Aopen AX37 Plus Motherboard Review

More Testing

- HD Tach v2.61 (Onboard VT8223 Controller)

Can anybody say "Mature IDE controller" here? The scores are on par with the i815E board this drive normally partners with. 3.5% CPU utilisation is also extremely impressive.

- HD Tach v2.60 (Onboard Promise FastTrack100 "Lite" Controller)

I can't believe this benchmark for two reasons. Firstly, when I tried to run version 2.61 of HD Tach, I got a BSOD no matter what I did. Version 2.60 worked successfully, so I used that. Secondly, these drives are 5400RPM, 2½ years old and performing pretty darn close to the 12-month-old 7200RPM drive above. 1.5% CPU utilisation is astounding. One drive was ATA/33, the other was ATA/66, so this will explain the low burst transfer rate.

- DroneZ

DroneZ is a game that is distributed with almost every GeForce3 shipping, either in its demo or full form. Despite the GeForce3 (and consequently the whole system) being thoroughly thrashed here, the AX37 Plus delivers. 74.1 frames per second, [email protected] color, maximum visual quality. 'Nuff said - the AX37 Plus is a very serious contender to the Intel i815E.

- 3dMark2001

From my research, there are very few non-overclocked Pentium III systems that score in excess of 5000 3DMarks at default settings. The AX37 Plus, teamed with DDR memory and the GeForce3, seem to make an excellent team.

- Quake III Arena (VIA Arena Demo)

The VIA Arena demo was chosen due to it being far more demanding than the reference ones included with Quake III. A solid 63.2 frames per second at 1024x768 32bit color is excellent, as this is a very taxing benchmark indeed.