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To test the ASUS M4A79 Deluxe, I will use the AMD Phenom II x3 720 Black Edition since it can be used in both AM2+ and AM3 motherboards. I will compare it to our AM2+ test board. For the AM3 motherboard in the comparison, the RAM will have to be different, obviously. For each memory controller, the maximum RAM frequency will be set, that is DDR2-1066 for the AM2+ motherboards and DDR3-1333 for the AM3 ones.

As for the benchmarks, there will be a set of system benchs and another set of gaming benchs. Two of them require custom runs as they have no benchmarking tool. So for Bioshock and Call of Duty: World at War, Fraps will be used to record the FPS, whereas for all other gaming tests, the built-in benchmarking tool will be used. For all of these, the tests will be run at 3 different resolutions: 1280x1024, 1680x1050 and 1920x1200.

Test Setup

• Phenom II x3 720 Black Edition processor
• ASUS M4A79 Deluxe
• MSI 790FX-GD70 motherboard
• Gigabyte MA790GP-DS4H motherboard
• ASUS M3A78-T
• NVIDIA GTX 260 videocard with Forceware 182.06
• Cooler Master V8 heatsink
• Seagate 7200.11 750GB with 32MB cache SATA2 drive
• Mushkin XP-800AP power Supply
• 2x2GB Mushkin DDR2-1066 5-5-5-15-1T
• 2x2GB Mushkin DDR3-1333 7-7-7-20-1T

Benchmarks

• SiSoft Sandra Professional
• WinRAR
• PCMark Vantage
• TMPG rendering program
• POV-Ray
• Cinebench
• HDTune
• Far Cry 2
• Bioshock
• Call of Duty: World at War
• Crysis Warhead
• Left 4 Dead
• Mirror's Edge