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With the rather plain brown PCB, the NB70-SC looks quite drab in the face of the red and black coloured boards we have been seeing so much of these days.
77% Rating: 
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DFI NB70-SC |
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3DMark2001, QIII Benchmarks, Conclusions
3DMark2001 is the latest installment
in the 3DMark series by MadOnion. By combining DirectX8 support with completely
new graphics, it continues to provide good overall system benchmarks. 3DMark2001
has been created in cooperation with the major 3D accelerator and processor
manufacturers to provide a reliable set of diagnostic tools. The suite
demonstrates 3D gaming performance by using real-world gaming technology to test
a system's true performance abilities. Tests include: DirectX8 Vertex Shaders,
Pixel Shaders and Point Sprites, DOT3 and Environment Mapped Bump Mapping,
support for Full Scene Anti-aliasing and Texture Compression and two game tests
using Ipion real-time physics. Higher 3DMark scores denote better performance.
| 3DMark 2001 Benchmark Results |
|
DFI NB70-SC |
3DMarks |
Ranking |
| 1. |
3DMarks |
6063 |
 |
| 2. |
3DMarks |
6190 |
 |
The 3DMark 2001 scores are quite respectable for the test system setup.
3DMark2001 has SSE2 support written into it. Even overclocking
slightly brings a nice boost. We're probably more videocard limited
then anything else here.
Quake III Arena is a First Person Shooter (FPS)
that revolutionized gaming as we know it. Using multiple light sources and
having graphics textures that can fill videocards, even after 3 years it's still
able to bring a cutting edge system to its knees.
| Quake III Arena Fastest demo001 |
|
FSB |
FPS |
Ranking |
| 1. |
100 MHz |
226.6 |
|
| 2. |
108 MHz |
231.5 |
|
| Quake III Arena Fastest nv15demo |
|
FSB |
FPS |
Ranking |
| 1. |
100 MHz |
62 |
|
| 2. |
108 MHz |
62.7 |
|
In demo001 we see some really nice scores. Quake III has always liked the P4
and it's memory bandwidth, and increasing FSB seems to help out quite a
bit! In the more CPU intensive benchmark, nv15demo, there's almost no
difference. Let's crank up the resolution a little...
| Quake III Arena MAX 1024x768 demo001 |
|
FSB |
FPS |
Ranking |
| 1. |
100 MHz |
146.8 |
|
| 2. |
108 MHz |
149.5 |
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| Quake III Arena MAX 1024x768 nv15demo |
|
FSB |
FPS |
Ranking |
| 1. |
100 MHz |
41.6 |
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| 2. |
108 MHz |
41.9 |
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At higher resolutions, the videocard becomes the bottleneck. Perhaps if we were
using a GeForce3 Ti500 or Radeon8500, the scores would be a little farther apart.
Anyway's the difference is less, but that's more to do with the videocard
than any other factor.
Conclusions:
Overall, our first experience with a DFI motherboard is good one. The
NB70 isn't a speed demon, but then again that's not to be expected for a
board that is retailing for about $140 CDN.
For DFI's
target customers, the NB70-SC offers both value and good performance. It's not as
fast as RDRAM based P4's, but it is faster then SDRAM ones. During
testing the system was rock solid even when it was overclocked. We didn't see one
single crash which is usually a sign of Intel quality.
The general layout of the NB-70 was pretty good, but I really don't like to see floppy drive connectors located so low on the PCB. It seems as though more and more mainboard manufacturers are doing this, so maybe they know something I don't!
With the NB-70 there are five usable PCI slots, so there is plenty of room for expansion. The board is limited to just two DIMM slots, but that would be more more Intel's fault then DFI's.
In terms of overclocking and tweaking there are almost no options. Remember though that this is $140 board so we don't really expect to see lots of bells and whistles that would probably
never be used.
The level of performance the NB-70 showed us wasn't out
of spec to what we have been seeing from most i845D based systems so overall,
it could be worth considering if you are looking for a stable 'value' board
for just general use.
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3DMark2001
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