ASUS M4A78T-E 790GX AM3 Motherboard Review

System Benchmarks

When running the SuperPI 32MB benchmark, we are calculating Pi to 32 million digits and timing the process. Obviously more CPU power helps in this intense calculation, but the memory sub-system also plays an important role, as does the operating system.


An enthusiast favourite, SuperPi excels at revealing how the processing and memory sub-systems are performing and it can demonstrate the slightest performance variances. In this case, our overclocked configuration really shines in this benchmark, reducing the overall time by over 5 minutes. This represents an almost 26% performance improvement from a 32% CPU overclock, which is strong scaling result. In a benchmark in which every second matters, this a massive gain.



The latest iteration of the popular system benchmark is PCMark Vantage from the Futuremark crew. The PCMark series has always been a great way to either test specific areas of a system or to get a general overview of how your system is performing. For our results, we simply run the basic benchmark suite which consists of a wide range of tests involving all the sub-systems of the computer.


Almost not quite as impressive as above, the roughly 11% performance gain achieved in this PCMark Vantage is quite respectable since it represents an improvement in overall system performance. Despite the fact that this benchmark tests all critical sub-systems, it is evident that nearly all the gains are isolated in the CPU-dependent Communication and Productivity sections.



Developed by MAXON, creators of Cinema 4D, Cinebench 10 is designed using the popular Cinema software and created to compare system performance in 3D Animation and Photo applications. There are two parts to the test; the first stresses only the primary CPU or Core, the second, makes use of up to 16 CPUs/Cores. Both are done rendering a realistic photo while utilizing various CPU-intensive features such as reflection, ambient occlusion, area lights and procedural shaders.


Cinebench demonstrates the multi-threading processing power our triple-core X3 720 BE chip . In this test, we see a roughly 28% performance improvement, which is a quite linear to the 32% increase in CPU clocks.



Tech Arp's recent development of the x264 HD Benchmark takes a 30 second HD video clip and encodes it into the x264 codec with the intention of little to no quality loss. The test is measured using the average frames per second achieved during encoding, which scales with processor speed and efficiency. The benchmark also allows the use of multi-core processors so it gives a very accurate depiction of what to expect when using encoding application on a typical full length video.


Although not really an encoding powerhouse, our Phenom II X3 chip achieves a 32% performance boost through overclocking, which in this case equates to a decent 3.5 frames per second improvement.



Unlike the DivX conversion program we just looked at, Lame Front End is not multi-threaded and only utilizes a single processor core. This will obviously limit performance but we should still achieve significant time savings going from the stock to the overclocked settings. We will be encoding a WAV rip of Santana’s Supernatural album and converting it to MP3 using the VBR 0 quality preset.


LFE is a single-threaded application that allows the ripping of a CD in a matter of minutes. It reveals nearly perfect performance scaling, with a 31.5% gain from a 32% overclock. In practical terms, we were able to shave approximately 1 minute off of this task through overclocking.



For the image editing portion of this review, we will use Photoshop CS3 in coordination with Driver Heaven’s Photoshop Benchmark V3, which is an excellent test of CPU power and memory bandwidth. This is a scripted benchmark that individually applies 15 different filters to a 109MB JPEG, and uses Photoshop’s built-in timing feature to provide a result at each test stage. Then it’s simply a matter of adding up the 15 results to reach the final figure.


Impressive. At 3.7Ghz, our overclocked configuration was able to complete the Photoshop test a full minute and half faster than at stock. This represents an almost 40% improvement in image-editing performance. This is greater than the 32% CPU overclock, but this is could simply attributed to benchmarking variances, which are fairly significant with Photoshop.



The last of our real-life tests will be with the highly popular & multi-threaded WinRAR 3.8.0 tool, in which we take a 1GB batch of assorted files and archive them, timing the task until completion.


WinRAR is a tool that we use countless times per day, so any performance improvement can provide some welcome time savings. Our overclocked Phenom II X3 system finished the compression task a solid 42 seconds faster than at stock, which is a worthwhile 20% performance improvement.