Intel P965: The Double Mint Twins Gone Wild
by Gary Key on November 9, 2006 8:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Media Encoding Performance
Our first test is quite easy - we take our original Office Space DVD and use AnyDVD Ripper to copy the full DVD to the hard drive without compression, thus providing an almost exact duplicate of the DVD. We then fired up Nero Recode 2, selected our Office Space copy on the hard drive, and performed a shrink operation to allow the entire movie along with extras to fit on a single 4.5GB DVD disc. We left all options on their defaults except we checked off the advanced analysis option. The scores reported include the full encoding process and are represented in minutes and seconds, with lower numbers providing better performance.
We continue to see a strong performance from the Biostar 965PT motherboard with the Gigabyte S3 trailing the DS3 once again although the differences in scores are minimal between the P965 boards. The 975X and NVIDIA 570SLI lag slightly behind in this test where the CPU and storage subsystems are stressed.
Audio Encoding Performance
While the media encoding prowess of the P965 boards were superb in our initial media encoding testing, we wanted to see how they faired on the audio side. Our audio test suite consists of Exact Audio Copy v095.b4 and LAME 3.98a3. We utilize the INXS Greatest Hits CD that contains 16 tracks totaling 606MB of one time '80s hits.
We set up EAC for variable bit rate encoding, burst mode for extraction, use external program for compression, and to start the external compressor upon extraction (EAC will read the next track while LAME is working on the previous track, thus removing a potential bottleneck with the optical drive). We also set the number of active threads to two to ensure both cores are active during testing. The results are presented in minutes/seconds for the encoding process, with lower numbers being better.
As in the media encoding section, the more intensive CPU and storage system tests seem to favor the P965 over the i975X/NV570SLI when running at the same memory timings. The Biostar 965PT scores slightly better than the Deluxe model in this test and ties our Gigabyte and ASUS boards for top scores. This test has proven to be very repeatable so we loaded the P965 Deluxe BIOS on the 965PT and the board consistently scored 2.33 so we again attribute the difference in scores to the newer BIOS.
File Compression Performance
In order to save space on our hard drives and ensure we had another CPU crunching utility, we will be reporting our file compression results with the latest version of WinRAR that fully supports multi-treaded operations and should be of particular interest for those users with dual core or multi-processor systems. Our series of file compression tests utilizes WinRAR 3.61 to compress our test folder that contains 444 files, ten subfolders, and 602MB worth of data. All default settings are utilized in WinRAR along with our hard drive being defragmented before each test.
Once again the Gigabyte and Biostar boards share first place honors with the Abit and ASUS boards finishing right behind them. The margins continue to be extremely close between our P965 boards just reiterating the fact that boards based on the same chipset are going to offer the same performance. The 975X and 570SLI boards trail slightly but the differences are minimal.
Our first test is quite easy - we take our original Office Space DVD and use AnyDVD Ripper to copy the full DVD to the hard drive without compression, thus providing an almost exact duplicate of the DVD. We then fired up Nero Recode 2, selected our Office Space copy on the hard drive, and performed a shrink operation to allow the entire movie along with extras to fit on a single 4.5GB DVD disc. We left all options on their defaults except we checked off the advanced analysis option. The scores reported include the full encoding process and are represented in minutes and seconds, with lower numbers providing better performance.
We continue to see a strong performance from the Biostar 965PT motherboard with the Gigabyte S3 trailing the DS3 once again although the differences in scores are minimal between the P965 boards. The 975X and NVIDIA 570SLI lag slightly behind in this test where the CPU and storage subsystems are stressed.
Audio Encoding Performance
While the media encoding prowess of the P965 boards were superb in our initial media encoding testing, we wanted to see how they faired on the audio side. Our audio test suite consists of Exact Audio Copy v095.b4 and LAME 3.98a3. We utilize the INXS Greatest Hits CD that contains 16 tracks totaling 606MB of one time '80s hits.
