HOW WE CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEM:

When configuring the Iwill XP4-G, the first thing we did was enter the system BIOS and loaded the "Optimized Defaults".  We then configured our RAM to run at 166MHz (DDR333), with the timings set by SPD.  The hard drive was then formatted, and Windows XP Professional (SP1) was installed.  When the installation was complete, we hit the Windows Update site and downloaded all of the available patches, with the exception of the ones related to Windows Messenger and Media Player 9.  Then we installed all of the necessary drivers, and removed Windows Messenger from the system altogether.  Auto-Updating and System Restore were then disabled, and we setup a 768MB permanent swap file on the same partition as the Windows folder.  Lastly, we set Windows XP's Visual Effects to "best performance", installed the benchmarking software, defragged the hard drive and ran our tests.  We used an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro in all of the benchmarks you'll see here.  The Iwill XP4-G is also equipped with Intel's "Extreme Graphics" controller, but we chose not to use it for any testing.  We have already tested Intel's integrated graphics here and here, and as you can see the performance is anything but "extreme"...

The HotHardware Test System A Pair of i845s

SiSoft SANDRA Benchmarks Our girl SANDRA does her thang...

SANDRA, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant, is a set of information and diagnostic utilities, developed by the folks at SiSoftware. SANDRA isn't only a tool for benchmarking though, it also provides a host of other useful information about your hardware and operating system. We ran four of the built-in sub-system tests that comprise the SANDRA 2003 suite (CPU, Multimedia, Memory and File System).  All of these tests were run with the CPU set to its default clock speed of 2.4GHz (18 x 133MHz).

          
CPU @ 2.4GHZ                                                  M.M. @ 2.4GHZ

          
MEM. @ 2.4GHZ                                              H.D. @ 2.4GHZ

According to SANDRA, the XP4-G's performance was on par with similarly configured reference systems.  In the CPU Arithmetic Benchmark, Iwill's conservative default motherboard timings show the XP4-G falling just shy of the reference scores for a 2.4GHz P4.  In fact, the same holds true in the CPU Multimedia and Memory Bandwidth benchmarks as well.  File system performance was also fine.  We have achieved very similar scores using this same drive in other motherboard reviews.

PCMark2002 Benchmarks Some More Synthetic Action

Next, we ran some tests with Futuremark's PCMark2002 benchmarking suite.  Like other synthetic benchmarks, it is difficult to translate PCMark2002 scores into "real world" performance.  However, because it is very easy to run, and produces repeatable, comparable results, PCMark2002 has become a staple here in the H.H. labs.  We ran PCMark2002's CPU and Memory performance modules on the XP4-G and again on a similarly configured desktop system based on Abit's IT7-Max2 v2.0.  For the remainder of this review, we'll be comparing the XP4-G's performance to the Abit board.  The CPU module incorporates the following tests:

CPU Test:

• JPEG decompression

• Zlib compression & decompression

• Text search

• MP3 Audio Conversion

• 3D Vector Calculation

PCMark2002's CPU results show the Abit IT7-Max2 with an extremely slight advantage over the Iwill XP4-G.  With a mature platform like the i845, using basically the same supporting hardware, software and drivers, performance differences between similarly configured systems should be non-existent.  And so far, that's what we're seeing here.

Memory Test Technical details: (Quoted Taken From Futuremark.Com)

Raw read, write, and read-modify-write operations are performed starting from a 3072 kilobytes array decreasing in size to 1536 KB, 384 KB, 48 KB and finally 6 KB. Each size of block is tested two second and the amount of accessed data is given as result. In the STL container test a list of 116 byte elements is constructed and sorted by an integer pseudo-random key. The list is then iterated through as many times as possible for 2 seconds and the total size of the accessed elements is given as result. There are 6 runs of this test, with 24576 items in the largest run corresponding to a total data amount of 1536 KB, decreasing in size to 12288 items (768 KB), 6144 items (384 KB), 1536 items (96 KB), 768 items (48 KB) and 96 items in the smallest run corresponding to 6 KB of total data.

We saw more of the same with PCMark2002's Memory performance module.  The IT-Max2 pulled ahead of the XP4-G by a mere 15 points, which falls well within the margin of error for this test.  Up to this point, the Iwill XP4-G has hung tough, and performed at virtually the same level as the "full sized" IT7-Max2 based system using synthetic testing tools.  Will the story change when we move on to the "Real World" benchmarks?  Let's find out...

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