NVIDIA nForce4 SLI XE: Enthusiast Features on a Budget

Firewire and USB Performance

After looking at many options for Firewire and USB testing, we finally determined that an external USB 2.0, Firewire 400, and Firewire 800 hard disk would be a sensible way to look at USB and Firewire throughput. We utilize a RAM disk as our "server", since memory removes almost all overhead from the serving end. We turn off disk caching on the USB and Firewire side by setting up the drives for "quick disconnect" so that our results are consistent.

We use 1GB of fast 3-2-2-8 system memory set up as a 450MB RAM disk and 550MB of system memory. Our standard file is the SPECviewPerf install file, which measures 432,533,504 bytes (412.4961MB). After copying this file to our RAM disk, we measured the time for writing from the RAM disk to our external USB 2.0, Firewire 400, or Firewire 800 drive utilizing our internal Windows based timing program. The copy times in seconds were then converted into Megabits per second (Mb) to provide a convenient means of comparing throughput. Higher rates, therefore, mean better performance in this particular test.

Possibly the most interesting aspect in our Firewire and USB throughput tests is the performance of an external hard drive connected to Firewire 800. Our benchmarks show that Firewire 800 is up to 46% faster than a drive connected to the more common Firewire 400, and about 29% faster than USB 2.0.

The ECS C19-A SLI board does not offer a Firewire option, although ECS lists it as an upgrade option. The USB 2.0 performance is consistent with other NVIDIA based boards and continues to lead the Intel chipset solutions in throughput.