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 the motherboard on-board video, comparing its performance to ECS GeForce6100SM-M, which is based on GeForce 6100-405, and to ECS RS485M-M, which is based on ATI Radeon Xpress X1100.

Then we disabled the board 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, ASUS M2A-VM achieved the same performance level of the other two motherboards with on-board video that we included in our comparison, ECS GeForce 6100SM-M and ECS RS485M-M (Radeon Xpress X1100). It also achieved the same performance level of an ASUS M2N32-SLI De Luxe with a GeForce 7800 GTX installed, which is great.

When we installed our GeForce 7800 GTX on the reviewed board we saw no performance increase on SYSmark2004.