ASRock 939SLI32-eSATA2: ULi Dual x16 SLI
by Gary Key on March 2, 2006 12:15 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Ethernet Performance
The current motherboard test suite includes LAN performance measurements. All of these boards utilize PCI Express controllers with the only difference being the supplier of the core logic.
The Windows 2000 Driver Development Kit (DDK) includes a useful LAN testing utility called NTttcp. We used the NTttcp tool to test Ethernet throughput and the CPU utilization of the various Ethernet Controllers used on the Intel motherboards.
We set up one machine as the server; in this test, an Intel system with an Intel CSA Gigabit LAN connection. Intel CSA has a reputation for providing fast throughput and this seemed to be a reasonable choice to serve our Gigabit LAN clients.
At the server side, we used the following Command Line as suggested by the VIA whitepaper on LAN testing:
All standard Ethernet tests were performed with standard frames and the NVIDIA Active Armor suite disabled unless otherwise noted. Gigabit Ethernet supports Jumbo frames as well and provides a further reduction in CPU overhead.
The current motherboard test suite includes LAN performance measurements. All of these boards utilize PCI Express controllers with the only difference being the supplier of the core logic.
The Windows 2000 Driver Development Kit (DDK) includes a useful LAN testing utility called NTttcp. We used the NTttcp tool to test Ethernet throughput and the CPU utilization of the various Ethernet Controllers used on the Intel motherboards.
We set up one machine as the server; in this test, an Intel system with an Intel CSA Gigabit LAN connection. Intel CSA has a reputation for providing fast throughput and this seemed to be a reasonable choice to serve our Gigabit LAN clients.
At the server side, we used the following Command Line as suggested by the VIA whitepaper on LAN testing:
Ntttcpr -m 4,0,‹server IP› -a 4 -l 256000 -n 30000On the client side (the motherboard under test), we used the following Command Line:
Ntttcps -m 4,0,‹client IP› -a 4 -l 256000 -n 30000At the conclusion of the test, we captured the throughput and CPU utilization figures from the client screen.
All standard Ethernet tests were performed with standard frames and the NVIDIA Active Armor suite disabled unless otherwise noted. Gigabit Ethernet supports Jumbo frames as well and provides a further reduction in CPU overhead.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
46 Comments
View All Comments
Zoomer - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
This board would cannabilize sales of the premium SLI32 and xfire board that Asus sells for $150 IF it included voltage settings up to 2v vCore, 3.2v vMem, etc.They would be stupid to do it. These people will pay the $150 anyway if they don't have an easy (cheap) alternative. For the rest of us, we can get busy with a 2B pencil, solders or conductive ink. ;) And forgo the warranty on it, so if it goes boom in a year's time, you're on your own.
Nice strategy. Would AT leak the beta bios for comparison's sake? (We'll smuggle it to xs or ocwb....:D)
poohbear - Thursday, March 2, 2006 - link
and for the record the dualsata2 is a very stable mobo @ stock settings, i have to give credit where it's due, but for overclocking this company's products shouldnt even be considered.sandorski - Thursday, March 2, 2006 - link
It kinda sucks Nvidia bought out ULI, they were very innovative and really filled niche markets very well. Then again, perhaps Nvidia will let them continue doing interesting things there?Cygni - Thursday, March 2, 2006 - link
Hard to argue with that... looks like ASRock/ULi has another mega seller on their hand with this baby. But I cant help but wish it had an AGP slot thrown in between the two PCI-Ex lanes, to allow an upgrade path. Thats probably the primary reason the ULi 1695 boards have been selling so well.The IDE and SATA performance numbers are really striking in contrast to Nvidia's. I hope we see the inclusion of ULi's storage controller in future Nvidia chipsets.
All for $85... awesome.
Furen - Thursday, March 2, 2006 - link
If it had an AGP slot then it would have to use ULi's AGP tunnel + the 1697 instead of the 1695 + 1697, which would mean that it'd only have 16 PCI-e lanes for graphics. I suppose most of us wouldn't mind going for two 8x slots while in SLI but then most of us wouldn't really want SLI to begin with.JackPack - Thursday, March 2, 2006 - link
Quality doesn't seem to be bad either. Panasonic and UCC caps in there.