We measured the overall performance of this motherboard using SYSmark2004, which is a software that simulates the use of real-world applications. Thus, we consider this the best software to measure, in practical terms, the system performance.

The benchmarks are divided into two groups:

• Internet Content Creation: Simulates the authoring of a website containing text, images, videos and animations. The following programs are used: Adobe After Effects 5.5, Adobe Photoshop 7.01, Adobe Premiere 6.5, Discreet 3ds Max 5.1, Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, Macromedia Flash MX, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9, McAfee VirusScan 7.0 and Winzip 8.1.
• Office Productivity: Simulates the use of an office suite, i.e., simulates sending e-mails, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. The following programs are used: Adobe Acrobat 5.05, Microsoft Office XP SP2, Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1, NaturallySpeaking 6, McAfee VirusScan 7.0 and Winzip 8.1.

The software delivers specific results for each batch and also an overall performance result, all in a specific SYSmark2004 unit.

We ran this software in two scenarios. First using its on-board video. Then we disabled its on-board video and installed a GeForce 7800 GTX from XFX to compare it with an ASUS M2N32-SLI De Luxe, which is a high-end socket AM2 motherboard based on NVIDIA nForce MCP 590 SLI chipset. Our idea was to see if this motherboard would achieve the same performance level of a high-end motherboard when we installed a high-end video card on it.

With its on-board video enabled ECS RS485M-M achieved the same performance level of ASUS M2N32-SLI De Luxe with a GeForce 7800 GTX installed.

When we installed our GeForce 7800 GTX on the reviewed motherboard, its overall score increased 3.40%, making it to achieve an overall score 4.29% higher than ASUS M2N32-SLI De Luxe. In this scenario the reviewed motherboard was 3.56% faster on the Internet Content Creation batch and 5.14% on the Office Productivity batch that ASUS M2N32-SLI De Luxe. We were quite amused by these results and we ran SYSmark2004 again on both motherboards, with the same results. We will discuss more about this in our Conclusions section.