PCMark Vantage
Futuremark’s newest benchmark suite, PCMark Vantage, was released earlier this year we published an initial article on the new software that looked at some CPU performance as well as providing overviews for all the individual testing suites it uses and what kind of applications they emulate. The new Vantage software takes a much more real-world user-scenario approach to testing that previous PCMark software and as such deserves more time our benchmark analysis.
The ASUS M3A78-T edged out the ECS A790GXM-AD3 for the overall PCMark Vantage crown, but almost every benchmark was close score wise. When you remove the difference in DDR2 and DDR3 memory between these two motherboards, you are pretty much left with identical boards minus the differences between their BIOS and included software. There are also a couple other features that are unique to each board, but the performance results we are seeing indicate that end users will see comparable results whether they choose AM2+ or AM3 that are based off this chipset.
If you haven’t yet done so, I would recommend reading Ryan’s previous article that has a lot of detail on what these PCMark Vantage tests actually do. That will give you a better understanding of the results to aid in your potential purchasing decision.
