Stability:

This is what SMP is all about. Being able to run scads of CPU-intensive applications simultaneously with no lockups or hangs, and in fact being able to burn a CD on top of everything else. Since overclocked stability is what really counts here, all the following results were achieved with the PIIIs at 846MHz with a 141MHz FSB.

First I gave the VP6 a dose of the Prime95 "Torture Test." I set up two instances (one dedicated to each CPU) at 100% CPU utilization. After a solid day of them running without a single problem, I got bored and decided to see what I could do to make the system crash. To give you an idea of the kind of thing I threw at it, I kept those two instances of Prime95 running, opened 15 different Word documents, a huge Excel spreadsheet, an enormous Access database, Photoshop, Macromedia Flash, Ulead Media Studio Pro, and looped the Quake III Timedemo in two different windows. All that and not a hesitation, not a hiccup, so I copied a CD as well. And… no buffer underrun! In fact, the only times I have seen this system hang were when I turned on Quake III's SMP switch. Some people have reported lockups when using Creative Labs' Livewire 3.0 drivers with SBLive! cards on this board. I tried to duplicate this conflict, but to no avail. What can I say? The VP6 is a rock.