Gigabyte GA-8I945GMH-RH Motherboard Review

Overall Performance

We measured the overall performance of this motherboard using SYSmark2004, which is a software that simulates the use of real-world applications. Thus, we consider this the best software to measure, in practical terms, the system performance.

The benchmarks are divided into two groups:

• Internet Content Creation: Simulates the authoring of a website containing text, images, videos and animations. The following programs are used: Adobe After Effects 5.5, Adobe Photoshop 7.01, Adobe Premiere 6.5, Discreet 3ds Max 5.1, Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, Macromedia Flash MX, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9, McAfee VirusScan 7.0 and Winzip 8.1.
• Office Productivity: Simulates the use of an office suite, i.e., simulates sending e-mails, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. The following programs are used: Adobe Acrobat 5.05, Microsoft Office XP SP2, Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1, NaturallySpeaking 6, McAfee VirusScan 7.0 and Winzip 8.1.

The software delivers specific results for each batch and also an overall performance result, all in a specific SYSmark2004 unit.

We selected the following motherboards to compare to Gigabyte GA-8I945GMH-RH:

• ASUS P5RD1-V (ATI Xpress 200)
• Foxconn 865G7MC-ES (Intel i865G)
• Intel Intel D915 GEVL (Intel i915G)
• PCChips M985G (Intel i915GV)
• ECS 865PE-A7 (Intel i865PE)
• Foxconn 915A01-P-8EKRS2 (Intel i915P)

We added to our comparison two entry-level motherboard that don’t have on-board video, one supporting DDR memories and based on Intel 865PE chipset (ECS 865PE-A7) and another supporting DDR2 memories and based on Intel 915P chipset (Foxconn 915A01-P-8EKRS2). Our goal was to compare the performance of the reviewed motherboard from Gigabyte with motherboard without on-board video.

We also installed a GeForce 6200 with 128MB on the reviewed motherboard in order to check if by installing a real video card on this motherboard we would achieve the same performance of a entry-level motherboard without on-board video.

The results you see on the chart below.

Gigabyte GA-8I945GMH-RH with its on-board video enabled achieved the same performance level of almost all motherboards included in our comparison. It was 5.56% faster than ASUS P5RD1-V (ATI Xpress 200).

When we installed a real video card on Gigabyte GA-8I945GMH-RH we saw no performance change.