test system specs:
computer hardware:
processor:	intel 2.0ghz pentium 4
clock speed:	2.00GHz
Motherboard:	MSI 845 Ultra-ARU
Chipset:	Intel i845D
Videocard:	MSI GeForce 3 Ti500 (MS-8850)
Sound Card:	C-Media 8738 (onboard)
Network Card:	DLink DE-528CT
Memory:	256MB Corsair PC2400 CAS2 DDR
Hard Drive:	Samsung SV6004H 5400RPM UDMA100 60GB
CDROM:	Panasonic 48x CD-ROM CR-594-B
Floppy:	Panasonic 1.44MB Floppy Drive
Heatsink:	Arkua 8568
PowerSupply:	Enermax 431Watt
Software Setup	Windows 2000 Pro + SP2 Intel INF's 3.10 DetonatorXP 22.80 DirectX 8.1
Benchmarks	SysMark 2001 Business Winstone 2001 Content Creation 2001 Winbench 99 SiSoft Sandra 2002 Pro 3DMark2001 SE Quake III Arena

Overall System Benchmarks:

BAPCO Sysmark 2001	Source:MadOnion / BAPco

SYSmark2001 uses real world applications concurrently as an accurate way to test the system by following patterns that reflect the way real users work. SYSmark2001's workloads accurately represent today's updated business usage model. The benchmark runs at a realistic execution speed, with think times between application interactions, in order to emulate a desktop user's interaction with the operating system and applications.

Higher numbers denote better performance.

BapCo SysMark 2001 Benchmark Results
	MSI 845 Ultra	Sysmarks	Ranking
1.	Internet Content Creation - 100 MHz	210
2	Internet Content Creation - 108 MHz	221
1	Office Productivity - 100 MHz	139
2.	Office Productivity - 108 MHz	157

The MSI 845 Ultra does pretty well here in SysMark2001. Of course, when it's equipped with a P4 2 GHz CPU, anything looks good!

Winstone 2001	Source: Zdnet

Content Creation Winstone 2001 keeps multiple applications open at once and switches among those applications. Content Creation Winstone 2001's activities focus on what we call "hot spots," periods of activity that make your PC really work--the times where you're likely to see an hourglass or a progress bar.

Business Winstone is a system-level, application-based benchmark that measures a PC's overall performance when running today's Windows-based 32-bit applications on Windows 98 ME, Windows NT 4.0 (SP6 or later), Windows 2000, Windows Me, or Windows XP which runs real applications through a series of scripted activities and uses the time a PC takes to complete those activities to produce its performance scores.

Winstone 2001 Benchmark Results
	MSI 845 Ultra	Scores	Ranking
1.	Content Creation - 100 MHz	62.7
1a.	Content Creation - 108 MHz	65
2.	Business Winstone - 100 MHz	45
2a.	Business Winstone - 108 MHz	47.9

The MSI 845 Ultra gets pretty decent marks here, even in office based applications.

Winbench 99 V1.2	Source: e-Testinglabs.com

WinBench 99 is a subsystem-level benchmark that measures the performance of a PC's graphics, disk, and video subsystems in a Windows environment. WinBench 99's tests can run on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows Me systems.

WinBench 99 v1.2 Benchmark Results
	MSI Ultra 845	Score	Ranking
1.	Business Disk - 100 MHz	5380
1a.	Business Disk - 108 MHz	5190
2.	High-End Disk - 100 MHz	16600
2a.	High-End Disk - 108 MHz	16500
3.	Business Graphics - 100 MHz	533
3a.	Business Graphics - 108 MHz	603
4.	High-End Graphics - 100 MHz	910
4a.	High-End Graphics - 108 MHz	985

For some reason, the disk benchmarks are quite bad! We're no longer using the Maxtor 10GB 5400RPM Ultra/66 HDD for testing motherboards anymore, so it's quite puzzling why the scores are so low. As we can see, the hard drive subsystem doesn't like to be overclocked, however, the graphics benchmarks seem to benefit from the extra little boost a higher FSB gives!

Sisoft Sandra 2001	Source: Sandra

Sandra is designed to test the theoretical power of a complete system and individual components. The numbers taken though are again, purely theoretical and may not represent real world performance.

SiSoft Sandra 2001 Benchmark Results
	MSI 845 Ultra	Score
	Multimedia Benchmark
1.	Integer SSE - 100 MHz	7948 it/s
1a.	Integer SSE - 108 MHz	8610 it/s
2.	Floating-Point SSE - 100 MHz	9674 it/s
2a.	Floating-Point SSE - 160 MHz	10375 it/s
	CPU Benchmark
3.	Dhrystone ALU - 100 MHz	3695 MIPS
3a.	Dhrystone ALU - 108 MHz	4414 MIPs
4.	Whetstone FPU - 100 MHz	1045 FPU/2433 MFLOPS
4a.	Whetstone FPU - 108 MHz	1121 FPU/2610 MFLOPS
	Memory Benchmark
5.	Integer ALU - 100 MHz	2070 MB/s
5a.	Integer ALU - 108 MHz	2233 MB/s
6.	Float FPU - 100 MHz	2066 MB/s
6a.	Float FPU - 108 MHz	2217 MB/s

Here, when the 845 Ultra is teamed up with a 2 GHz P4, it simply chews through all the tests. Memory bandwidth isn't as high as RDRAM, however the board does pretty well considering it's using DDR RAM.