Gaming tests are next but have been a little cut down due to the performance limitations of the hardware (the 4x speed full length PCIe socket will almost certainly have a negative effect on performance) and the fact I wanted to test the onboard HD 6310 GPU as well as the GTX260.

Up first is Futuremark's 3DMark06 benchmark program.

The scores reflect what I suspected although not to the extent I feared. I'm sure it's a combination of CPU limitation and that slow PCIe slot. The HD 6310 result is more than acceptable for a base specification HD GPU and manages to at least match if not better the ION setups even when one is on the other end of a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo based dual core Pentium processor. That's actually pretty impressive.



Next is Futuremark’s newer 3DMark Vantage benchmark program.

Again there's a deficit as expected but here the gap is even less which surprised me. I think Vantage may be leaning on the GPU more than the CPU here. I did run the test multiple times and this represents the average accurately. As you can see the HD 6310 really suffers during the Vantage run. It's obvious that this isn't a gaming GPU.