Shuttle SB65G2: The Test

Since the SB65G2 even does away with on-board video, we were able to run our full suite of benchmarks with our standard ATI Radeon 9800 PRO video card. Yes, this is the card that supposedly requires a large power supply for best performance; and yes, this is a card that requires auxiliary power. However, even with a loaded system, there was still a spare Molex connector for the video card, and the system ran cool and stable even with our standard 3.0GHz Pentium 4 as our CPU.


 Performance Test Configuration
Processor(s): Intel 3.0 800FSB Pentium 4
RAM: 2 x 512MB Mushkin PC3500 Level II DS
2 x 256MB Corsair 3200LL SS
Hard Drive(s): Maxtor 120GB 7200 RPM (8MB Buffer)
Western Digital 120GB 7200 RPM (8MB Buffer)
Bus Master Drivers: Intel INF Update v5.00.1012
Intel IAA for 875P RAID not installed for consistency of Test Results
Video Card(s): ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB (AGP 8X)
Video Drivers: ATI Catalyst 3.6
Operating System(s): Windows XP Professional SP1
Motherboards: Shuttle XPC SB65G2 (865PE) @ 200.5 MHz
Asus P4C800-E (875P) @ 200.5 MHz
ABIT IS7-G (865PE)
ABIT IC7-G (875P)
Gigabyte 8KNXP (875P)

Recent performance tests on Intel 875/865 boards used 2x512MB Mushkin PC3500 Level II Double-bank memory. Previous tests of Intel motherboards used 2x256MB Corsair 3200LL Ver. 1.1.

All performance tests were run with the ATI 9800 PRO 128MB video card with AGP Aperture set to 128MB with Fast Write enabled. Resolution in all benchmarks is 1024x768x32.

Additions to Performance Tests

We have standardized on ZD Labs Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2003 and ZD Labs Business Winstone 2002 for system benchmarking. We are no longer reporting SysMark2002 results as part of our standard benchmark suite.

Game Benchmarks

We have added Gun Metal DirectX Benchmark 2 from Yeti Labs as a standard game benchmark. We are also evaluating the new X2 Benchmark, which includes Transform and Lighting effects as part of the standard benchmarks. Results are reported here for reference. Jedi Knight II has been dropped form our standard Benchmark Suite. We were forced to use different patches for operation on Athlon and Intel Pentium 4, which made cross-platform comparison difficult, if not impossible. In addition, Opteron/Athlon64 requires a 3rd patching variation for benchmarking. JK2 uses a Quake engine, and we are continuing to use Quake3 as a standard benchmark for the time being.

BIOS and Overclocking Gaming and Media Encoding Performance
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  • Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - link

    Is there any information about the version of the motherboard used in this review?

    My SB61 motherboard actually reads:
    - SB61/SB65
    - Version 2.1

    ...so I`m curious.

    Take it easy,
    James
  • Wesley Fink - Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - link

    Shuttle has just updated the SB65G2 and now includes the ICH5R Southbridge with SATA RAID and a slightly larger 220W Power Supply. Since this is an early sample for review, it is likely the SB65G2s you will find for sale will include these updated components.
  • Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - link

    Shuttles sff boxes are sooooooo tempting to me. The lac of PAT is generally not THAT big of an issue as pretty much all modern games these days are video card limited and older games while maybe more cpu sensitive are typically running blindingly fast anyway.

    Alas the shuttle box I want would have a topline cpu, a topline radeon (9800Pro or higher), a gig of ram, an audigy2, a cd burner and (here's the killer) a pair of raided 10K sata drives. I am just waaaaaay to uneasy about throwing all that into a little sff box with a teeny 200w power supply. :(

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