Windows Usage & Benchmarks

Upon first booting the P2-M2A690G, I was disappointed that Splashtop wasn't included. Splashtop is an instant-on Linux desktop that Asus has begun bundling onboard with many of it's motherboards. Regardless of this, I proceeded to install Windows XP and Ubuntu 8.04

I downloaded the latest drivers and utilities from Asus' website, which I had to transfer from my desktop to the unit via flash drive, as the ethernet controller wasn't supported by a default Windows installation. I also made sure to get the latest Catalyst driver from AMD.com.

To benchmark the unit, I've selected the 32-bit varieties of Windows XP and Ubuntu, a Sempron 3400+ to power the unit, and 2GB of WinTel DDR2 RAM. I'll be comparing the unit against my ECS GeForce 6100SM-M motherboard with similar specifications.

As the P2-M2A690G isn't a gaming machine, I'll forego many of our typical benchmarks such as Unreal Tournament 3 and 3dMark Vantage. I do, however, want to look at Super Pi, PC Mark05, 3dMark06, Unreal Tournament 2004, and audio/video CPU utilization.

Super Pi

Super Pi is a program that calculates pi to a specified number of digits after the decimal point. To get the most spread results in a reasonable amount of time, I've set the application to calculate Pi to one million decimal places.

PC Mark05

PC Mark05 aims to benchmark every aspect of PC usage, from gaming, to office productivity, to multimedia creation and viewing. It essentially judges the overall performance of a given system and assigns a score much like 3dMark does for graphics performance.

SiSoft Sandra: Memory Bandwidth

A system's memory bandwidth has everything to do with how fast a system boots, programs load, and operations are carried out. The Sandra Suite has an excellent benchmark for looking at these speeds.