LE370 Benchmarks

System Setup

Intel Celeron 400
Iwill LE370 motherboard
Corsair PC-100 3.3v SDRAM - 1x128MB
nVidia reference RivaTNT - STB Velocity 4400
     Driver version 4.10.01.0152
Western Digital Caviar 26400 6.4GB EIDE HD

Special thanks to U-tron Technologies and Corsair Memory for test-bed systems and peripherals.

Benchmarks

(All tests run under a clean install of Windows 98)
Quake II 3.20 - 640x480x8
     Default Settings
Ziff Davis Winbench 99 - 1024x768x16
     CPUMark99
     FPUMark
     Business Diskmark99
Ziff Davis Winstone 99 - 1024x768x16

Iwill LE370
Benchmark	Score
CPUMark99	29.3
FPUMark	2120
Business Diskmark	2710
Business Winstone99	20.3
Quake2 Demo1 Software	20.1
Quake2 Crusher Software	13.9

There is nothing outstanding about the benchmarks, nor is there anything lacking. The LE370 is a good performer, and doesn't appear to be lacking in any major regard. Two scores that seemed to be lower to me than they should've been were the benchmarks for the Quake 2 demos. I was expecting somewhat higher numbers there, based on the processor that I was using, since the demos were run in software mode. The motherboard did run with stability throughout the suite of benchmarks, however, as some motherboards may crash during benchmarking software sometimes.

The Aureal Vortex

Certainly, the high point of the LE370 is the inclusion of Aureal's Vortex 3D sound chipset, whose features are shown off in the likes of the Turtle Beach Montego and Diamond Monster Sound MX200. With today's big push towards PCI and 3D sound, who can stand by and be happy with bare-bones 16-bit sound? Simply having the ability to play from multiple sources simultaneously (such as hearing ICQ messages while listening to MP3s or while in the middle of a game) is worth the upgrade.

We tested the motherboard with several A3D and DirectSound applications, including Half-Life, Unreal, Motorhead, and Starcraft. CPU utilization for DirectSound and DirectSound 3D streams stayed markedly low, thanks to Vortex. 3D positional audio in Half-Life and Unreal worked flawlessly, as HRTF output convincingly rendered sound from 360 degrees. A3D 1.0 is even forward-compatible with Aureal's occlusion support from A3D 2.0 (but not reflections), as was evidenced from the applets included in the Aureal Control Panel.