ASUS M2A-VM Motherboard Review

3D Performance: 3DMark2001 SE

To evaluate AMD 690G 3D performance we installed two low-end video cards on ASUS M2A-VM: GeForce 6200 TurboCache with 64 MB and 64-bit interface (from XFX) and GeForce 6200 with 128 MB and 128-bit interface (from Leadtek).
We also installed a high-end video card, GeForce 7800 GTX, on it and compared its performance to a high-end motherboard with the same video card installed, ASUS M2N32-SLI De Luxe.
We ran several programs, as you will see in the next pages. The amount of RAM memory the chipset “steals” from the main RAM memory to be used as video memory was left on its default value, which is 64 MB. On this motherboard you have the following configurations: 32 MB, 64 MB, 128 MB and 256 MB.
The first one, 3DMark2001 SE, measures 3D performance by making DirectX 8.1 simulations, and the results you can see below (we ran it using its default configuration). All the listed video cards were installed on ASUS M2A-VM.

On 3DMark2001 SE AMD 690G was 4.89% faster than GeForce 6100-405, however it was 8.75% slower than Radeon X1100, which is not a good thing. It was also beaten by the two low-end PCI Express video cards we installed: GeForce 6200 TC (64 MB, 64-bit) was 74.50% faster and GeForce 6200 (128 MB, 128-bit) was 152.38% faster than the on-board video of the reviewed motherboard.
When we installed a GeForce 7800 GTX on the reviewed card, a surprise: it was 8.90% faster than ASUS M2N32-SLI De Luxe with the same video card installed.