Foxconn A690GM2MA Motherboard Review

3D Performance: 3DMark03

We followed the same methodology described in the previous page, but now running 3DMark03. 3DMark03 simulates DirectX 9.0 (i.e., Shader 2.0) games, which is fully supported by all four chipsets with integrated graphics we added to our comparison: Radeon Xpress 1100, AMD 690G, GeForce 6100-405 and GeForce 7025-630a.

You can check the results of our benchmarking below. All the listed video cards were installed on Foxconn A690GM2MA.

On 3DMark03 Foxconn A690GM2MA was 3.10% faster than ECS RS485M-M (ATI Radeon Xpress 1100) and 13.50% faster than ECS GeForce6100SM-M, but other motherboards with on-board video were faster: Abit AN-M2 (GeForce 7025) was 9.30% faster, ECS AMD690GM-M2 (AMD 690G) was 17.29% faster and MSI K9AGM2 (AMD 690G) was 19.07% faster.

We were really interested in learning why the other two motherboards based on the same chipset, AMD 690G, were faster. The only explanation we have is that the reviewed board was configured with its on-board video using 128 MB while on the other two boards the amount of memory that is stolen from RAM was set to “auto”; this option wasn’t available on Foxconn A690GM2MA.

The problem is that even the “worst” PCI Express video card is a lot faster than on-board video solutions: GeForce 6200 with 64-bit memory interface and TurboCache technology was 77% faster than Foxconn A690GM2MA. This is a huge difference. GeForce 6200 with 128-bit memory interface was 177% faster.

When we installed our overclocked GeForce 8800 GTS on the reviewed board it achieved the same performance level of ASUS M2N32-SLI De Luxe, what is great.