We set up EAC for variable bit rate encoding, burst mode for extraction, use external program for compression, and to start the external compressor upon extraction (EAC will read the next track while LAME is working on the previous track, thus removing a potential bottleneck with the optical drive). We also set the number of active threads to two to ensure both cores are active during testing. The results are presented in minutes/seconds for the encoding process, with lower numbers being better.
As in the media encoding section, the more intensive CPU and storage system tests seem to favor the P965 over the i975X/NV570SLI when running at the same memory timings. The Biostar 965PT scores slightly better than the Deluxe model in this test and ties our Gigabyte and ASUS boards for top scores. This test has proven to be very repeatable so we loaded the P965 Deluxe BIOS on the 965PT and the board consistently scored 2.33 so we again attribute the difference in scores to the newer BIOS.
File Compression Performance
In order to save space on our hard drives and ensure we had another CPU crunching utility, we will be reporting our file compression results with the latest version of WinRAR that fully supports multi-treaded operations and should be of particular interest for those users with dual core or multi-processor systems. Our series of file compression tests utilizes WinRAR 3.61 to compress our test folder that contains 444 files, ten subfolders, and 602MB worth of data. All default settings are utilized in WinRAR along with our hard drive being defragmented before each test.
Once again the Gigabyte and Biostar boards share first place honors with the Abit and ASUS boards finishing right behind them. The margins continue to be extremely close between our P965 boards just reiterating the fact that boards based on the same chipset are going to offer the same performance. The 975X and 570SLI boards trail slightly but the differences are minimal.
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Marlin1975 - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
The biggest problem I, and seems like most, have with 965 chipsets is the JMicron JMB363 IDE. You said there is a driver problem for the newwest driver but did not say what driver that is? Like 13.03, 15, etc... I think I have a new driver then someone in the forums has one that is 2 whole numbers newwer.I have a hard time trying to find a decent driver so I just get what I can for the JMicron JMB363. My DVD burner just comes up in windows as a reg. drive and I can;t get windows to see that it is a burner. Mind you Nero sees it as a burner. So I am guessing that is a JMicron JMB363.
I like my Gigabyte board, better then the Asus I had. But the lack of IDE support by Intel makes me want to get a Nvidia 600i board even more.
jackylman - Friday, November 10, 2006 - link
The Biostar 965PT (and, I assume, the Deluxe) includes a VIA VT6401 IDE controller instead of the Jmicron. I had no problems seeing the controller in the BIOS or getting my optical drive to run in DMA.Just another reason that this board rules.
Viditor - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
The biggest problem I have encountered seems like a small one, but it's getting annoying.It seems that none of the 965 boards allow for 2 x PATA connectors...I don't know for sure, but I assume this is a limitation of the chipset.
The problem I keep running into is the reuse of existing components for an upgrade. Obviously you need one of the PATAs for the optical drives, which means that unless you get a PATA controller card you can't reuse your existing PATA drives...
Sho - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
The P965 chipset doesn't have any PATA support by itself, so the mobo makers need to include a seperate controller.BladeVenom - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
Nice to see the less expensive models getting a thorough review. Everyone reviews the Biostar Deluxe, even though it's almost impossible to find, unless you're a reviewer.Also nice to see that model of Crucial RAM used. Next time you do a budget review could you also test the cheapest memory available, and 1:1 ratio for overclocking be damned.
Gary Key - Friday, November 10, 2006 - link
We are still testing lower priced memory. I will add some addtional overclocking results to these two boards tomorrow. :)
BladeVenom - Friday, November 10, 2006 - link
Thanks.DaveLessnau - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
I might have missed the reason for this in the write-ups. If so, I apologize. But, why aren't you reviewing any Intel boards? I'd have thought that they'd provide a decent baseline for comparison to see if the other manufacturers can do any better/different.Gary Key - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
The Intel board we originally received has been pulled from retail availability. We have a BLKDP965LTCK coming next week to take its place. I believe this board currently retails for $110~$115. I will do my best to at least get performance numbers from this board in our charts before the final article goes up.Sho - Thursday, November 9, 2006 - link
... where's that high-end board roundup hiding? IIRC an Anandtech staffer had announced it for last Friday in a comment to another article about two weeks back.