17. And the most demanding resolution: 1600*1200
KT7A-RAID
KR7A-RAID
AN7

3dmark 2000 results for nforce2 and KT266A are too close to declare a winner; meanwhile the looser is KT133A again!

18. We switch to 3dmark 2001 - the de facto standard for testing socket 462/478.
First, as always, is the 1024*768 resolution, default settings as set by 3dmark itself:
Abit KT7A-RAID
Abit KR7A-RAID
Abit an7

19. 3dmark 2001 at 1280*1024 resolution all settings maxed out:
Abit KT7A-RAID
Abit KR7A-RAID
Abit AN7

20. and the final and most demanding settings: 1600*1200 max details:
Abit KT7A-RAID
Abit KR7A-RAID
Abit AN7

In 3dmark 2001 nforce2 has a very small lead - 2% - over KT266A, not enough to secure a victory; however the real problem lies with KT133A: as the resolution and level of details increase the delta between KT133A and its DDR competitors also increase!

21. We reached the final 3dmark: 2003! Again default settings at 1024*768 resolution:
Abit KT7A-RAID
Abit KR7A-RAID
Abit AN7

22. Increasing the resolution to 1280*1024 and max details will result in the following scores:
Abit KT7A-RAID
Abit KR7A-RAID
Abit AN7

23. At the 1600*1200 resolution we get lower scores and again KT133A is last:
Abit KT7A-RAID
Abit KR7A-RAID
Abit AN7 - overall score and FPS obtained during sound tests

nforce2 ultra and KT266A are battling for the first place with 1% difference between them, while KT133A brings up the rear!

24&25 Again average framerate obtained in the NO SOUND test and 24 SOUNDS test reveal that Abit KT7A-raid has a fundamental problem with the Creative Live card: 35% - no sound - and 45 % - 24 sound - slower than KT266A; meanwhile nforce2 ultra is far up in front with a 13% in the no sound test and 62% !!! in the 24 sounds test lead over KT266A.
Thanks to sound storm nforce2 ultra scores another victory in 3dmark 2003!

29. 3dmark 2005 can not be tested as it requires SSE instruction set so we switch to the one and only GUI test in the whole suite: TOM2D
Abit KT7A-RAID
Abit KR7A-RAID
Abit AN7

Finally KT133A escapes the last place as it overtakes KT266A in Tom2D; again nforce2 shows us that is the best performer an adds another victory to its tally!

30&31 Overall system performance is tested in PCMark: 2002 is the first version!
Abit KT7A-RAID
Abit KR7A-RAID
Abit AN7

PCMark 2002:
CPU score: VIA KT133A and SDRAM limits the performance of the processor, even at 1200 MHz; KT266A and nforce2 are close to each other with a small lead by nforce2.
RAM score: nforce2 shows everyone who's the boss as it leads the pack!
HDD score: different drives so it is not taken into account!

32&33&34 PCMark 2004 is the last version to be tested as PCMark 2005 requires SSE:

PCMark 2004 short summary: VIA KT133A is NOT a good match for the Athlon even one with a 200 Mhz FSB!
Long summary: CPU score - only KT133A is lagging behind, the others score very close
Memory score: being 29% slower than KT266A is not good for KT7A-raid; with a 11% lead nforce2 ultra scores another victory!
Graphic score: again nforce2 is better than everyone else!

38&39&40. We finally reach the games and the first one is Farcry 1 from 2004, my favorite Farcry version!
Abit KT7A-raid is first; only the resolution is different, the settings are maxed out every time, including AA. I used HardwareOC bench tool to provide accurate and repeatable testing conditions. Because the results are in HTML format I do not have screen shots saved but I will put all of them in one archive for anyone interested.

1024*768

Far Cry Benchmark

The benchmark started at 10.10.2024 20:03:48

System Information
Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP
System memory: 1,0 GB
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) processor
CPU speed: 1200 MHz
Sound system: : SB Live! Wave Device
VGA Information
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
Memory: 256.0 MB
Current GPU speed: 560 MHz
Current memory speed: 700 MHz
Driver version: 6.14.0010.9371 (English)

Resolution: 1024×768
Ultra quality option, Direct3D renderer
Level: Volcano, demo: hocvolcano.tmd
Pixel shader: default model
Antialising: 8×
Anisotropic filtering: 16×
HDR: disabled
Geometry Instancing: disabled
Normal-maps compression: disabled

Score = 23,89 FPS

Copyright 2002 - 2006 Zoltan Nemeth - Roadside

1280*1024 resolution:

The benchmark started at 12.10.2024 05:32:59

System Information
Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP
System memory: 1,0 GB
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) processor
CPU speed: 1200 MHz
Sound system: : SB Live! Wave Device
VGA Information
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
Memory: 256.0 MB
Current GPU speed: 560 MHz
Current memory speed: 700 MHz
Driver version: 6.14.0010.9371 (English)

Resolution: 1280×1024
Ultra quality option, Direct3D renderer
Level: Volcano, demo: hocvolcano.tmd
Pixel shader: default model
Antialising: 8×
Anisotropic filtering: 16×
HDR: disabled
Geometry Instancing: disabled
Normal-maps compression: disabled

Score = 23,90 FPS

And KT7A-raid scores an average of 23FPS at the most demanding resolution: 1600*1200

The benchmark started at 12.10.2024 05:24:04

System Information
Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP
System memory: 1,0 GB
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) processor
CPU speed: 1200 MHz
Sound system: : SB Live! Wave Device
VGA Information
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
Memory: 256.0 MB
Current GPU speed: 560 MHz
Current memory speed: 700 MHz
Driver version: 6.14.0010.9371 (English)

Resolution: 1600×1200
Ultra quality option, Direct3D renderer
Level: Volcano, demo: hocvolcano.tmd
Pixel shader: default model
Antialising: 8×
Anisotropic filtering: 16×
HDR: disabled
Geometry Instancing: disabled
Normal-maps compression: disabled

Score = 23,18 FPS