Foxconn A690GM2MA Motherboard Review

3D Performance: 3DMark05

We again followed the same methodology described previously, but now running 3DMark05. This program measures 3D performance by simulating DirectX 9.0c games, i.e., using Shader 3.0. This programming model is used by the latest games and supported by GeForce 6100-405 and GeForce 7025-630a, but it isn’t supported by Radeon Xpress 1100 nor by AMD 690G.

It isn’t fair to use this program to evaluate 3D performance of motherboards with on-board video, as they achieve a very low score on this program. We ran it anyway, basically to see the performance achieved by Foxconn A690GM2MA using a real video card installed and also to compare it to other motherboards with on-board video.

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

This time Foxconn A690GM2MA was 6.37% faster than Abit AN-M2 (GeForce 7025), 21.73% faster than ECS GeForce6100SM-M and 61.66% faster than ECS RS485M-M (ATI Radeon Xpress 1100). The other two motherboards based on AMD 690G were 30% faster than this model from Foxconn, however.

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 56% faster than Foxconn A690GM2MA. This is a huge difference. GeForce 6200 with 128-bit memory interface was 87% 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.