Test: Real-World Gaming
First up we have Prey which was tested at 1280x1024 and 1920x1200 resolutions. At 1280x1024 the slowest motherboard was the ASUS P5K-SE which rendered 179.3fps, the fastest was the ASUS P5K Deluxe which managed 185.0fps. This means there is a 5fps difference between the fastest and slowest motherboard in Prey at this resolution which is a minimal 3% performance difference.
Company of Heroes running at 1280x1024 saw the ASUS P5K Deluxe as the slowest board of the pack while the ASUS P5K-SE took the lead here. What's funny about this is we just saw the opposite in Prey where the P5K-SE was the slowest board and the P5K Deluxe was the fastest. This just goes to show how evenly matched these P35 motherboards are performance-wise, as well was reminding us that other factors such as CPU and videocard speed are more important as long as you are running on a stable platform.
The X3: Reunion results seem to fluctuate a little more than those recorded in Prey and Company of Heroes. The two fastest motherboards at 1280x1024 were the ECS P35T-A and Gigabyte P35-S3L, both rendered 92fps. The slowest motherboard was again the Gigabyte P35-DQ6 which rendered just 85.9fps. This means there is 7fps separating the fastest motherboard from the slowest.
Finally we have Far Cry which again demonstrated little performance difference between these nine motherboards. There was a very small 6fps gap between the fastest and the slowest motherboard in this test.