

The weak points of this motherboard are: the very restricted number of memory banks, the restricted number of PCI slots and the average overall performances.

Conclusions

Even if this motherboard is not a high performance motherboard it doesn't mean that is worthless. In my opinion, the ECS P5SS-Me is a very interesting products for peoples with low budgets looking for a good startup kit. Once you have this motherboard, you have the main part of what is required to built a complete system. Thus, don't look to this motherboard as just another super 7 motherboard but as a very good basis to built a low cost computer system from scratch.

For any additional information, please visit Elitegroup's web site.