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Performance in Games
The Condor can make a good office machine – that goes without arguing. But can this system be made into a powerful gaming computer? The chipset and the mainboard permit that, but what about the PSU and the cooling system? I will try to answer these questions and will also share with you the benchmark results.
I tried to load the system fully using an ATI RADEON X800 Pro graphics card and an engineering sample of the Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz processor (Prescott core). Of course, it is rather unwise to put so hot a processor into a barebone system, but I got a real gaming station instead.
For comparison’s sake, I benchmarked an ASUS P4C800 Deluxe mainboard, too.
System | FIC SFF Condor | ASUS P4C800 Deluxe |
Chipset | i865PE | i875P |
CPU | Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz (Prescott) | |
Memory | 2 x 256MB Kingston PC3500 HyperX | |
Cooler | TaiSol CPU Cooler | Zalman CNPS-7000A-Cu |
Thermal interface | Stock thermal paste | KPT-8 thermal paste |
Graphics card | ATI Radeon X800 Pro | |
OS | MS Windows XP SP1, DX 9.0b, Catalyst 4.6 | |
The processor worked at its nominal frequency on both mainboards.
The memory settings were different, however:
I couldn’t adjust the memory timings that the FIC mainboard selected automatically. Then, this i865PE-based mainboard doesn’t boast an analog of Performance Acceleration Technology available in the i875P-based board. Evidently, the system with the P4C800 is going to be faster in tests.
